Son Preference Among Educated Men: An Empirical Study in Hazara University, Pakistan

Since mid-twentieth century in most of developed countries, gender relations have witnessed social changes and transformations either through public policy or education as a socio-cultural goal. Accordingly, it was predicted that highly educated respondents from different cultural, regional and social backgrounds would display little or no significant gender bias with respect to the gender of their children. Result and collected data depicted somewhat a different picture. Data was collected through a close ended and structured questionnaire from 250 respondents comprised mostly of students, teachers as well as administrative staff of Hazara University, Pakistan. The views of respondents were collected on three questions to know whether they had any preference regarding: (i) the gender of their firstborn child; (ii) the gender ratio of their children; and (iii) the gender of their only child. In the first case, little ratio of preferences was noted. However, an overwhelming and significant gender preference for male children was found for the other two items. Moreover, some variations were also observed across various respondents’ characteristics as unmarried and young respondents displayed negligible gender preferences. Overall, data shows that strong gender preferences in offspring still exist with son as the first priority; even within segments of educated families where we might not expect to find them.