engleski

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF GRETA THUNBERG

At Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM), students of the Economics and Management study program have two mandatory communication courses: Rhetoric and Business Communication. Within the courses students are, among other skills, taught how to adapt their messages to a particular audience, occasion and medium with a help of case studies illustrating different speakers and contexts. As previous research has shown that women are significantly more environmentally proactive than men (Steel, 1996) and that there are gender differences in speaker perception (Turman and Barton, 2004 ; Lang et al., 2005), a study was conducted among ZSEM students. They were shown the speech of a famous teenager activist Greta Thunberg given in 2019 on the UN’s Climate Action Summit about climate change, and then they filled out the questionnaire, the aim of which was to detect how gender affects the perception of speakers and environmental issues. The research included students (N=99) from the first to the fifth year, studying in the Croatian and English language programs. The sample also included exchange students studying at ZSEM. There were 55 female students and 44 male students. The research questions (N=10) covered the role of the language, ecological awareness, age, and education in perception of quality, attractiveness of the speech, the use of ethos, pathos and logos, persuasiveness and the influence potential. Their attitudes to selected questions were measured using Likert scale. The statistical analysis found significant differences between genders. The results showed that female students gave higher grades to Greta and her speech and they would be more willing to change their behavior as the result of listening to Greta’s speech. Gender perspective in perception of speakers should be taken into account when preparing business and marketing messages and as such covered in a communication course curriculum.

business communication ; public speaking ; gender differences ; student attitudes ; student perceptions ; Greta Thunberg

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