From Policy Discourse to Gender Identity: Changes in Australian Teenagers’ Attitudes toward Gender Equality and Family Roles

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_57How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Australian Youth; Gender Equality Education; Policy Awareness; Media Exposure; Gender Attitudes

Abstract

In Australia and around the world, gender equality, family diversity, and youth inclusion are central to contemporary social policy. And adolescence represents a critical stage for the formation of gender identity and family role expectations, shaped by institutionalized education, public policy discourse, and the increasingly influential digital media environment. Therefore, understanding how these factors interact is essential to achieving more inclusive and equitable social outcomes. This study investigates how gender equality education, policy awareness, and media exposure jointly influence Australian adolescents’ gender attitudes and family role orientations. Based on Gender Socialisation Theory and risk-oriented approaches to youth media use, it explores whether structured educational participation, exposure to gender equality policies, and engagement with digital media are linked to more egalitarian gender norms. Specifically, this study employs quantitative methods, analysing AuSSA data for Australians aged 15-24 and drawing on supplementary data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Education, and UN Women. Besides, multivariate regression is used to examine how education, policy awareness, and media use relate to attitudes toward gender equality and family roles. The results show that participation in gender equality education and higher levels of policy awareness is significantly associated with stronger support for gender equality and non-traditional family roles. Media exposure alone does not have a consistent effect; and it strengthens egalitarian attitudes only when combined with educational participation. In digital contexts, the interaction between educational practice, policy communication, and media literacy has a strong influence on how adolescents develop their gender attitudes.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Kewen Yin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - From Policy Discourse to Gender Identity: Changes in Australian Teenagers’ Attitudes toward Gender Equality and Family Roles
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 562
EP  - 572
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_57
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_57
ID  - Yin2026
ER  -