Gender Sensitivity Issues in Short Stories

Abstract

This study is a hybridized research which consists of the qualitative and quantitative data. It determined the trend of manifestation of the different themes of gender sensitivity in short stories and looked into the difference in the trend of manifestation of the different themes and the relationship with the sex of the short story writers. The findings revealed that the theme on how women are hindered for political career was the theme that mostly occurs on the selected short stories written by males with nine or 45 percent trend of manifestation. However, with the selected short stories written by females, the themes on women’s vulnerability to poverty and the discrimination of women for employment appear with the most number of occurrences of four or 23.53 percent. There was an observed difference in the trend of manifestation between the males and the female writers. However in the Kruskall Wallis statistical test revealed that there was no sufficient evidence to conclude gender differences in the themes. Furthermore, the sex of the short story writers does not affect the trend of manifestation of the different themes embodying the different gender sensitivity issue in the selected short stories except with the gender sensitivity issue on Poverty. The researcher concluded that short stories contain different themes reflecting the various gender sensitivity issues which vary in the trend of manifestation.The study recommends that Filipino writers should write more stories depicting the role of Filipino woman and emphasize their importance in the society.