Education has emerged as the most important tool in the elimination of sexism.  Sexism is one of the major global issues that are still unresolved in the XXI century. Thus, measures of awareness, prevention and screening and educational intervention are essential to eradicate this social evil and permit the advance of democracy. In this context, future teachers will be a professional group of great importance, as they will be an agent of social change.

In this research we focused on assessing gender and bias attitudes towards gender equality implementation in education of future primary school teachers during their initial training, in order to test the effectiveness of this training period to modify these attitudes towards others more egalitarian. The purpose of our study is to present scientific evidence to help us improve teacher training in subsequent interventions. This need is determined by international texts relating to education and gender, as well as the need to train teachers specifically in the area of gender equality.

Various experts in the field have reported that the opportunity that we had to introduce a gender perspective in new teacher training curriculum after the adaption process with the European Higher Education Space was not fulfilled, despite it constituting a principle in all stages of education (Anguita and Torrego, 2009; Gutiérrez et al, 2011). And this has happened even though it is clear that current teachers are, unconsciously or not, sexist in their teaching. Most think that sexism is disappearing and has strong resistance to the coeducational change. The persistence of these beliefs in recent times suggests that teacher training in relation to gender equality and co-education has not changed, even though it is evident that it presents deficits in awareness and training (Spender, 1982; Subirats, 1985; Subirats and Brullet, 1988; Fernández, 1990; Freixas, 1995; Bonal, 1997; Martel, 1999; Rodríguez, 1999; López et al, 1998; Rodríguez, 1999; López and Encabo, 2002; Lojo, 2004; Artal, 2009; Rebollo et al 2011). So, we asked ourselves the following research questions: What level of sexism presents our future teachers? How effective is the initial training of teachers to change sexist attitudes towards those of gender equality?

General Research Objectives:

a) Respond to the social and educational needs and the current legislation relating to equality between men and women and the eradication of violence against women, on the premise that education, specifically teacher education is the starting point for a more just, equal and therefore more democratic society.

b) Analyze sexist of bias attitudes and their predisposition toward building a culture of gender equality in the education of future teachers.

c) Check whether the current Initial Teacher training is effective in promoting egalitarian attitudes towards gender and towards building a culture of gender equality in education.

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