Gender Heterogeneity, Individual Attitudes, and Girl-Boy Friendships among University Students

Growing pattern of premarital dating and friendship, together with transformation in the gender structure of Iranian universities are two emerging socio-cultural phenomena. In this paper, we examine the intersection of these two phenomena among university students. Based on Blau's theory, we hypothesize that as gender heterogeneity in classrooms increases, the contact chance within the members of minority gender groups decrease and on the contrary, friendship among the members of the majority gender group increase. The findings of a survey conducted among 425 students from Shiraz University, supported Blau's theory, indicate that gender heterogeneity in classrooms provide greater opportunity for interaction with the members of opposite-sex. In the case of female students, these findings should be interpreted cautiously however. Results also suggest that individual attitude has explained variance of the dependent variable more than gender heterogeneity. Although both objective macro structures and subjective micro structures affect social relations, the latter has more immediate influences.