Abstract:

Despite the policies of our country in the last years on legal, political, economic and cultural ground to promote equity and gender parity, there are still discriminatory conceptions of men and women. Although these concepts have, increasingly, an implicit and informal nature that makes them less visible and difficult to detect, they have still a profound impact on people's daily life. This reality is clearly shown in the young people. Recent researches have found a widespread rejection among adolescents toward explicit sexist beliefs, linking masculinity and violence and questioning the equality of rights between men and women. However, this rejection decreased significantly when gender stereotypes are expressed more subtly or when they are related to differences in education and emotional expression (Diaz-Aguado, 2003). The first objective of this research is to know and highlight some factors that mediate the development of gender conceptions and discriminatory behaviour among young people. Specifically, we study the role of some psychosocial variables such as social dominance orientation (SDO), the gender stereotypes and group identification. The second objective is to provide with a feedback to our participants, since the knowledge of the influence of these factors gives then an essential information to promote change. The sample consisted of 100 adolescents aged between 14 and 17 years attending compulsory secondary education. The study used an experimental methodology and indirect measures of the variables studied, allowing a more reliable measurement of these variables, having in account its implicit nature. The results support the hypotheses and lay the foundation of specific intervention strategies that focus on education and socialization of young people in values that promote equality between women and men.

Keywords:

Adolescents, SDO, group identification, stereotypes, gender discrimination and education.