Gender differences in young peoples value preferences

Abstract: The main aim of this work is to discover gender differences in value orientation of today's youth, and to analyze developmental changes and ethnicity in terms of the same. The research is based on the assumption that a person’s gender identity influences his or her value orientation, thus gender stereotypes are adopted also on the level of what is preferred by the individual, or seen as important in life. In the research participated 118 young people from the Gymnasium in Subotica. The data about gender identity and value orientation was collected by a questionnaire, which was created in favour of this research. In the first part the questionnaire offered a list of gender related traits in order to define the participant’s gender identity. The second part was a list of opposite values, which was adopted from Jensen’s research. The results confirm the general findings of Jensen and reveal that there is significant gender effect present in adolescent’s value orientation in case of eight opposite values. It also highlights that age difference between the participants doesn’t contribute significantly to a higher or lower visible gender difference in value orientation, but conversely it shows that ethnic difference is an important factor in it.