Psychological Mechanisms of the Development of Gender Identity of Youth

Abstract

The article deals with an empirical study of the development of gender identity of youth. The formation of the personified image of “I” as the construct of masculine, feminine and androgyny in the context of humanistic, genetic and cognitive psychology, and in accordance with the author’s model of sex-role identification of personality is analysed. The specificity of the development of gender identity of girls and boys 15–17 years old concerns the gender differentiation of the structure of terminal and instrumental values, the different ratio of “Ideal I”/“Real I” of representatives of both sexes, their correlation with strategies of gender behavior and subjective control. The general self-concept, which is formed in adolescence, related to the feeling of adulthood – responsibility for their behavior, its awareness. It has been found out that the reconstruction of the cognitive component of the gender identity of youth is the result of “creative synthesis” between the aspirations of the internal authentic “I” and the demands of the social environment. The referential gender identity of girls and boys is strongly stereotyped. Gender identity appears in the generalized, systematized image of acquired sexual sex-role “I”; expanded by the significant influence of its deployment in the sphere of interpersonal relationships; conscious self-determination of girls and boys in the system of gender orientations. It is characterized by the balance of the “Real Gender I” and “Ideal Gender I”; the deepened level of self-reflection, the orientation to different models of sex-role behavior; the subordination of the content of gender identity to the wider socio-role context.