The theoretical and empirical analysis of the problem of peculiarities of youth perception of gender roles is carried out. The key elements of gender role perception are: gender role, gender scheme, role standard and prototype. The role standard is a system of features that act as a measure of social role, the criteria for its identification by the subject of perception. The prototype carries the average image of the role, the most typical implementation of a particular role, which contains information about its possible variability and limitations, as well as characteristic attributes and symbols.
The differences in gender-role repertoire of men and women of young and mature age are defined. In adults, the gender-role repertoire is generally wider than in young people. At the same time, men, regardless of age, focus mostly on male roles and show high variability in their identification and description; women are more likely to actualize roles from both female and male repertoire.
The connection between economic status, profession, marital status of parents (first / remarriage) with the peculiarities of youth perception of gender roles is revealed. High economic status and belonging to the humanitarian professions correlate with the focus on gender equality, while low economic status and belonging to the technical professions correlate with a focus on traditional subordination and gender stereotypes. Research participants who are children from the mother's first marriage or from the father's remarriage attribute greater concern (femininity) to family roles.
Levels of masculinity, femininity, androgyny of gender roles actual for youth are revealed. The most masculine roles for both women and men were "husband", "male-leader" and "father". The most feminine role for both male and female samples is the role of the mother; both samples referred the roles of macho, male leader and female leader to the least feminine. But in assessing the androgyny of gender roles, these samples are not unanimous. Whereas young women consider both female and male roles to be the most androgynous, young men consider them to be only male. The diagnosed consider the roles of "seductress", "gigolo", "mistress" the least androgynous.
The psychological peculiarities of the perception of gender roles by both men and women is their different emotional and personal load. Men's assessments of male roles often correlate with the idealization of the relationship in the parental couple. The assessments of women's roles by men correlate with the construct’s "affection", "humiliation" and "conflict in the parental family", which indicates the emotional contradiction of expectations in the perception of women's roles. Assessments of gender roles by women often correlate with stereotypical attitudes about marriage and the family, which may indicate a perceptually low variability of role expectations in the perception of gender roles by young women.
According to feminine and masculine characteristics, the gender role repertoire of the diagnosed was grouped by 4 factors: family-female, family-male, resource-financial and erotic-game roles. At the same time, resource-financial and erotic-game roles, which are also gender roles in their characteristics, exist in the perception of young people separately from the family. When assessing roles for androgyny, they were grouped by two factors: family-role and individual-consumer, which is consistent with previous results. Thus, we can talk about at least two meta-roles, which are prototypes of gender roles of youth: 1) the family meta-role; 2) the individualistic meta-role. They can be specified in four prototypes of gender roles: 1) the family man; 2) the family woman; 3) the individualist, focused on consumption; 4) the individualist, focused on sexual pleasures. Family values are opposed to both enrichment and sexualization.
The implementation of the author's training program for the development of perceptual gender-role competence of young people has caused significant changes in the perception of gender roles by training participants. Estimates of androgyny of complex family roles increased, stereotypical feminine “coloring” of erotic-game roles decreased, cognitive complexity of gender-role perception increased (number of features used to describe gender roles), the level of role depth and role flexibility of participants increased. This indicates the overcoming of many stereotypes in the perception of gender roles and the growth of perceptual gender-role competence of training participants.
