Positive youth development in Portugal : a tool towards gender equity?

© 2018 Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Positive Youth Development - PYD pointed out the need to strengthen internal/external developmental assets in youth’s contexts. Literature suggests gender differences concerning health outcomes, with girls reporting poorer health outcomes, but higher quality in peer relationships, than boys. This chapter examines the associations of PYD and its dimensions with psychosocial variables, according to gender. Through an online survey, 2700 Portuguese college students (73.3% females), with a mean age of 21.3±2.79 years old were included. For both genders, the results showed significant differences and similarities with the PYD’s total score and its dimensions. Such results reinforce the importance to study positive indicators for PYD, but taking into account gender issues. More knowledge in this area can help health/education professionals and policy-makers to better plan interventions/policies. It is aimed to improve an integral and gender-sensitive healthy perspective for youths, based on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work.The research leading to this publication was cofunded by different partial supports such as the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (Grants: Teresa Santos - SFRH/BD/82066/2011 /J51280474607; Marta Reis - SFRH/BPD/1109 05/2015), WJCR/ISPA, Instituto Universitário; ISAMB, FML/University of Lisbon; FMH/ University of Lisbon. The William James Center for Research, ISPA - Instituto Universitário is supported by a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (Grant Number: UID/PSI/ 04810/2013).