As we have had the opportunity to comment elsewhere (Oliva, Hernando, Parra, Pertegal, Ríos and Antolín, 2008) an adjusted adolescent with a good positive development must possess a whole series of personal, social, cognitive, emotional and moral competencies such as good self-esteem, relational skills, decision-making capacity, empathy and respect for diversity, among others. Regarding the so-called moral competencies, which include social commitment, responsibility, prosociality, justice and respect for diversity, the belief in social equality, and more specifically in gender equality, stands out.

As previously mentioned, belief in gender equality is a competence to be developed for good adolescent adjustment as well as a resource or asset that facilitates the positive development of girls and boys. While belief in gender equality is associated with positive development, the presence of stereotypical ideas is associated with indicators of maladjustment such as the maintenance of problematic relationships. Thus, there are data that corroborate the association between possessing sexist beliefs and maintaining relationships in the future, especially in couples, based on dependence and imbalance, relationships that are the precondition for the occurrence of violence or abuse in the couple. In this sense, the fight against gender prejudices and stereotypes is fundamental, especially in childhood and adolescence. So much so that the Integral Law for Protection against Gender Violence gives a central role to educational proposals aimed at educating young people in mutual respect, and the school becomes a privileged context in which to overcome the sexist vision of the world by encouraging men and women to cooperate from a similar status around shared objectives and distributing opportunities for power (Díaz-Aguado, 2006).