From dreams to possibilities: the role of gender and family income in aspirations among youth in the city of Yazd

Abstract

ABSTRACT Understanding what youth aspire is widely considered to be a critical step towards recognizing further changes in societies. This article explores young people’s aspirations, including personal and collective desires, in a less-studied social setting, Yazd in Iran. This paper also examines the differentiating roles of gender and family income for the importance and chance of accomplishment attached to these ambitions. The data for this study comes from an initial explanatory phase followed by a survey comprising 2700 youth in Yazd. Our findings suggest that marriage-based and political aspirations are the most and least important dimensions, respectively. We also found that the importance given to aspirations and chance of their realization are generally, but not consistently, different in terms of gender and family income. Accordingly, young women, compared to young men, commonly attended more to their ambitions but perceived them as less reachable. In most cases, youth from low-income families considered their desires less accessible than others. Drawing an importance-expectation matrix for each gender group, ‘having a healthy body and soul in aging’ was introduced as a critical aspiration with the widest gap. We discuss the results and implications vis-à-vis contextual and structural conditions in which the youth are embedded.