The background to this study is the increasing differences in grades and throughput between males and females in Swedish upper secondary school. The study aimed to investigate the relationship between beliefs about study motivation and gender in Sweden in seven different study programs in upper secondary schools. The study adopted quantitative research design. The data were collected via a questionnaire of “Patterns of Adaptive Learning Study” (PALS) designed by Midgely (2001) and adopted to Swedish contexts by Blomgren (2016). The questionnaire consisted of 38 items that were administered to 155 female and 107 male students in upper secondary school in one region in Sweden. The data obtained were analyzed using Mann-Whitney test. Results revealed that overall males and females to 2/ 3 held similar beliefs about their motivation to study but to 1/3 differed at a significant level. Overall, the importance of schools, teachers, families and their own efforts was highly appreciated in the study. The difference was evident mainly in the value of the teacher's importance and role in the classroom, where males had higher estimate. However, females were of the opinion that the school was less safe, that the classrooms were less inviting and that there was less silence in the lessons compared to males. The study partly explained the seemingly paradoxical situation in students' different learning strategies and addresses didactic improvements to teachers.