By Pascal Lapointe of Agence Science-Presse
Is Generation Z, those under 30 years of age, going through an ideological separation of the sexes? Data from several countries sems to indicate that there is a growing gap between the political views of young women, who are more progressive, and young men, who are more conservative.
By comparison, the portraits we have of the politics of Generation X (1966-1980) and Generation Y (1981-1996) show that both genders in these age ranges are close together in their political beliefs. Such a gap among adolescents and young adults, if confirmed, would be unprecedented. Furthermore, it could have long-term social and political consequences, given how deeply ingrained the ideas formed at this age can be.
The Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch, a specialist in data analysis, examined Gallup polls and surveys conducted in four countries. He cites the work of Alice Evans, professor at Stanford University, who has made this “divergences of genders” throughout history the subject of her recent research.
In the United States, Burn-Murdoch summarizes, “Gallup poll data shows that after decades during which the sexes shared equal liberal or conservative views of the world, women between 18 and 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts. It has taken only six years for this gap to appear.”
This same gap among young people appears in data from Germany and South Korea, and is almost as pronounced (25%) in the United Kingdom. Other less studied examples seem to go in the same direction: in Poland recently, half of all men age 18 to 21 voted for the extreme right-wing party, as opposed to one in six women of the same age. In China, Alice Evans writes, economic growth and greater access to universities have favored an emancipation of young women: they are discovering greater opportunities. “Encouraged by their peers and by feminist media, they are doing better and demanding more.”
The #MeToo movement was probably a common trigger event in several countries. It pushed more women to speak up and react to injustices. More young men might have felt “threatened” over the erosion of their “privileges,” adopting a more conservative ideological stance. The economic climate may have furnished a pretext, Evans argues: “resentment is higher among men who think that state institutions in their region are unjust, and who live in a region with growing unemployment and greater competition for jobs.”
Social media filter bubbles are also likely a significant factor: we know how algorithms allow different groups to become trapped in bubbles where they only see what confirms their own beliefs. This is particularly true for the generation that grew up with social media. The case of the controversial influencer Andrew Tate is emblematic in this regard: despite (or perhaps because of) his misogynistic remarks, he is relatively popular among young men in several countries. In the U.K., 27% of men aged 18-29 have a favorable opinion of him, and 24% agree with what he says about « how women should be treated, » compared to 10% of all men.
If this is confirmed, there are inevitable political or electoral consequences. Concretely, this means that in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany, young women, Burn-Murdoch concludes, “now adopt much more liberal positions than do young men “ on immigration and equality of opportunity. And we do not see such gaps between the sexes within other age groups.
Three things could reverse this trend, Evans concludes: economic growth; better regulation of algorithms to see more clearly into social media filter bubbles; and more intersex friendships, which will dampen this tendency to live within separate virtual spaces and rely on polarized information sources.
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