Gen Z views are rapidly splitting in half by gender—and the gap is not small

Sociologists generally agree that marked differences in public opinion tend to be more evident between than within generations. But recent research has uncovered a deepening rift in people under 30, one defined not by age but by gender.

Dr. Alice Evans has built on the work expressed in her 2020 book The Great Gender Divergence to show that today’s young people (under 30) are going through a rather significant demographic and sociological shift. Young women appeared to be more concerned with and aligned to progressive values and issues, while young men are moving in a more conservative direction. This isn’t just happening in the US. An ideological divide between men and women of the younger generations appears to be a global phenomenon.

Traditionally speaking, males and females would be spread roughly equally across political worldviews. But according to Gallup data, US women aged between 18 and 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts. The same can be said about Germany, with the UK showing a 25 percentage points difference. And men in Poland are far more inclined to support hard-right political parties. This new phenomenon is a very recent occurrence, taking a mere six years to manifest.

“Confederation, Liberty and Independence” is an alliance of radical nationalists and free-market libertarians founded in Poland in 2018. Last September, AP reported the following:

The party has been growing in popularity, especially among young men fed up with the political parties that have dominated Poland for most of the post-Communist era. Its convention in Katowice on Saturday, billed as its largest ahead of parliamentary elections on Oct. 15, was aimed at energizing more voters and at playing down antisemitism and other extreme views among some of its members.

Through smoke and fire, Confederation’s leaders made their case for lower taxes, less regulation and an anti-European Union and anti-Ukraine foreign policy.

Confederation was backed by almost half of Polish men aged between 18 and 21, whereas only a sixth of the same age bracket of women support the party.

This movement isn’t just affecting Western nations. South Korea, China, and even Tunisia are showing similar social patterns.

In some moral theories, liberals are often epitomized by much more openness to new experiences. Change, as entailed in the term “progressive,” is something that liberals embrace. On the other hand, conservatives (as the term denotes, wanting to conserve how things are) are not so keen on quick moral and social metamorphosis.

The question is why this is happening. The Financial Times sees the work of Evans in the following context:

Seven years on from the initial #MeToo explosion, the gender divergence in attitudes has become self-sustaining. Survey data show that in many countries the ideological differences now extend beyond this issue. The clear progressive-vs-conservative divide on sexual harassment appears to have caused — or at least is part of — a broader realignment of young men and women into conservative and liberal camps respectively on other issues.

In the US, UK and Germany, young women now take far more liberal positions on immigration and racial justice than young men, while older age groups remain evenly matched. The trend in most countries has been one of women shifting left while men stand still, but there are signs that young men are actively moving to the right in Germany, where today’s under-30s are more opposed to immigration than their elders, and have shifted towards the far-right AfD in recent years.

Alice Evans suggests that the changes are a result of the following components:

1. Men and women tend to think alike in societies where there is
   1. Close-knit interdependence, religiosity, and authoritarianism, or
   2. Shared cultural production and mixed-gendered offline socializing.
2. Gendered ideological polarization appears encouraged by:
   1. Feminized public culture
   2. Economic resentment
   3. Social media filter bubbles
   4. Cultural entrepreneurs

Thinking alike

In poorer communities, with all the threats that precarious societies entail, outsiders are distrusted and people stick together where possible and beneficial. Evans explains, “If children are socialized to put family first, then remain reliant on close-knit networks, beholden to uniform social policing, there is little scope for polarization. Deviance is sternly punished, since people either believe it is morally improper or risks social censure.”

Such close-knit, interdependent, and often religious communities tend to foster conformity. Being ostracised in such an environment is an “extremely costly” course to take. Such costs are equally as high in authoritarian states and communities where resistance is threatening and crushed as soon as possible.

On the other hand, when communities are mixed and diversity doesn’t bring costs with it, normalization cultivates empathy. This is espoused by Gordon Allport in the “contact hypothesis,” which proposes that “ingroups who have more interactions with a certain outgroup tend to develop more positive perceptions and fewer negative perceptions of that outgroup.” Or, as Evans states, “When people collaborate in joint projects, they tend to forge solidaristic ties and reject discrimination.”

Many of the countries that have experienced a shift in thinking between the genders have moved beyond these types of communities or societies. The US isn’t an authoritarian dictatorship, and the UK isn’t a close-knit religious society.

Gender division

As mentioned, the components of gender division are proposed to be:

1. Feminized public culture
2. Economic resentment
3. Social media filter bubbles
4. Cultural entrepreneurs (such as Andrew Tate)

With the growth in a feminization of popular culture over the last few decades—by 2020, for example, women authored the majority of new books, with their readers often being female—one can expect some kind of cultural backlash.

Add to this the idea that “economic stagnation fuels sexist resentment, xenophobia, far-right voting, and zero-sum mentalities.”

Across the European Union, younger men are most likely to claim that “Advancing women’s and girls’ rights has gone too far because it threatens men’s and boys’ opportunities.” This viewpoint is strongest in regions with rising unemployment and strong competition for jobs. Where men struggle to get ahead, they take their resentment out on women’s gains. For example, where unemployment has been high in Britain, you’re more likely to hear the phrase, “Husband should earn, wife stay at home”.

As has been well documented, xenophobia and the rise of the far right emerge in tandem with economic downturns. Evans explains this connection:

Xenophobia and sexist resentment both reflect men’s unmet desire for status. A fundamental feature of patriarchy is that men want to have high status. When men feel like they’re falling behind, unable to gain pre-eminence, forever ghosted by women on dating apps, they may react aggressively and endorse hostile sexism. This is a global trend, which I summarised here.

These ideas are exacerbated by zero-sum thinking where your success is my loss. Such a heuristic often breeds resentment and jealousy, which can prosper in times and places of economic stagnation.

It appears that men are more inclined to be affected by such scenarios. Men are more likely to resist immigration in the UK and Germany, for example. An interesting sidebar here that Dr. Evans sets out is as follows:

The message is clear: People who’ve personally seen and experienced upwards mobility are more likely to believe that everyone can thrive.

This is consistent with Gethin et al’s finding that that highly educated people tend to vote for left-wing and democratic parties. Rich and successful men are doing great! Their status is secure and they’re happy to share the pie.

It is another normalization of sorts.

The internet and its cultural entrepreneurs

The third element mentioned is that of social media filter bubbles. Economic challenges breed status in security and resentment. But zero-sum thinking doesn’t shift anyone particularly to the left or right as the phenomenon has previously been seen to affect both ends of the political spectrum. What has changed recently is the advent of social media. And this variable needs to be understood in the context of Evans’s fourth point: cultural entrepreneurs.

The first thing to understand here is how algorithms work. We have all come into contact with internet rabbit holes. Once you see one bit of content, no matter what the context is, the algorithm will suggest something that it thinks you might want to look at. So on and so forth until you spiral into somewhere that ends up being quite different from where you started. This is all very uneventful if it concerns music on YouTube, but when it might have a more ideological dimension, one can end up spiraling to the extreme right or the radicalized left within a matter of hours:

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram have been carefully designed to keep users hooked. Algorithms elevate sensational, radicalizing articles. They also create ‘filter bubbles’ (a term coined by Eli Pariser), by feeding people stories that appeals to their priors. This reinforces righteous resistance and group think.

Corporate quests for advertising revenue create social networks that augment extremism – explain Acemoglu and Johnson. Corporate algorithms are a kind of ‘institution’: they set the rules of the (digital) game.

Men can get quite easily sucked into “male-dominated filter bubbles”— cultural echo chambers that “legitimize anti-female resentment,… filter bubbles [that] may be exacerbating zero-sum mentalities.”

But it’s not just men who are sucked into this cultural vortex—it is also men-to-be. One of my 13-year-old boys recently sent me a Stephen Crowder video, a diatribe against gender diversity. I tried, in vain, to explain who Stephen Crowder was, and—more difficult given that this particular twin is on the spectrum—why those opinions were poisonous. He was having none of it.

Andrew Tate is another example, appearing to gain notoriety and favorability despite his infamy and the legal and ethical controversies that surround him. Dr. Evans uses him as an example:

Andrew Tate gained notoriety on social media for espousing sexism. A third of young British men now rate him favourably. As a multi-millionaire businessman – partying with attractive women in private jets and super yachts – he embodies many men’s idea of success. His wealth, confidence and charisma all aid ideological persuasion.

But he’s not just an exogenous shock, single-handedly brainwashing innocent young men. Rather, he’s surfing a wave of economic frustration, turbo-charged by corporate algorithms that fire-up sensationalist content for clicks.

A YouGov poll very clearly exemplifies this growing trend of young men taken in by such rhetoric:

These cultural entrepreneurs are finding fertile ground among today’s young men and even children. Yet there are no flourishing vines of juicy grapes that grow from the seeds, just twisted and thorny twigs thrust from gnarly branches to flail and catch unsuspecting bypassers.

I have long argued that people like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, and others are the gateway drugs into the more dangerous types (your Steven Crowders and Andrew Tates), who are themselves consistently flirting with, or indeed ensconced within, the far right. It is easy to get sucked in and pulled downwards when tempted to get too near to that virtual maelstrom that is endlessly whipping its furious winds about the internet, a place where we are spending increasing amounts of time.

There is some nuance to be had here, of course. These things don’t happen in a vacuum, and while we have looked at some of the variables that appear to have promoted this gender division, there could be something to say about the prevailing cultural milieu.

Many argue that the progressive left has been involved in significant overreach these past decades. The reaction of young men in the societies is a counterpoint to such a rapid cultural shift that some could argue is unjustified. This could be an example of a pendulum swinging one way and then back the other before perhaps coming to rest somewhere more amenable to everyone.

While this may certainly be the case, I can’t help but think that my son would be a better, more caring human being if he stayed well away from the Steven Crowders of the world. Sometimes, the mechanism needs oiling and the pendulum requires a little push.