Public opinion research assumes that each generation tends to act as a whole in terms of political ideology. However, it’s observed that the ideological gap between young men and women is widening everywhere in the world. Millions of people living in the same cities, workplaces, classrooms, and even homes are no longer on the same page.
Public opinion research assumes that each generation tends to act as a whole in terms of political ideology. According to this assumption, everyone belonging to that generation shares the same experiences, reaches life’s major turning points at the same time, and intermingle in the same areas.
So, how should we interpret reports that Generation Z is extremely progressive on some issues and surprisingly conservative on others?
“Gen Z is two generations, not one”
According to researcher Alice Evans, who serves as a visiting researcher at Stanford University, today’s young people under thirty are experiencing a significant division, with young women in one camp and young men in another: “Gen Z is two generations, not one.”
It’s observed that the ideological gap between young men and women is widening everywhere in the world. Millions of people living in the same cities, workplaces, classrooms, and even homes are no longer on the same page.
In the US, Gallup data show that after decades of roughly equal distribution between liberal and conservative worldviews across genders, women aged 18-30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than men.
In Germany, there’s a 30-point gap between increasingly conservative young men and progressive young women; in the UK, this gap is 25 points. Last year in Poland, nearly half of men aged 18-21 supported the far-right Confederation party, while only one-sixth of women the same age supported this party.
The ideology gaps are only growing
In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, young women exhibit a much more liberal stance on immigration and race-based justice issues compared to young men, whereas the proportions are equal in older age groups. The trend in most countries is for men to remain stagnant while women lean towards the left. In Germany, however, there are signs of young men shifting to the right.
According to John Burn-Murdoch from the Financial Times, ideological gaps are widening, and the data indicate that it’s increasingly difficult for people to move outside their political formations: “All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.”
Source: Financial Times