Not so long ago, we would think of generations as a single entity. That’s what Millennials think, or that’s what Gen Z believes.
Now it turns out that the views of men and women under 30 around the world are increasingly divided. Women have become more liberal in the past decade; men of the same age, more conservative. “Gen Z is two generations, not one,” John Byrne-Murdoch writes in the Financial Times [gift link]. “In countries on every continent, an ideological divide is emerging between young men and women.”
Study finds American women have become more liberal since 1990s New Gallup Poll The shift was more pronounced among younger and older women, with increases of 11 percentage points.
Compared to men, women aged 18-30 are 30 percentage points more liberal than men of the same age.
A similar gap exists in Germany. In the UK the gap is about 25 percentage points.
The Financial Times reports on deeper divisions outside the West, such as China and South Korea, using data from Gallup polls, analysis of the Korean General Social Survey and the British Election Study.
“As long as Korean men continue to dominate management and associate with other men, they will be trapped in a culture of self-righteous sexism,” Alice Evans wrotea visiting scholar at Stanford University, is working on her book, Great gender differentiation. On the other hand, Korean women are becoming increasingly feminist. “Inspired and encouraged, they shared their stories of abuse and publicly supported each other.”
india story
“The first signs of challenging the status quo are now evident,” Rahul Verma and Ankita Barthwal of the Center for Policy Research (CPR) wrote in a 2020 article published by Mint. Is India on the cusp of a gender revolution? This change has been driven primarily by educated young women.
Verma and Barthwal looked at the 2020 You-Guv-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey, examining gender preferences in marriage, parenting, career space, friendships and politics.
Similarities in career ambitions are “at least partly due to greater equality of opportunity between men and women,” they said. It signals “the weakening of gender norms that determine women’s career choices.” For example, when it comes to dream careers, men and women with the same academic qualifications have strikingly similar aspirations.
But differences are also emerging.
For example, equal numbers of men and women want to get married, but more women than men – 70% to 62% of 10,005 respondents in 184 towns and cities said they preferred love marriage. Women also want to marry later; 19% of men said it was after age 31, and only 14% said they would rather marry after age 31. Women also want fewer children than men: 65% of men want two, compared with 58% of women.
When it comes to friendships, women are more likely than men to have friends outside identity circles such as caste, religion or gender. Only 13% of women said they had no friends outside their caste (versus 20% of men); 15% said they had no friends outside their religion (compared to 21% of men), and 18% had no friends outside their gender. (25% for men). This is actually noteworthy when you consider the restrictions and regulations placed on women’s mobility and movement.
Verma warned it was too early to see a trend. “We may have green shoots, but I don’t see a trend yet,” he said. “Certainly young women are becoming more politically inclined, but women are still lagging behind in many ways.”
Find out why
There are two possible reasons for this gender difference. The first is the impact and consequences of the #MeToo movement. When women come forward to share their experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace, they find that online movements provide them with a democratic, open space. It helps create virtual networks around the world. It has also prompted women to speak out and boycott on a range of issues.For example, in Iran, the movement against the mandatory wearing of headscarves
But the movement also created a solidarity among women who found they could connect very quickly around the world and organize at least virtual sisterhood networks.
The second may be the rollback of hard-won rights, most notably the rollback of Roe v. Wade in the United States in June 2022, which ended the constitutional right to abortion.
But, for me, there is a third key reason. When it comes to challenging the status quo of a patriarchal society, men are literally served hand and foot by an army of mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, and it is women who benefit the most. Men have everything to lose and women have everything to gain.
“Young women’s aspirations have risen dramatically,” says Shrayana Bhattacharya, author of “What Young Women Want.” Desperate search for Shah Rukh Khan. But, “Young people are not equipped to cope with these new aspirations. They are not raised to deal with this new generation of ambitious women.”
So while we may not have reached the Venus/Mars watershed yet, women are increasingly questioning the roles they play. Change is coming.
The following article is excerpted from “Mind the Gap” by Namita Bhandare.read The rest of the newsletter is here.
Namita Bhandare writes about gender. The views expressed are personal.