Across much of the world, men and women think alike. However, in countries that are economically developed and culturally liberal, young men and women are polarising. As chronicled by John Burn-Murdoch, young women are increasingly likely to identify as ‘progressives’ and vote for leftists, while young men remain more
I was really enjoying this refreshing and unexpected piece until I got to this part, where it seemed to slide back into boring ole modern politics:
-- The evidence of Western young men's "sexist resentment" against women is their agreement with the statement "Advancing women's and girls' rights has gone too far because it threatens men's and boys' opportunities." To me, a Gen X woman, there is an ugly edge to the *wording* of this statement, but I think, given a poll, I would probably check "yes" here. It certainly wouldn't be a vote in "opposition to women's rights" as the y-axis suggests, but rather a concern that men and boys are really struggling. For example, is the reason women outnumber men in graduate programs by 1.6 to 1 because so much effort has been put into giving them "opportunities" from the zero sum game that is university admissions? That's what I would understand that poll question to mean.
--The tendency for young men to agree with the statement "Foreigners living in Germany should better adapt their lifestyle to that of Germans" is presented as evidence of their "xenophobia." It's interesting to see the sex and age differences in responses here, but is a positive answer to this question really xenophobia? (Noting that it appears that nearly everyone in Germany agrees with the statement, since 10% is the highest value!) Who, living in Germany and seeing Turkish families who have lived in Germany for five generations and still don't speak German, would disagree that they should "better adopt the German lifestyle"?
In an evenhanded and intriguing article, it was disappointing to see seemingly mundane political ideas presented as sexist resentment and xenophobia.
Really enjoying this - agree with Tyler Cowen's blog comment. 😃
A few random thoughts:
Judith Rich Harris notes in The Nurture Assumption that boys and girls (kids) are happy to mix until group opportunities reach a certain threshold, then they fracture along sex lines. Lines up nicely with your observations.
Have you read Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire, written about her time as a Middle Eastern correspondent? Again, echoes as I read your article.
I enjoyed reading this but you almost have to laugh at how the feminized public culture mentioned, which I will say is part of a broad public narrative/conscience, literally cannot acknowledge or offer examples of how this negatively affects boys and men, or specific negative behaviors being enforced onto them (even by women).
Only the other way around do I see examples being included here which is expected yet still frightening and it’s getting really tiring. You mention online filter bubbles that men inhabit and some of their tendencies yet fail to mention that for women, instead just simply saying they exist. Same goes for gendered expectations and norms. They are largely discussed for women but not for men.
We need more examples and need to do better, as there are most definitely male issues that need to be addressed & uncovered, and they seemed to have only gotten worse in the past few decades. The feminized public culture is incredibly biased and can’t or won’t acknowledge that, which is a problem because it affects us all, and if the divide strengthens and there are consequences we all suffer.
"“Who pays for dates?” is currently trending on the Western manosphere. Collectively, men bemoan unfairness. “If women want equality, they can share the tab!” I hear this same issue repeated by many 20-something men. As a cold, rational empiricist my internal monologue is,
“This is just a personal preference. Some people enjoy traditional gender roles (e.g. some men enjoy sexual dominance and/or financially providing for their girlfriends ). Those people can sort and select in the dating market”."
Woman complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, Alice has lots of sympathy. Man complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, "it's just like basic economics dude just sort and select in the dating market."
So much interesting data and thought here, thank you for pulling it together. I'm wary of a tendency to 'pathologise' the right more than the left - eg resistance to immigration is not evidence of xenophobia. I also note that while you say the right tends to misunderstand the left, the only research I've seen on this found that conservatives tend to understand liberal positions better than vice versa. Filter bubbles - hmm, I think this hoary idea needs to be put out to pasture. As you point out yourself, people who grew up pre-internet lived in restrictive filter bubbles, more so than younger generations do now. On radicalisation - not sure about the evidence for this. There's been more than one study finding that the YouTube radicalisation effect does not exist. Although I have to admit this goes against my intuitions! But these are quibbles. I'm interested in the broader question of whether this divergence is wholly bad - in some ways I can see it being a good thing - plenty of opportunity for partnerships-as-Allport-projects!
No, women no longer pour teas and give you services like that at work. You are going to get sued if you make them do that. Time has changed.
No, most men do not install hidden cameras to film women undressing, because that is a serious crime. And we do not laugh with criminals about criminal activities they have done. There are criminals everywhere in the world. That does not mean everyone in the world is criminal.
I see your point and I know what you are talking about. I really do. but your article is way too biased.
You need to have fair perspectives from the both sides. You are assuming one as a victim and the other as a inferior villain. This kind of view just widens gender gap much more.
Dear Dr. Evans. I left twitter but I'm still reading your posts and listening to your podcasts
I've written a post where I try to complete yours. I miss in your analysis why young women are voting for far left parties. If men are the reason behind polarization, why do not women vote for centrist / moderate parties? I think young women are as frustrated as men are. But for different reasons. https://derechomercantilespana.blogspot.com/2024/01/que-impulsa-la-polarizacion-ideologica.html
This post really strikes me as a mix of dismissal and condescension. The idea that breaking filter bubbles and changing algorithms will stop this trend implies that the complaints of men aren't rooted in real world problems, that they're just inventions of social media.
I can say with certainty than men are victims of sexist hiring policies in my field (tech). Two out of the three companies I've worked at had explicitly discriminatory policies. One outright prohibited men from a segment of each quarter's headcount. Of course, this was presented as "bonus" headcount for women rather than prohibiting men. But this is the exact same thing: if I have 30 headcount plus 20 "bonus" headcount exclusive to women it's identical as having 50 headcount, 20 of which are off-limits to men. Another set a quota of 40%, despite software developers and electrical engineers - who accounted for nearly all engineering roles - being ~20% and 10% women respectively. This isn't merely "threatening men's and boys' opportunities" it's explicitly curbing them.
A lot of the men I know that are drawn to "manosphere" content say they're frustrated with the unwillingness or inability of mainstream to address, or even acknowledge the existence of, sexism targeted at men. Conspicuously absent from the suggestions on how to close this gap is a bullet point about actually addressing anti-male sexism.
What a thought provoking article. I don't think you nail the root causes- social conservatism, and high ingroup preference tend to be predicted by a lower placement in the socio-economic spectrum and particularly a lower level of education. It why many demographics are currently switching position. The key driver is education. Younger higher status higher income White and Asian males are moving to the Left, whilst White males from poorer backgrounds, African American males, Latinos and recent migrants from legitimate immigration channels (other than H-1B1) are all switching Right (because economic research proves that more migration is worst for recent migrants) .
Economically, high migration is good for business, good for GDP and ensuring people in the top quintile (especially the top decile) make more money. However, high migration of the non-selective kind is terrible for males at the lower end of the educational spectrum, as well as for social spending (because the revenue base declines on a per capita basis).
The fallacy is the 'everyone moves up' myth. Some people move up, primarily on the basis of educational level of attainment- but if one is blue collar in the West then the effects of mass migration on a personal level have been disastrous. Douglas Adams was right when he argued that often the question is more important than the answer. Economic questions that don't look at the socio-economic spectrum and net contributions to tax revenue minus tax expenditure per citizens are worse than useless because they are highly misinformative. These aren't the only factors- both offshoring and automation have played a substantial role, but only by degrees compared to the unlimited labour supply of people willing to work longer hours for less money in unsafe working conditions. It certainly doesn't help that credentialism and Western snobbery has meant that electrical engineers and doctors who should be displacing the highly educated and reducing their incomes in the West often find themselves by necessity working jobs as janitors or car mechanics.
It's all down to economic interests. The solution is the type of migration practiced by Australia up until the early 2000s. By offering specific protections against migration for the blue collar class, their Populate or Perish policy able to achieve double the rate of foreign-born citizens without any of the cultural friction found in other Western countries. It also helped build a network of universities in the developing world, because it created demand for an educated workforce in the same way that America's H-1B1 program did.
I largely agree with the arguments about misogyny, but it's important to note that dating apps have been disastrous for both young men and young women. Young college women report being willing to endure painful and unconformable sex on the first date with their male college peers because of scarcity and competition, whilst young men might as well not bother with dating apps at all, outside of the college scene. Going to the gym and eating healthily might help when you're thirty have have a good job, but research shows that the ideal swipe for men is highly attractive and 18 to 22, when for younger women its early thirties, attractive, tall and with a reasonable good job. 18 to 30 males simply need not apply- no matter how good they look.
The other issue is self-selection in a more diverse media landscape. Contrary to some arguments (especially academic studies by bad actors who used multiple content creator accounts by the same authors to prove false correlation with polarisation to the extremes) most search engine curation and platforms push heavily towards the corporate centre Left. It's why progressive content creators are entirely correct when they complain about being supressed as much as conservatives- because they aren't part of the corporate centre Left.
But the far more powerful force is the ways in which people were selecting for content. Before YouTube altered its algorithms, men were more likely to search for content on economics, whilst women were more likely to search for issues relating to social progress. The fact that economics is generally somewhat more popular amongst conservatives and libertarians, whilst social progress is the preeminent political occupation of progressives meant that the various platforms sorted men to the Right and women to the Left, even though this wasn't necessarily their current political affiliation.
Thanks for this great read, super well researched. It’s unfortunate though imo that your writing, while sharing your sophisticated meticulous research, also reveals apparent bias wrt to your personal sympathies, that can be alienating. In short, while your model is neutral, your chosen examples are one sided suggesting that only men can learn from women and are harmed by segregation never vise versa. You also display zero sympathy for men’s challenges. It’s a shame really. Your analysis is great and the argument convince but the tone and one-sidedness of the chosen examples detracts and distracts.
I'd like the author to cite the sources of her data. Who conducted the research and how, where is it published, etc?I don't accept common sense assumptions as facts. Scientific proof of her assertions is almost impossible to pin down.
I'm done with people underestimating men, and writing off the entire gender based on distraught, young outliers.
I think you discount the decline of religion in America. I often see discussion of the missing third place as well in this topic but I think most people are blind to the fact that that used to be the church.
Whether socialized or biological women tend to be more empathetic and emotional than men by these tendencies have been restrained in the political sphere by our culture up until now. We know for a variety of reasons that those traits are correlated with progressivism. Even your article shows a massive slant towards this mindset.
Do you think a factor in gender ideological differences in the west could be the number of men vs. women who attend university? Women have been the majority of university students for a while now with the gap growing even larger. We know that there is a growing gap in political ideology if you have have a university degree compared to if you don't. Could the gender divergence be downstream of an education divergence?
I was really enjoying this refreshing and unexpected piece until I got to this part, where it seemed to slide back into boring ole modern politics:
-- The evidence of Western young men's "sexist resentment" against women is their agreement with the statement "Advancing women's and girls' rights has gone too far because it threatens men's and boys' opportunities." To me, a Gen X woman, there is an ugly edge to the *wording* of this statement, but I think, given a poll, I would probably check "yes" here. It certainly wouldn't be a vote in "opposition to women's rights" as the y-axis suggests, but rather a concern that men and boys are really struggling. For example, is the reason women outnumber men in graduate programs by 1.6 to 1 because so much effort has been put into giving them "opportunities" from the zero sum game that is university admissions? That's what I would understand that poll question to mean.
--The tendency for young men to agree with the statement "Foreigners living in Germany should better adapt their lifestyle to that of Germans" is presented as evidence of their "xenophobia." It's interesting to see the sex and age differences in responses here, but is a positive answer to this question really xenophobia? (Noting that it appears that nearly everyone in Germany agrees with the statement, since 10% is the highest value!) Who, living in Germany and seeing Turkish families who have lived in Germany for five generations and still don't speak German, would disagree that they should "better adopt the German lifestyle"?
In an evenhanded and intriguing article, it was disappointing to see seemingly mundane political ideas presented as sexist resentment and xenophobia.
Really enjoying this - agree with Tyler Cowen's blog comment. 😃
A few random thoughts:
Judith Rich Harris notes in The Nurture Assumption that boys and girls (kids) are happy to mix until group opportunities reach a certain threshold, then they fracture along sex lines. Lines up nicely with your observations.
Have you read Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire, written about her time as a Middle Eastern correspondent? Again, echoes as I read your article.
Great work.
Filter bubbles are not a thing for right wingers as we are constantly bombarded with leftist messaging like this article.
I enjoyed reading this but you almost have to laugh at how the feminized public culture mentioned, which I will say is part of a broad public narrative/conscience, literally cannot acknowledge or offer examples of how this negatively affects boys and men, or specific negative behaviors being enforced onto them (even by women).
Only the other way around do I see examples being included here which is expected yet still frightening and it’s getting really tiring. You mention online filter bubbles that men inhabit and some of their tendencies yet fail to mention that for women, instead just simply saying they exist. Same goes for gendered expectations and norms. They are largely discussed for women but not for men.
We need more examples and need to do better, as there are most definitely male issues that need to be addressed & uncovered, and they seemed to have only gotten worse in the past few decades. The feminized public culture is incredibly biased and can’t or won’t acknowledge that, which is a problem because it affects us all, and if the divide strengthens and there are consequences we all suffer.
"“Who pays for dates?” is currently trending on the Western manosphere. Collectively, men bemoan unfairness. “If women want equality, they can share the tab!” I hear this same issue repeated by many 20-something men. As a cold, rational empiricist my internal monologue is,
“This is just a personal preference. Some people enjoy traditional gender roles (e.g. some men enjoy sexual dominance and/or financially providing for their girlfriends ). Those people can sort and select in the dating market”."
Woman complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, Alice has lots of sympathy. Man complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, "it's just like basic economics dude just sort and select in the dating market."
So much interesting data and thought here, thank you for pulling it together. I'm wary of a tendency to 'pathologise' the right more than the left - eg resistance to immigration is not evidence of xenophobia. I also note that while you say the right tends to misunderstand the left, the only research I've seen on this found that conservatives tend to understand liberal positions better than vice versa. Filter bubbles - hmm, I think this hoary idea needs to be put out to pasture. As you point out yourself, people who grew up pre-internet lived in restrictive filter bubbles, more so than younger generations do now. On radicalisation - not sure about the evidence for this. There's been more than one study finding that the YouTube radicalisation effect does not exist. Although I have to admit this goes against my intuitions! But these are quibbles. I'm interested in the broader question of whether this divergence is wholly bad - in some ways I can see it being a good thing - plenty of opportunity for partnerships-as-Allport-projects!
Just few corrections for the South Korea part.
No, women no longer pour teas and give you services like that at work. You are going to get sued if you make them do that. Time has changed.
No, most men do not install hidden cameras to film women undressing, because that is a serious crime. And we do not laugh with criminals about criminal activities they have done. There are criminals everywhere in the world. That does not mean everyone in the world is criminal.
I see your point and I know what you are talking about. I really do. but your article is way too biased.
You need to have fair perspectives from the both sides. You are assuming one as a victim and the other as a inferior villain. This kind of view just widens gender gap much more.
Dear Dr. Evans. I left twitter but I'm still reading your posts and listening to your podcasts
I've written a post where I try to complete yours. I miss in your analysis why young women are voting for far left parties. If men are the reason behind polarization, why do not women vote for centrist / moderate parties? I think young women are as frustrated as men are. But for different reasons. https://derechomercantilespana.blogspot.com/2024/01/que-impulsa-la-polarizacion-ideologica.html
This post really strikes me as a mix of dismissal and condescension. The idea that breaking filter bubbles and changing algorithms will stop this trend implies that the complaints of men aren't rooted in real world problems, that they're just inventions of social media.
I can say with certainty than men are victims of sexist hiring policies in my field (tech). Two out of the three companies I've worked at had explicitly discriminatory policies. One outright prohibited men from a segment of each quarter's headcount. Of course, this was presented as "bonus" headcount for women rather than prohibiting men. But this is the exact same thing: if I have 30 headcount plus 20 "bonus" headcount exclusive to women it's identical as having 50 headcount, 20 of which are off-limits to men. Another set a quota of 40%, despite software developers and electrical engineers - who accounted for nearly all engineering roles - being ~20% and 10% women respectively. This isn't merely "threatening men's and boys' opportunities" it's explicitly curbing them.
A lot of the men I know that are drawn to "manosphere" content say they're frustrated with the unwillingness or inability of mainstream to address, or even acknowledge the existence of, sexism targeted at men. Conspicuously absent from the suggestions on how to close this gap is a bullet point about actually addressing anti-male sexism.
"Far-right" "far-right" "far-right"... what is "far" about it? Why does writer after writer act as though slightly right of Karl Marx is "far-right"?
What a thought provoking article. I don't think you nail the root causes- social conservatism, and high ingroup preference tend to be predicted by a lower placement in the socio-economic spectrum and particularly a lower level of education. It why many demographics are currently switching position. The key driver is education. Younger higher status higher income White and Asian males are moving to the Left, whilst White males from poorer backgrounds, African American males, Latinos and recent migrants from legitimate immigration channels (other than H-1B1) are all switching Right (because economic research proves that more migration is worst for recent migrants) .
Economically, high migration is good for business, good for GDP and ensuring people in the top quintile (especially the top decile) make more money. However, high migration of the non-selective kind is terrible for males at the lower end of the educational spectrum, as well as for social spending (because the revenue base declines on a per capita basis).
The fallacy is the 'everyone moves up' myth. Some people move up, primarily on the basis of educational level of attainment- but if one is blue collar in the West then the effects of mass migration on a personal level have been disastrous. Douglas Adams was right when he argued that often the question is more important than the answer. Economic questions that don't look at the socio-economic spectrum and net contributions to tax revenue minus tax expenditure per citizens are worse than useless because they are highly misinformative. These aren't the only factors- both offshoring and automation have played a substantial role, but only by degrees compared to the unlimited labour supply of people willing to work longer hours for less money in unsafe working conditions. It certainly doesn't help that credentialism and Western snobbery has meant that electrical engineers and doctors who should be displacing the highly educated and reducing their incomes in the West often find themselves by necessity working jobs as janitors or car mechanics.
It's all down to economic interests. The solution is the type of migration practiced by Australia up until the early 2000s. By offering specific protections against migration for the blue collar class, their Populate or Perish policy able to achieve double the rate of foreign-born citizens without any of the cultural friction found in other Western countries. It also helped build a network of universities in the developing world, because it created demand for an educated workforce in the same way that America's H-1B1 program did.
I largely agree with the arguments about misogyny, but it's important to note that dating apps have been disastrous for both young men and young women. Young college women report being willing to endure painful and unconformable sex on the first date with their male college peers because of scarcity and competition, whilst young men might as well not bother with dating apps at all, outside of the college scene. Going to the gym and eating healthily might help when you're thirty have have a good job, but research shows that the ideal swipe for men is highly attractive and 18 to 22, when for younger women its early thirties, attractive, tall and with a reasonable good job. 18 to 30 males simply need not apply- no matter how good they look.
The other issue is self-selection in a more diverse media landscape. Contrary to some arguments (especially academic studies by bad actors who used multiple content creator accounts by the same authors to prove false correlation with polarisation to the extremes) most search engine curation and platforms push heavily towards the corporate centre Left. It's why progressive content creators are entirely correct when they complain about being supressed as much as conservatives- because they aren't part of the corporate centre Left.
But the far more powerful force is the ways in which people were selecting for content. Before YouTube altered its algorithms, men were more likely to search for content on economics, whilst women were more likely to search for issues relating to social progress. The fact that economics is generally somewhat more popular amongst conservatives and libertarians, whilst social progress is the preeminent political occupation of progressives meant that the various platforms sorted men to the Right and women to the Left, even though this wasn't necessarily their current political affiliation.
Thanks for this great read, super well researched. It’s unfortunate though imo that your writing, while sharing your sophisticated meticulous research, also reveals apparent bias wrt to your personal sympathies, that can be alienating. In short, while your model is neutral, your chosen examples are one sided suggesting that only men can learn from women and are harmed by segregation never vise versa. You also display zero sympathy for men’s challenges. It’s a shame really. Your analysis is great and the argument convince but the tone and one-sidedness of the chosen examples detracts and distracts.
I'd like the author to cite the sources of her data. Who conducted the research and how, where is it published, etc?I don't accept common sense assumptions as facts. Scientific proof of her assertions is almost impossible to pin down.
I'm done with people underestimating men, and writing off the entire gender based on distraught, young outliers.
I wonder how much of this is just educational divergence. Women have been going to college at a greater rate than men for decades.
A couple of points
I think you discount the decline of religion in America. I often see discussion of the missing third place as well in this topic but I think most people are blind to the fact that that used to be the church.
Whether socialized or biological women tend to be more empathetic and emotional than men by these tendencies have been restrained in the political sphere by our culture up until now. We know for a variety of reasons that those traits are correlated with progressivism. Even your article shows a massive slant towards this mindset.
Do you think a factor in gender ideological differences in the west could be the number of men vs. women who attend university? Women have been the majority of university students for a while now with the gap growing even larger. We know that there is a growing gap in political ideology if you have have a university degree compared to if you don't. Could the gender divergence be downstream of an education divergence?
Thanks for the great article.