Evaluation of the “Financial Times”
Political views: Young women and men seem to be drifting further and further apart
In recent decades, women in many countries have become more liberal, while men have become more conservative, writes the Financial Times.
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Young people’s political views have diverged further in recent years and decades, as a data analysis by the Financial Times shows. Opinions differ, especially between men and women.
Is Generation Z as left-wing, liberal and green as many think? At least between the genders, this doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case, as a data analysis by the Financial Times shows. Accordingly, there is a gap in political views and attitudes between men and women Women between the ages of 18 and 29 have been growing further apart for decades.
According to the Financial Times, this development can be observed in various countries around the world. The gap between liberal women and conservative men is particularly large in the USA, South Korea, Germany and Great Britain.
In the USA, for example, according to the Gallup polling institute, women aged 18 to 30 are currently 30 percentage points more liberal than their male counterparts. According to the Financial Times, the difference there has continued to widen since the 2010s. In recent years, studies from the USA have shown that the political positioning of 18 to 29 year old men and women is drifting further apart.
Big differences in South Korea
The gap between young men and women is particularly large in South Korea. There the gap between conservative men and liberal women is around 50 percentage points.
According to FT writer John Burn-Murdoch, this is largely due to the #MeToo movement, which has particularly resonated with young women in the East Asian country, where gender inequality remains high.
In the 2022 presidential election, older men and women in South Korea voted similarly, while young men voted heavily for the right-wing People Power Party and young women voted almost equally for the liberal Democratic Party.
“Korea is an extreme situation, but it serves as a warning to other countries about what can happen when young men and women separate,” writes Burn-Murdoch in his commentary on the figures. The marriage and birth rates have fallen sharply. “Korean society is divided into two parts.”
“The trend in most countries is that women are moving to the left”
But in Germany too, according to the “FT” analysis, women in their twenties have become significantly more politically liberal than men of the same age, who have only become slightly more conservative in the last ten to twenty years. In the 1980s, young men in Germany were much more liberal, as the newspaper’s analysis shows. Today, conservative men and liberal women are around 30 percentage points apart.
A small exception is the United Kingdom: According to the “FT”, the gap between men and women aged 18 to 29 is around 25 percentage points. However, the development shows that men in this age group have become significantly more liberal in their attitudes over the past ten years.
Alice Evans, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and one of the leading researchers on the topic, says the answer, according to the Financial Times, is that today’s under-30s have experienced a great deal of gender alienation.
Burn-Murdoch sees another reason that #MeToo has increased this gender divergence in attitudes. “The clear divide between progressive and conservative on the issue of sexual harassment appears to have spawned – or at least been part of – a broader realignment of young men and women toward a conservative or liberal camp on other issues.” Young women in the USA, Germany and the United Kingdom now represent significantly more liberal positions than men in this age group, including on issues of immigration and racial equality.
“The trend in most countries is that women are moving to the left while men are not moving.” However, there are signs that young men in Germany are actively moving to the right, where those under 30 today are more opposed to immigration than their elders and have turned to the far-right AfD in recent years, Burn-Murdoch said.
Sources: “Financial Times”, Survey Center on American Life.