9 ms·

An ideological divide is emerging between young men and women around the world

• delichon 3y ago
  I'm guessing it's not a coincidence that the country with the biggest ideological gender gap (South Korea) also has the lowest fertility rate. I'll also guess that the low fertility rate is not the cause of the high ideology gap.
  • fithisux 3y ago
    Maybe it is the other way around.
  • throwaway290 3y ago
    Perhaps another factor is responsible for both
    • philbin 3y ago
      The birth control pill and the abortion pill, possibly?
      • AwaAwa 3y ago
        If this were reddit you would be banned for life. Refreshing that there still exist some spaces where uncomfortable thoughts can still be voiced, and isn't twitter. Another divide I'll wager, and more than a little ancillary to the aforementioned ideological divide.
        • throwaway290 3y ago
          reddit is not even worth mentioning? Mods there have scripts to auto-ban people who didn't even post anything simply if they joined "wrong" subreddits, posts are banned routinely without any explanation etc.
      • throwaway290 3y ago
        Or the patriarchal culture with rampant gender based discrimination and pay inequality combined with freedom of information and decent education for all. In this country abortion was illegal until 2020, marital rape still seems not explicitly illegal etc.
  • mlrtime 3y ago
    One of the questions to denote liberal/conservative was a question about family. SK women specifically do not value the family role vs career. This will definitely affect fertility rates. This is the question but not broken down by country, rather age. https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1750849199720030292/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1750849199720030292/...
    • fxtentacle 3y ago
      That post is confusing to me. It says "Young women have become markedly more progressive on gender norms, but young men have not budged." and then shows a diagram that many young women want to have a family and children, with work being optional, which to me completely doesn't sound like "progressive on gender norms".
      • atomicnumber3 3y ago
        I think the key is they want to choose. Not feel forced into homemaking.
      • philbin 3y ago
        Yes, it seems the two groups' wishes are mostly orthogonal.
      • antisthenes 3y ago
        Some of these studies report what people say they're going to do and some report what people actually do. And of course your typical twitter journalists report them as being one and the same. They're not.
• deleted 3y ago
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• felipeerias 3y ago
  Social groups are becoming increasingly fragmented and driven apart by social media. It’s well known that people from different political tribes receive irreconcilably different visions of the world. Why wouldn’t the same fracture happen across gender as well?
  • hollywood_court 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • mc32 3y ago
      Fox News didn't come into being till the late mid 90s. And didn't become a force till later. Music "Dangers" were espoused by the PRMC at the time, spearheaded by the Gores (who you know, are/were democrats). In addition, you have had colleges and universities who are predominantly run by left-leaning faculty and administration, some moderate and some extreme. So it's not a right-wing pull only.
    • tivert 3y ago
      > I've lost relationships with my mother, my uncles, my cousins, numerous former coworkers and two of my neighbors as a direct result of those individuals being exposed to Fox News. Why do you blame Fox News when the bigger common denominator is you? How do you react to people who believe different things than you do?
    • almatabata 3y ago
      > However, it turns out that Fox News has been more damaging to our society than any video game I would expand it and say that 24/7 news channels in general like Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC that are doing irreparable damage by pushing on sided narratives and demonizing their fellow citizens.
• rzmmm 3y ago
  Why compare these particular countries? And why is x axis on different scale for each country?
• mellosouls 3y ago
  This really isn't that surprising - as has been discussed many times here - young men in particular are being badly affected by modern cultural mores especially in the relationship games dominated by digital services. Add into that the hyper-masculine voices that often correctly identify these issues while prescribing sometime toxic solutions in a public space that otherwise denies their suffering it's inevitable that ideological divides will develop. The problems will continue as mainstream media grudgingly notes the consequences while sticking it's head in the sand as to the causes as it has done for years.
  • idkdotcom 3y ago
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  • ch4s3 3y ago
    The data for the US shows young men in the US staying relatively around the center after a brief left shift in '08, but young women have skewed far to the left. So the gap shouldn't have much to do with the material conditions of men, in the US at least.
    • Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
      Or, that same data could be use to show that women have stayed relatively around the center and men of skewed far to the right. After all, "the center" is not an absolute objectively defined concept.
      • coldtea 3y ago
        No, but given two points in time, one can determine which are the center, left, and right views at each point, and see how much each group moved from those and at what direction. That is, the center/left/right doesn't have to be an "absolute objectively defined concept". That "what is center" can change over time is irrelevant. To see if people moved to the left or right compared to, say, the 90s, you just need to know what was the center baseline in the 90s. The comparison is relative.
• jj999 3y ago
  It's well known there are only two political ideologies and those are uniform internationaly.
  • tinix 3y ago
    excuse me? got a source? 2 party systems aren't normal in most of the world. even in a western centric view that's not true... I'm struggling to see what leads you to say such an extreme idea as this.
    • Mxs2000 3y ago
      I think they're being sarcastic.
    • Atreiden 3y ago
      That was sarcasm for sure :)
    • deciduously 3y ago
      The parent was sarcastic.
  • DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    That doesn’t mean we can’t broadly observe a spectrum in many contexts between traditional/conservative and liberal/progressive. Even if some of the facts and priorities change between contexts.
  • TillE 3y ago
    Seriously, political self-identification is nearly meaningless. Drill down into actual current issues and you get a much, much better picture of what people really believe.
    • deleted 3y ago
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  • MattGaiser 3y ago
    I don't think they must be uniform internationally. A big political gender gap opening up where one was not before is notable, even if the specific disagreements of the gaps differ.
• tokai 3y ago
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  • tiahura 3y ago
    If you won’t read the article, please don’t comment.
    • tokai 3y ago
      Link should have been to the article then. I'm not spending my time on looking up a study that looks flawed from the onset. Please don't make comments that don't add to the discussion.
  • JR1427 3y ago
    I agree. The last time I read something by JBM, he had said that "people who don't have a passport (a sign that they have not recently travelled abroad) were more likely to vote Brexit" To me, he was implying that ignorance of other lands led them to vote Brexit, but I think the more important underlying factor is that passports and travel cost money. So to return to my point, I too am suspicious of the statistics that JBM shows. As with all statistics, they are crafted to push a particular opinion.
  • megmogandog 3y ago
    Look at the issues discussed: gender roles, race/immigration. Conservative means traditional gender roles, immigration as a negative/threat. Liberal means the opposite. For me at least that's comprehensible and unambiguous outside the US as well
    • zozbot234 3y ago
      These days traditional gender roles are assumed to be some inescapable part of one's identity, that can only be altered by comparatively extreme means such as medical treatment. Sure, there are some "non-binary" folks who see through that whole worldview but they are a tiny minority. And they're only allowed that if they're OK with being stamped with some weird "third gender" role label in turn.
• andyjohnson0 3y ago
  No speculation on causation? Or is that in follow-on tweets that I can't access?
  • firejake308 3y ago
    https://nitter.rawbit.ninja/jburnmurdoch/status/1750849189834022932 https://nitter.rawbit.ninja/jburnmurdoch/status/175084918983... Thread is visible via Nitter, although the graph is missing from the first post
  • moffkalast 3y ago
    Based on the chart, something very drastic happened in the 2010-2020 decade. Major changes in that period include always connected smartphones, social media, a financial crisis, streaming services, ecommerce, ongoing digitalization of just about everything. Seems to me that the part about increasingly inhabiting different spaces is likely true, even outside echo chambers men and women seem to have segregated socially acceptable interests that group us all into separate areas, both online and irl. Plus the whole death of the third place that people keep going on and on about, and less buying power to hang out in the pay-to-exist places. With covid slamming us all headfirst into total isolation, and now work from home continuing it I would say the odds are very likely that this continues to accelerate exponentially because it's a feedback loop. The more time we spend apart, the less we have in common. Add today's chatbots to the mix that people will be talking to instead of real humans to relieve some of their loneliness and we've got a real problem.
• beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
  There is, obviously, a lot of stuff tied up in this data; but, when you look at the current gender data on higher-ed students and graduates, and the historical trend of higher education attendance and graduation with liberal ideological affiliation, then this isn't super surprising. (One could also argue that critiques of neo-liberalism (an amorphous term to be sure) have also gone "mainstream." Yet while in higher-ed those critiques are often synonymous with a left-leaning worldview, we're seeing a critique from the "other side," the non-higher educated demographic.)
• walthamstow 3y ago
  His article in today's FT may be a better link. I'm a big fan of JBM. https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998 https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12... I thought the UK graph was incredible. How did such a left-leaning country end up with such an opposite government for 14 years? The answer is the voting system, first past the post. Boris Johnson won total control of the UK with 43% of the vote.
  • dentemple 3y ago
    This is behind a paywall. Got an alternative link?
    • failingslowly 3y ago
      https://archive.is/PSONZ https://archive.is/PSONZ
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • CaptainMarvel 3y ago
    The Conservative party won 43% of votes and 56% of seats. The Labour party won 32% of votes and 31% of seats. Despite winning only 1.34x more votes, the conservatives received 1.8x more seats. (It's even worse, the Liberal Democrats won 11% of votes, and got 2% of seats; the Conservatives received 3.9x the votes and 28x the seats...) The Conservatives changed the voting system for the London mayoral elections from supplementary vote to first past the post with the Elections Act 2022. The UK has become a less democratic country with the government being less representative of the views of its people.
    • awjlogan 3y ago
      You could also point out that the SNP got 3.9% of the total vote and 7.8% of the total seats. I don't have a solution to this, the game has to be played under the existing rules, but I don't think this means it's "less democratic". Certain measures are definitely anti-democratic (for example, the voter ID issue), but the system itself is what it has been for a long time. I still think that a partial driver of Brexit was that UKIP didn't get a single seat, despite getting a large proportion of the vote. That may have exposed their shallowness as well as sating their voters somewhat, but looking at Europe just now (e.g. the AfD in Germany) maybe that's naive of me.
• Spivak 3y ago
  I've actually seen one of the effects of this among my single friends who have observed that conservatives now put "non-political" on their dating profiles because if they put conservative they get no matches. But since that's obvious now non-political is "okay, so conservative." The best part about this is that one of my single friends is conservative herself and won't even match with conservative men. I think it's great honestly. Women might not hold a lot of political power directly but mate selection is a powerful motivator for change.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > because if they put conservative they get no matches Why is political affiliation on a dating app? > one of my single friends is conservative herself and won't even match with conservative men Have you asked her why? To me, someone proudly putting a conservative political affiliation on a dating profile raises safety issues not related to their political views, but to their choice to put them there as a marker of their identity. > Women might not hold a lot of political power directly Wat.
    • MattGaiser 3y ago
      > Why is political affiliation on a dating app? For the majority, different political views are a dealbreaker in the USA. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-marriage-rate-different-political-views/674358/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/us-marriag...
    • Spivak 3y ago
      IDK, it's just one of the basic things that on your profile. It includes stuff like height, age, if you smoke, if you drink, your religious affiliation, your profession. And since it's such a strong signal, folks will unmatch on that alone, it seems like a good question to determine compatibility. > Have you asked her why? Oh absolutely, she talks at length about it. She started out not really caring about political affiliation because she's a conservative with a friend group of mostly liberals and can get along with anyone but then all the conservative men instant dq'd themselves either in the chat or on the first date by demonstrating a quote "frightening lack of respect for women." > Wat. I know! It's messed up. We really should do something about it. I mean look at this [1] in 2023 women just got to the 30% mark in legislative positions. https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/the-data-on-women-leaders/ https://pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/the-data-on...
• Der_Einzige 3y ago
  While I think this analysis is spot on, there are other somewhat lesser discussed factors that go into the general worsening of the "war of the sexes". 1. Massively impacted endocrine systems worldwide leading to massive drops in average sperm counts, male testosterone rates, and huge amounts of estrogen and related chemicals leading to far younger average puberties for women. 2. Further economic and social stratification between men and women over technology choices. Very real anti-green bubble discrimination and strong social pressure to use apple products. It's a meme in zoomer communities about android users not being allowed to show their phones until the third date as the social repercussions of your partner knowing you have an android are very serious. Notably this trend has caught on even in Samsung's backyard: South Korea. Even in SK, having an android phone is unsexy, uncool, and users will be stigmatized for not having the "best" (iphone). SK may be the most vain country on earth. 3. AI girlfriend/AI Waifu is here today. Such technologies will only further fan the flames of the gender wars. Women seem more happy alone than with partners they hate, so I think women will be on balance happy to see increasing amounts of "undesirable" men simply opting out and embracing AI relationships.
• doener 3y ago
  "This is also the result of right-wingers being the only ones to show understanding for young men whose experience simply does not fit the narrative of a patriarchal society built around their needs. If they are looking for guidance, influencers give them a clear path with videos, books and articles. The rules are mundane: exercise, eat healthily and don't watch porn all day. But when you have nowhere else to turn, this becomes a revelation." https://x.com/nschniederjann/status/1750806835714564270 https://x.com/nschniederjann/status/1750806835714564270
• TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  In a reply further down OP mentions that role models play a role in this divide. I've noticed there's a lot more conservative role models than liberal role models targeting men. Is there a liberal counterpart to Andrew Tate, for example? Admittedly this just might be my colored perception from existing in a bubble.
  • BurningFrog 3y ago
    But are those role models cause or effect?
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Is there a liberal counterpart to Andrew Tate, for example? There are plenty of non-crazy male role models. (Most successful public figures, I’d argue, trimmed at the most controversial.) The problem is they’ve largely abandoned the mantel of masculinity. Which is a problem, because it’s a core part of our humanity—you can’t repress it away. So the right has been able to run wild with the term, which lead to a backlash labelling any expression of masculinity as toxic. Which is bullshit. But what’s also bullshit is the notion that whining instead of doing, throwing hissy fits and kicking those who are down is somehow masculine, which is the current pitch à la Tate et al.
    • timeon 3y ago
      > masculinity as toxic What these influencers like Tate do not want to tell you is that masculinity can be considered as toxic for other reasons as well. For example 'toxic masculinity' burdens men with unreasonable expectations.
      • zozbot234 3y ago
        Hard to blame "masculinity" for that when the problematic expectations are largely coming from women. Often in an entirely inadvertent way, but this does not make them any less real or consequential to the men themselves.
• stared 3y ago
  Poland has similar approval of the center and the right from both men and women. Yet, there is a stark difference between the far-right (almost only men, especially young) and the left (much more support from women, especially young). I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern followed elsewhere in Europe.
  • MattGaiser 3y ago
    Korea, Germany, and the USA are different enough cultures that Poland could easily sit between a comparison of them. So likely just a matter of time.
  • tgv 3y ago
    Or France. The other day, I read an article that said that 50% of French women want to be old-fashioned, stay-at-home-mothers. Can't find it anymore, unfortunately. The numbers are probably skewed (as they always are), but there's a conservative trend also under women.
• asylteltine 3y ago
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• tiahura 3y ago
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• idkdotcom 3y ago
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• deleted 3y ago
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• jmyeet 3y ago
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  • mlrtime 3y ago
    > Patriarchy and white supremacy Doesn't exist in America today. White supremacy exists only in fringe groups that have no influence. Patriarchy is non existent today. I'd love to be proven wrong with hard examples.
  • rswskg 3y ago
    'Patriarchy and white supremacy are inextricably intertwined' You understand there are many societys in this world, in fact the majority of them, which would conteract that statement? 'Society and government largely exists to maintain institutions to enforce the subjugation of women (and BIPOCs)' - care to explain that statement?
    • tivert 3y ago
      > You understand there are many societys in this world, in fact the majority of them, which would conteract that statement? No. The entire world can be assumed to be like America, so Americans don't need to really think about it. Everything foreign is properly understood by mapping it to familiar American concepts and obsessions.
  • czbond 3y ago
    > Patriarchy and white supremacy are inextricably intertwined. I don't want to get into the topic deeply - but this quote displays to me you have not traveled much outside of the U.S. China, Japan, Central America, portions of the Middle East, Northern Africa cultures as a start display Patriarchy heavily.... without the "lets link it to white people" effects. It is fun for some people to dump on the U.S., but once one actually deeply looks at other cultures, you realize Patriarchy is a human issue - Not a U.S. issue I employ all "U.S. bashers" to travel more. You'll come back humbled, and a bit more thankful for where the U.S. is, even if we are not perfect
    • 3y ago
• JR1427 3y ago
  The problem with these kinds of statistical snippets that papers like the FT produce, is that they are fishing for some kind of shocking/surprising easy to understand finding. That doesn't mean that such statistics and charts actually show anything useful in a scientific sense. The problem is that the information is presented as a scientific "truth", and many people don't have the understanding to know that all statistics and analysis involve human input (e.g. which tests to use, how to visualise, which data to exclude etc etc), and that this input introduces biases, whether accidentally or intentionally.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > they are fishing for some kind of shocking/surprising easy to understand finding The FT has a hard paywall. They aren’t pandering for clickbait. (The author’s tweet doesn’t even bother linking to the article.) > many people don't have the understanding to know that all statistics and analysis involve human input The Financial Times’ readership?
    • JR1427 3y ago
      I'm not saying it's clickbait in the sense of "this one amazing trick to shrink belly fat", but it still trying to show something surprising (people find graphs showing things they know boring). Don't over estimate the scientific/statistical understanding of FT readers. They are just normal people. (I know a few of them.)
      • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > They are just normal people Like Hacker News readers, who presumably need a general disclaimer about statistics. Got it.
        • bee_rider 3y ago
          They are normal people, our people follow a uniform distribution instead.
    • 3y ago
• fxtentacle 3y ago
  I don't know what "liberal" and "conservative" mean in these diagrams, but one could argue that if the average woman desires to date upwards, then that would create an incentive for women to push for more liberal relationships while most men would benefit from conservative values like monogamous marriage to prevent a few billionaires from monopolising dating, too.
• czbond 3y ago
  As a married dude - I'll offer some advice to other engineers that may be having trouble due to political issues of potential mates. Since the topic implies human coupling is down because of political ideologies... the advice is sort of like in business "put yourself where the majority of the business is" - If you live in a place where the majority opinion is yours, you're all set. - If not, move to where they are. If you're conservative, living in Portland... it's going to be hard. If you're liberal living in Alabama, you may have to move to the east or west coasts. Sure you can dig and find someone in your locale, but go where the fishing is plenty.
  • JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > If you're conservative, living in Portland... it's going to be hard. If you're liberal living in Florida, you may have to move to the east or west coasts Or challenge your views! You don’t need to switch parties. But more often than not, the difference is one of prioritising different issues more than disagreeing on hot-button ones. Or, where there is disagreement, disagreeing on aspects versus the conventional packaging of the issue.
    • zozbot234 3y ago
      The conventional phrasing for this is "hide your power level". If you're good at playing Ideological Turing Test games you're all set no matter what your starting ideology is, and you might find that you can also change others' views in your direction.
      • czbond 3y ago
        It depends on how you want to spend your time, right? Fully agree you can change people, but is that worth spending your time? Do you have other goals in life? I recall a moving story to me on ... "This American Life" on NPR, which had a story about the most moving way for people to change their minds on polarizing issues, is to spend lots of time talking & hanging out with people who lived personally with whatever is the opposing views in a civil manner. The example at the time was based on groups not accepting the gay lifestyle spending time with those who were. But just because you try, doesn't mean the other person is ready to accept. So like in chaos theory, you have to plan on failure..... hope for success.
• renegat0x0 3y ago
  It would be interesting to me to check in how much social media algorithms can change people opinions.
• incomingpain 3y ago
  I already knew about this, old graphs and it's going to get much worse for about 6-9 years. Completely predictable and understandable. SK is getting there sooner obviously. I wonder what Japan's latest data looks like, not good I bet. Like OP points out, this isn't a divide on gender related issues. Most recent polling from angus reid says Canada is similar to Germany but much more conservative, but same amount of divide. Roughly a 15% lead for conservatives with women. Canada is a unique case where women have moved conservative already because of he-who-must-not-be-named. I'm pretty confident we will fix the problem in about 3-4 years? Hopefully. The remarkable thing about this issue is that this isn't sustainable but you're not really allowed to talk about it. Why is the only place you can discuss this on twitter? there are some probabilities or implications to figure as well. I expect SK will uncensor their internet in due course. Not a certainty though. Something a democracy must have is open free discussions in order sort out your beliefs. Sometimes you have to talk about painful subjects. I am 100% egalitarian, but the discussion has to be had. The societal rift is growing and it's really bad. When issues are censored though, everyone just sits there dumbfounded and unsure why it's even happening because nobody is talking about it. There is no right or wrong, it's fine for women to become progressive. OP calls it negative polarisation and drops the hashtag. I'm shocked this thread hasn't been flagged and disallow the discussion.
• philbin 3y ago
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• deleted 3y ago
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• 1letterunixname 3y ago
  It's probably related to lack of education because fewer and fewer men are going to college, read, and make a decent living. Furthermore, right-wing populism led by so-called "strongmen" seems appealing to emotional voters who choose not too see the bigger picture or reality, and lack a foundation of principles or knowledge. Instead, it's easier to revert to conspiracy theories, hate, anger, and insurrections.
• iteratethis 3y ago
  Men drifted to the right due to a vacuum. I'm reasoning from a European perspective but the pattern is fairly universal. In the 80s-90s, almost all men were progressive. The progressive movement was a labor movement fighting for the plight of the lower class which largely consisted of blue collar men. There was ample room to improve the conditions of these men, thus the politics and the demographics align. Let's pause for a moment here to consider the implication: men are not innately right-wing or conservative. As of the 90s, the progressive movement dramatically shifted away from working class men to target other groups. Women joined the workforce which rightfully needed attention. Minorities/immigrants. Teachers and other government workers. Pretty much everybody but (white)(blue-collar) men. Then globalization happened, as well as extensive labor immigration. Both trends have dramatically affected the economic status of these men. Where before non-college educated men had ample access to a tough but honorable job in blue-collar that would earn enough to start a family, now they're in the lower ranks. The underclass. So not only where these men politically de-emphasized (or even totally abandoned), also economically. And to finish it off, there's the cultural abandonment. A cynical and hostile view of men. A lot of people fail to acknowledge the above degradation of men's status or even believe it's a good thing. What they fail to realize is that the "patriarchy" concerns the top ranks. Most men are not in the top or in any position of influence at all. Men in the working class, specifically in rural areas, and other sub groups have most definitely taken a huge beating, politically, economically and culturally. That type of abandonment by progressive politics is what created the vacuum. They feel alienated and not represented, hated even. They may vote conservative out of spite, without even supporting the beliefs. A recent poll of young conservatives showed that the vast majority in fact do not support dialing back abortion rights. The progressive movement should start caring about men. You can do two things at a time, it's not zero-sum. In fact, it's a no-brainer. Men failing is very bad for women, bettering the plight of men directly benefits women.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    I do think mens rights advocates have some valid points, but especially with the blue collar stuff I think most of it is just a classic case of equality feeling like oppression to the privileged. High school grad white men had access to high status jobs because others were excluded, especially foreigners. Now theyre not, so their jobs arent as good. Is the solution really to favor uneducated white men over everyone else again? Or maybe embrace the fact that life generally sucks, and try to improve it for everyone, even if that means some continue to suffer. I agree that the patriarchy does not favor uneducated white men, but it used to, and I think thats a large reason theyre angry.