Plain English with Derek Thompson - The Gender War Within Gen Z

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Something mysterious is happening in the politics of young men and women. Gen Z women—those in their 20s and younger—have become sharply more liberal in the past few years, while young men are shifting subtly to the right. This gender schism isn't just happening in the U.S. It's happening in Europe, northern Africa, and eastern Asia. Why? And what are the implications of sharply diverging politics between men and women in our lifetime? Alice Evans, a visiting fellow at Stanford University and a researcher of gender, equality, and inequality around the world, joins the show to discuss. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail]. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Alice Evans Producer: Devon Baroldi Links: https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998 https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-gender-gap-young-men-women-dont-agree-politics-2024-1 https://www.ggd.world/p/what-prevents-and-what-drives-gendered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and the Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the prestige TV feed, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Today's episode is about a sociological mystery that has fascinated me in the last few weeks, and that is the widening political gap between young men and women.

In short, Gen Z women, which basically means women under 25 or 30, are becoming sharply more liberal in the U.S., while Gen Z men are shifting subtly to the right. It's true that historically women have always been a little bit more liberal than men. that's been true for at least 40, 50 years. But today, the political gap between young men and women is by some accounts at a record high and still growing. A few weeks ago, Daniel Cox,

director of the Survey Center on American Life and a research fellow at AEI, published a viral piece on Business Insider that really got this narrative rolling. Using private data from Gallup, plus his own surveys, he showed the share of young women who consider themselves liberal

has surged in the last 20 years. But at the same time, after decades where both generations seemed to be moving left, today's young men in America have banked a surprising right turn, especially on some cultural issues. Several studies indicate that young men

are more Republican today than they were a few years ago. A few days after the Daniel Cox essay came out, the Financial Times John Byrne Murdoch, as a former guest in this show, published another analysis that went absolutely gangbusters in my corner of the internet. John's reporting shows that this gender gap is not specific to the U.S.

Whatever is happening here is happening around the world, in Europe, in Africa, and in Eastern Asian countries like Korea. Now, I should pause here to say that not every single survey is finding the same schism. And that's okay. Different surveys ask different questions of different populations, and it's hard to put the opinions of an entire general general generation in a box, as simple as liberal versus conservative, especially when a lot of people

are liberal on some issues and conservative on others. But at this point, we have data from Gallup, CNN, UCLA, Pew, the Harvard Youth Survey and the Survey Center on American Life all pointing in the same direction. Something strange is happening between Gen Z men and women. and it has major implications for our culture and for our politics. I have for years said that the most important trend in American politics, at least in the electorate itself, is education polarization and all the weirdness that comes from college grads sorting into one party and non-grads sorting into another in a zero-sum political arrangement.

But these surveys, and this data, makes me think I have long underrated the importance of gender polarization and all the weirdness that would come from one party seeing itself as the party of men, while another party through the power of negative polarization sees itself as the party of women. Or even worse, the party against men. I'm not saying that's what we have in America today. I'm just saying I really do not want politics conducted as a zero-sum gender war. And that's part of why I find this so interesting. Today's guest is Alice Evans, a visiting fellow at Stanford University and a researcher on gender, equality, and inequality around the world.

There is nobody better to explain what is really happening in America, why the Gen Z gender war is truly an international event, and why gender polarization has taken off in the last decade. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English. Alice Evans, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Let's start by talking about the U.S. You know the data on gender polarization as well as anybody. Why don't you first give me your thesis statement?

What do you see happening in the data and in the surveys that you've read? Okay. So in the U.S., it seems to be a little mixed and murky, but some data suggests that men are more likely to express concerns that women seek to gain power over men or that women's gains come as a threat. But there is some fluctuation year by year. Some data points to women being more progressive, more concerned about racial bias, and also more willing to support zero platforming conservative speakers.

So that illiberalism, I think, seems more female. There's been evidence of a gender gap in the U.S. electorate for a while. I think in my own research, I found that it was the 1980 election where a Washington Post headline first said there is a gender gap officially in the U.S. electorate. So what is new here? If women have been more liberal than men for several decades and women have been more likely to vote for Democrats in the U.S. for several decades. In fact, I think it's been many election cycles since Democrats won a majority of men in the U.S. What is actually new that the survey data is pointing out to us?

For me, I think the big trend is this illiberalism, this idea that we should not platform conservative speakers because their views are so heinous that we should not allow them to speak. That wasn't a case when I was at a university 13 years ago. So in terms of the schism that we're seeing with young women self-identifying more as liberal and young men self-identifying or progressive, yes, right, progressive. might be the better word here because lowercase L liberal can mean all sorts of things when we're talking about sort of political theory. But young women are more likely to self-identify as regressive, young men a little bit more likely to self-identify or as conservative, a little bit more likely to say

they might vote Republican. I want to talk about why this is happening first in the U.S. And then we're going to travel to a couple other places around the world. Let's start with, you know, you and I talked off of Mike, I guess I should say, about what you see as a kind of zero-sum mentality that's opened up between not just progressives and conservatives, but maybe also between men and women. This is a big thorny subject, but why don't you be the first to dive right into it? What does a zero-sum mentality have to do with gender polarization here? Absolutely. But before I do, can I just say why I use the term progressive rather than liberal, just to make that clear? So I think for a long time, you know, women have been more concerned about

racial and gender issues. But the big trend that we're seeing among young. people is really this idea of deplatforming people that conservative speakers should not speak. So that's an illiberal stance, right? That's the idea that we shouldn't tolerate these views and that if people say those things, we should tell them to be

quiet or not welcome them at universities. So this hugely contentious sphere at universities, that's quite new. And it's about who should have a voice, who should have a platform. So I think that's the really important thing, that illiberalism is changing. And it's

It's illiberalism motivated by a sort of concern for social justice, that we're so concerned about equality, we want to make this place so inclusive for people that we should not allow those toxic, inverted commerce views. I think, sorry, I just wanted to explain that. Okay, so zero-sum mentalities. Yes, this is really fascinating. So there's this wonderful new paper by Sahel Choyne, Nathan Nunn, Sequera and Sancheva. and they have this, and they look at the beliefs that the world is zero-sum,

that if there is a basket of apples, then you, Derek, eating more apples comes at my expense. So some people see the world like that, that there is a fixed basket of goods, where others think, hey, we can all thrive. Derek has his podcast, I have my podcast, and the two of us can both have podcasts. There's no tension there. So the fascinating thing about zero-sum mentalities is that they're common on both the left and the right. It's associated with support for redistribution, awareness of racial and gender bias, but also being anti-immigrant. So it's this idea of contention. And fascinatingly, it's

associated with economic immobility. So people who have not experienced upward mobility compared to their parents are more likely to have these views, whereas migrants are less likely to have zero-sum mentalities. You know, if they've come from a poorer country to a bigger country, They think, wow, we're all doing well. This is all great. Hey, let a thousand flowers bloom. So they're less likely to say that opportunities are scarce and fixed. So zero-sum mentalities, I think, is useful because it's all about this resentful hostility.

So if it's men thinking that women's gains come at our expense, that is a zero-sum mentality. If it's women thinking that, you know, men are trying to take advantage or men are trying to, or people in general are being hostile to racial minorities, that is also a zero-sum mentality. It is this, and it is this competition for public turf. It is this competition for who has the right to speak. You know, we want to police this area and institute our worldview. It is an institutionalized of our worldview rather than having a sort of more open, liberal, tolerant approach whereby anyone can speak out. So I think it's really related to this idea of policing campus culture. That's really interesting because the idea that modern feminism might be seen as zero sum seems to appear in some of the survey data that I was looking at

in the research for this show. So, for example, in a 2022 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center, almost half of Democratic men under 50 said feminism has done more harm than good. Those are the Democrats. I mean, you go to Republicans, it's going to be many, many more, more likely for them to say that modern feminism has done more harm than good. And it does suggest that there might be an attitude among young men, not only on the far right, but maybe on the center too, who have this feeling that modern feminism is a zero-sum game, that the gains that women have made,

whether it's in the workforce or whether it's something related to me too, that these gains come at the expense of men as a category, and that might be a driver of the political schism. And therefore, the leftward movement of young women might itself be a driver. of the more moderate, conservative shift among young men. Is that kind of what you're saying? That's certainly possible. I think that there's a wonderful report called Hidden Tribes of America,

and they make in a point that it is the most animated, most politicized, most energetic people who speak the loudest. So it's the extremist people who are the loudest, and those views that may be heard, and they may be ventriloquized as representative of their broader group. So for example, example, if someone with very extreme, strong left-wing or progressive opinions speaks out on feminism, then Fox News or other right-wing media might say, this is what feminist think now. And so that creates a mistaken and false and misleading opinion or view of what progressives or gender or liberal people think in general. So you are saying, well, maybe it's women becoming more liberal and then that creating a backlash. Well, alternatively, it could be that, you know,

people on the far extremes are speaking out, and then those extremist views creating horror and worries about everyone else. Oh, my goodness. Other Americans think, no. Most Americans are pretty moderate middle of the road, right? According to this hidden tribes data. So, yes, some, you know, the question is, to what extent does this, this sort of backlash reflect people's opinion about what other people are doing, or is it just a distortion, a media distortion? That we're not all totally crazy. The media distortion bit, I think, is so important because I'm working another piece right now for the Atlantic about the decline of socializing in the U.S. There's evidence from the American Time Use survey that American adults socialize 30% less than they did just 20 years ago,

and American teens socialize 50% less than they did just 20 years ago. That's in terms of the number of hours they say they spend in face-to-face interaction with people generally their age. and if you are trading the physical space for the digital space, I'm going to assume that you're trading friends for media. And if you're in a group of friends, and some groups of friends are all girls, some groups of friends are all guys, but a lot of groups of friends,

certainly mine in high school, were some guys and some girls. And so your views can kind of moderate each other. You understand each other as people. But if we're more likely to get our information about the world through online news and through our phones, not only could we have the sensationalizing, nutpicking phenomenon that you're pointing to, I wonder if, and I'd love you to comment on this, because this is all just sort of coming off the cuff, but I wonder if we're also seeing that young men and women are more likely to be algorithmically segregated than they used to be. that it's more likely that young men are playing video games with just young guys in their ears, more likely that young women are in spaces that are feminist online spaces where young men dare not tread. And that, of course, it's wonderful for anyone to have their own space.

But maybe there's something to this algorithmic segregation of young men and women that is driving this political polarization. Anything to that theory? Absolutely. So let me say three points. First, in terms of the timing, there seems to be. to be a strong correlation, that it is around the mid-2010s, but we see the split opening up, which is exactly not the start of Instagram, etc. So on timing, yes, you seem correct. Secondly,

we also know that algorithms tend to feed people information or ideas that appeal to their pre-existing preferences. So women may self-select into certain groups and then be, you know, cocooned in those filter bubbles, which sends them pleasing content, and also tries to maintain their attention, absolutely. So I'm certainly with you that the causal mechanisms are aligned. That said, it's not just social media which has created these raccooning filter bubbles. So long before that, as women become journalists, film writers, novelists,

they have been creating a more feminized culture, a more feminist subculture. So women may be expressing their ideas in novels, in stories, in songs. And those and, you know, female authored books tend to be overwhelmingly read by women. So their stories, their narratives, are resonating with other women. So even before social media, we were seeing a more feminist subculture in certain spheres. So, you know, whether it's in terms of not necessarily a feminist book, but, you know, a book written by a woman, you know, communicating her experiences and concerns. So I'm totally with you in terms of the

correlation, the causal mechanisms, absolutely in terms of algorithms, but it's not just social media. Something's so interesting about the concept of feminized culture. I never would have raised that as a potential causal variable here. But as you were talking, I could not help but think of, and I'm sorry to all the people who have heard this woman's name a thousand times in the last 100 hours, Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is potentially, quantitatively, the most popular musician in history. And when you just look at the potential for musician these days to be heard by anyone in the world,

she is a female musician who, I think I'm on firm ground saying this. My wife is a huge fan. I am merely a big fan who writes for women, who is a brilliant explicator of women's thoughts about relationships and lives. And what have we seen in the last week in America, an extraordinary backlash among conservatives,

to the presence, or I guess, according to them, overpresence of a feminized culture on their screen. All of these guys, and it's mostly the guys, maybe there's some women who are tired of Taylor Swift. I'm sure there are. The world is a big place. But it seems like there's a lot of conservative men who are like, I want my screen to be a man's screen. I'm looking at men and play football. I don't want to see a mere 13 seconds of Taylor Swift shouting after Travis Kelsey catches another 13-yard pass. And it seems to me that's something about the rise of feminized culture, the power, I'm essentially

saying, of women in today's culture, which did not exist, maybe 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, certainly, 70 years ago, that's causing this kind of backlash. I'm not saying that's everything, but I do think that, to your point, Taylor Swift seems to be a really interesting example of how the presence and popularity of a feminized culture can both represent power in and of itself for women and be a sort of action that creates a reaction among politically conservative men. Any possible truth to there? I'm presently in Hong Kong and in China Taylor Swift is enormously popular. She's an absolute superstar and I think that her lyrics really her lyrics and her interviews resonate because she's speaking about her desires, her emotions,

her resentment and revenge, right? It's a, she's articulating her emotions. So in a society like China and also the US, you know, where women have long been taught to please and placate or to, you know, put other people's needs forward or self-sensor themselves because they worry about not being light. She's expressing what she feels, what she wants.

It's her emotional navigation through life's trials and tribulations. And she's not afraid to speak her mind. and she does it so eloquently, you know, articulating all these diverse emotions. And I think, you know, each of these songs can resonate with women in different ways. And then in her media interviews, she is especially charismatic, but calling out sexist double standards. Like, for example, if I were a man, that song, or when she talks about how the media will criticize her for having various boyfriends or too few boyfriends. So she calls out all these things, but not in an aggressive way, right?

She doesn't do it in an aggressive way, but in a very likable way, and women can relate to that. So I think, one, yes, she's very likable both in terms of her songs and in terms of her interviews, and this resonates with women both in China and the US. And so, and then I want to make a broader point about patriarchy. So patriarchy, as I see it, is fundamentally about the idea that men are high status and deserving of deference. They are knowledgeable authorities where women are lower status. you know, they are expected to serve men, right? And I'm not saying all society is a patriarchal, but that is what the patriarchy is, right? And, you know, the idea that if you have a woman who is hogging the limelight, she is effectively usurping men's status. And we saw a similar backlash in China and also in conservative fears to the Barbie film. And the Barbie film starts as a matriarchy. You know, the Barbie film, the way that it starts, is fundamentally a matriarchy because women are celebrated.

You know, there are all the cheers and champions for women's, women's accomplishments. You know, the society is run by women. They have these female dance parties that celebrate female friendships and solidarity. Right. So that is a matriarchy. And that also upped men in China. So, for example, girlfriends might see the Barbie film as a sort of litmus test for their boyfriends.

Did he react aggressively to this film celebrating women? So absolutely. So it's fundamentally a challenge to patriarchy in terms of women hogging the limelight, women making so much money, which can also upset heterosexual couples if the woman is the breadwinner. So absolutely, yes, yes, I totally agree. It is a challenge and a front to patriarchy, both in terms of her screen time, her wealth, her success, and her lyrics and interviews themselves. Perfectly. Yes, Derek, you've done my word for me. Thank you. So I think to wrap up this section of trying to see what's happening in America clearly, tell me if you think I'm summarizing our conversation inaccurately here. But I think we have our hands around an explanation that I hope it doesn't sound like we're over assigning blame. I think you've pointed out very fairly that there are several things happening here. There is the rise of feminized culture, Taylor Swift, Barbie, being at the vanguard of that, which celebrates a progressive feminism and is creating a reaction potentially among some reactionary young men.

But it is also the case, and this is the first thing that you said, that young women, young women on campus in the U.S., are practicing, in many cases, a kind of progressivism that is out of step with historical liberalism. And that even a moderate young man who isn't a reactionary patriarch or patriarchal reactionary, I should say, might say, you know what, that's not the kind of liberalism that I feel comfortable with, and therefore I find myself reacting to my female peers on campus, and that might be creating a kind of gender polarization. And so it's not as if this is any one thing happening. There might be several things happening that are creating this political schism among young men and women

in the U.S. Now, if it would be only one thing in this is for just happening in the U.S., we might be more likely to say that, you know, it could be a cystical fluke. It could just literally be a Taylor Swift NFL phenomenon. But you've seen this gender polarization among young men and young women happening all over the world. So what I want to do next is cross the Atlantic and go to Europe. Where are we seeing this happen most clearly in Europe? Absolutely. So number one, thank you for the excellent summary. Number two, we can see it in election data. So in many European elections in Finland, in Poland, in Germany, young men, specifically young men, are gravitating towards right-wing parties. I think one in four young men expressed

affiliation with right-wing parties. I was actually recently in Poland and in Italy and Spain doing research on precisely this. So those right-wing parties, whether it's the AFT and Spain, for example, more likely to attract young men. So that is what, and that is pretty good data because that's people's revealed preferences. That's not just. just their self-identification on attitude no polling. So that is one. And there's also data on what we call hostile sexism. So this is this concept that advances in women's rights come at men's expense.

And young men are slightly more likely to endorse that, not only in Europe, but also in New Zealand. In Europe and maybe New Zealand as well, I'm not as familiar with its economic history in the last 10, 15 years. Europe has had a much slower recovery from the pandemic. They've had much slower growth in the last 10 years. They've had a much lower recovery from the Great Recession. And I'm thinking back to the point that you made about 20 minutes ago about zero-sum mentalities. It seems to me that zero-sum mentalities would especially click in when the economy is more zero-sum.

So do you think that economic stagnation in Europe might be another factor that's driving young men to seek populist solutions to what they see as a political gender problem? Absolutely. And I think this could explain why the data of the gender divide is so much clearer in Europe than the US. In the US, it sort of depends on what year, what questions. It's a little bit murky. And I'm hesitant in Europe, it is absolutely clear. And my hunch is that it's partly about the economics. And if we look at research on Brexit or populism or support for the far right, it is generally associated with economic. frustration. So Rodriguez-Possi and Nile Lee, they've done a lot of work across Europe looking at support for populist parties. And they really thrive in economically lagging regions or places where people are struggling. So, you know, I come from England. And in England, it was definitely the struggling in northern regions, etc., that were voting for Brexit. Those are the people that are struggling. And I think that this is certainly a zero-sum mentality because xenophobia,

just like sexist frustration, is the idea that other people, are coming here and taking our stuff. And if we look specifically at the data, it is young men in Europe being more likely to express concerns about immigrants, about foreigners being a threat. So females and foreigners, those are the big threats to our established status. And this goes back to what I was saying about patriarchy. So if patriarchy is the idea that men should be providers, men should be high status. If your opportunities for status are very limited and other people are coming, then that's a threat. You know, men fundamentally want to achieve status. And I think this is a really important point to think about how it varies across wealth. So Thomas Piccetti, the scholar of

inequality highlights that young, educated, rich and successful men tend to be very liberal. And they don't have these zero-sum mentalities. They're able to achieve status. You know, those guys on 200K, they're doing fine, right? We don't need to worry up. They've achieved status. They're thriving on Wall Street or the Bay Area, right? Or, you know, in Paris or Dusseldorf. Those men are doing great and they're more likely to have this sort of open liberal mentality because, you know, they're earning your high amount. They're able to do very well in the sort of dating market or marriage market. They're still extremely eligible. But it's the young men who are struggling, who are failing to achieve that status, who are doing bad relatively. It's not just about your absolute income,

but your relative income. When they're struggling to gain status, and then when they're being constantly rejected on dating apps, you know, that's another thing we can talk about, but that experience of being constantly rejected or ghosted, feeling like you're a loser, feeling like you're unattractive. It's not about how much money you make, but, you know, the economic status translates into, you know, whether you're wanted as a man. And if you're constantly feeling that women don't want you, it's kind of insulting. It's upsetting. It is upsetting, yeah. You mentioned that men are status-oriented. Do you consider, consider women to be less status-oriented than men?

That is a great question. I think, as I understand, patriarchy, it is the idea that men have, feel entitled to high status. So they're more concerned to achieve high status. And because women historically have never had that high status, they have lower expectations. So a woman may be perfectly satisfied with a sort of more middling job because she didn't expect to be the top, right? If you never expected to be to be the gold medalist, then silver is great. Silver is fantastic. But if you were set up to achieve gold, then it's kind of an affront when

you're like some loser. It seems to me that one thing that might be, you know, frustrating for a lot of young men in places like Spain, Italy, where you have really, really high youth unemployment, is that not only do you have really high youth unemployment, you also have youth unemployment at a time when women's participation in the labor force is rising. And so I wonder if that might be fueling the fire here, not only feeling like you don't have a job. And I think you mentioned this in our call previously, that the share of young people who are living with their parents

throughout their 20s and 30s and places like Spain and Italy is really striking, not only feeling like you don't have a job, but also seeing that the ranks of people who do have a job are more populated than women, that has been the historical norm, and that some combination of those two phenomena might drive a certain kind of special sort of 21st century resentment that didn't have an opportunity to exist 40 years ago. Absolutely.

And it's not just unemployment, but these temp jobs. So in southern Europe, you know, in these economically lagging regions, there's a really high share of people being on temp jobs, you know. So you're constantly in a struggle of economic insecurity that you have a job for 12 months So then trying to negotiate it, maybe on a zero-hours contract. So incredible insecurity. So that means that, yeah, sure, you're too economically insecure to get your own home, to rent your own place.

So you're living under your parents' roof. You're unable to achieve preeminence. You know, that's going to make dating so much harder if you don't have a place, right? So it's just you're being continually rebuffed, this insecurity. And yeah, life is tough. And when life is tough, we tend to see what Michelle Gelfand, Stanford, of course, this cultural tightness, this feeling of, you know, wanting to enforce a particular ideology or morality and policing others.

I want to ask one more question about Europe before we travel a little bit further east. And that is, I would love to have a clearer sense of how young men in Spain or Italy or throughout Europe, you mentioned that they were anti-immigrant and anti-female. I have a really clear understanding of how a European populist voter would be anti-eastern. immigrant. You would just want to shut down the border. You would be against, you know, certain immigrant hiring practices. I can see that viewpoint cashes out in policy. How does an anti-female attitude in Europe cash out in culture or politics? That's a great question. So I think in surveys, for example, young men in Europe are more likely to say things like immigrants are a threat to our

culture or foreigners. And then I think the hostile sex. question specifically might be something like women's gains come at men's expense. So it's all this, this perception of a threat that the females are taking stuff that is valuable or that is ours. Let's finally go to Asia. And I want to talk about South Korea in particular, because this is where the trend is at its most dramatic. South Korean men since 2005 have become sharply more conservative. And South Korean women have become sharply more conservative. and South Korean women have become sharply more liberal. We did a show, God, maybe six, nine months ago.

We talked a little bit about how South Korea went from having one of the highest fertility rates in the world to having among the lowest fertility rate in the world. I think it's like below 1.5 or something. So I want to close by talking about issues specific to South Korea. what is happening in South Korea that matches the narrative we've been telling, and what's happening in South Korea that is just specific to that country? Right. Can I give you a sort of historical detour? Please.

Okay. So I think the really important point about East Asian culture is that there were these imperial examinations whereby any man could achieve status as a civil servant if he was highly educated, skilled in these Confucian texts, and then pass the civil service exam. So it was a stratified culture, but also meritocratic. And this encouraged a very strong belief in education for social mobility. And that was actually part of East Asia's economic success, that it was high skills at low wages.

So you had this education fever. It's also a very competitive culture, whereby there's this really strong belief that if you invest in your children's education, then they can thrive economically. So you see this really strong investment and concern for status, for material status on this earth. Right. So that's one important factor.

It's a very, very competitive culture. Also, as part of that falling fertility, there's also been a very strong son bias. So 30 years ago, parents were disproportionately aborting or stopping after their son. So that means that South Korean men today, one, they face a competitive labor market. It is a thriving, economically thriving country,

very high rates of economic growth. But there's this strong competitiveness. There's very strong concern for status that men are only happy, and Thomas Talholm shows this in his data, that men are much happier if they have very high status. So it's not just about wealth, but your relative ranking, it's competitiveness. And the relative ranking matters even more so because men in their 30s are now dealing with their parents' choices 30 years ago, that they face the world's worst dating market, right? Because men far outnumber women. So in order to get a wife or to do well and get a girlfriend, you really need a

decent job so that you can look like a great guy. So that is where the relative ranking matters even more than the US. So one men are in these really tough time. And in East Asian cultures, people are working incredibly long hours. They have these systems of lifetime employment where by people, so you work for the same company, well, many men will work for the same company for their whole lives. But in their 20s, they're going to be these lower ranking guys who are paid, who are paid the absolute lowest in a system of a hierarchy, these very, very long wages, but they're very competitive and concerned about status. Right? So it's super tough. It is super tough. It's a hierarchical culture where you're not getting the respect that you want. You're not getting the

ranking that you want. You know, South Korean men are working incredibly incredibly long out. So I really want us, you know, before we talk about misogyny, I want us to empathize with these misogynist men. I want us, you know, I'm trying to get a sense of how it's tough to be a South Korean man. You know, you're coming home maybe at 10 p.m. 10 p.m. at night. Really late, exhausted and tired. Okay. And then in these men, and then on top of that, it is a traditionally extremely patriarchal culture. So in South Korea, there is this traditional idiom, man, high, woman, low. So they have been built up their entire lives to believe that they are better than women. And so South Korea has one of the largest gender pay gaps in the world. Management is like 90%

male. So men in their everyday lives, going back to your point about mixed gender socializing, When they socialize with women, they are superiors. They are not engaging with women as equals. They are set up to be superiors. That is how offices look. So even a female graduate will be expected to serve the tea and run errands. So they are accustomed to women serving them. And that has been the case, you know, in homes and families that women will do the domestic

work and look after their husbands. It's also represented on television. So if ever you watch a Korean film show, I was just recently watching your Netflix business proposal, So women are represented as sort of childish, juvenile idiots, that they're incompetent, whereas men are rational, strategic, and sensible. So you're built up this entire life to think that men are sensible, women are idiots, and they're supposed to serve you and be accommodating, servile, you know, lovely and sweet things. Okay.

So you have these patriarchal expectations in your mind, but in real life it is an absolute struggle. It is an absolute struggle to achieve them. On top of this, I think it's important to recognize that South Korean men have mandatory two-year constriction. So they're all in the army, and that is a very authoritarian hierarchical system. So I think that could also have a cultural effect. You're imbueing people with these expectations of hierarchy and authoritarianism and cultural tightness. Can you give me a clearer sense of how everything you're describing in terms of Korean

culture, a dating market for men, the economic reality for men, how does this, how is it, juxtaposed with a clear progressive movement among Korean women? I feel like I have a clear sense of why there might have been, why there might be right now, this reactionary movement among young, disappointed, disenchanted Korean men. Why have women swung so dramatically

toward the other side? Well, why wouldn't you? I think there are two. Christians there? Why were they silent and submissive and compliance for so long? And that's, you know, partly socialization and shame. You know, in Korea, there are about 10 different words for shame or embarrassment. So in a collectivist culture, you feel that humiliation in front of others, and so you self-sensor and self-police and don't want to express horrors. So, for example, even though there have been cases of sexual assault and harassment, abuses in, you know,

the corporate culture and drinking, women have... have been nervous, afraid, and silence and stigma can persist as a despondency trap. I call it a despondency trap, whereby if you never see anyone else resisting, then you assume wider compliance and acceptance. So you are reluctant to speak out because you anticipate social disapproval. And that's exactly what still continues in Japan. So even though there's sexual harassment and assault in Japan, women seldom speak out because they anticipate disapproval. What happened in South Korea is that a few bold women spoke out. You know, these bold, it's always the vanguards of any feminist movement

are always, you know, the bold ones who are taking a leap in the dark. And these women themselves did not anticipate such a positive response, but they spoke out, and to their surprise, and Hewan Jung chronicles this beautifully, to their surprise, there was this massive chorus of not your fault. and women gathered in their droves in so many venues. And in South Korean schools, for example, they stick at the windows with all these cases of abuse and assault by teachers. In the streets, women organize.

And because it's a collectivist culture, what's really fascinating is if you look at the photos of South Korean feminist protests, they tend to have the same colored banners and the same colored clothes. And it's this collectivist thing that we're all together. You know, we're doing it in the same way. We're supporting each other. So a few of these bold women came out. They shared their stories and they were absolutely supported by them.

And seeing that, more women came forward. So they overcame what they call the despondency trap. They realized wider support. So more women spoke out. They encouraged each other. Sensing that solidarity, they organized. And then when you feel that other people are supporting, you're more likely to speak out. And it's not just on social media or the streets.

You know, there are in protests. There are these protests called My Life. is not your porn. Women are pushing for more accountability in the police, more accountability in the judicial system. They're also books. There was a really famous book that done fantastically well across Asia called Born in 1982 and it chronicles everyday sexism. So again, that's this feminized public culture. So on social media and books and the streets, women are organizing against abuses, against assault and they're becoming empowered and emboldened because they anticipate wider support. That is the crucial thing. It is a positive feedback loop. So in many,

cultures, women are trapped in that negative feedback loop. Anticipating the disapproval, they stay quiet, they say ashamed, they stay stigmatized. And then, of course, other people also fear condemnation, which is what happens in Japan. So it's a question of getting out of that feedback loop and shifting the equilibrium. When we look across all these examples, we look at the United States, we look at Europe, we look at East Asia and South Korea in particular, Do you think it's best for me, for listeners to think that there are, are there a handful of explanations for the apparent gender polarization that we're seeing among young people? Are there a handful of explanations that you think hold across all of these different continents?

Or do you think these are best understood as somewhat, like, locals a weird word to use here, but somewhat local stories, that the European economy and the U.S. economy, have had very different trajectories in the last 20, 30 years. So we shouldn't think of them as being equal. The U.S. and East Asia have different cultures. You could argue that both are meritocratic in certain ways, but their meritocracy and the rituals and institutions of meritocracy are very different. The gender ratio of the Gen Z and the U.S. is very different than gender ratio of Korea.

To what extent I'm just trying to think of, you know, getting in my head a kind of thesis statement about this episode, To what extent do you think we should think of this as a handful of global stories versus mostly there are a bunch of local explanations for why we're seeing gender polarization across the world? Okay, great question. First, I think that in-depth local knowledge is incredibly important because each is manifest in a very particular way, right? But if we have a sufficient level of abstraction, we can see broader themes. Like for me, I see it. when men cannot achieve desired status. So in the South Korean context, that desired status looks slightly differently because you're having economic growth, but there's also this very difficult dating market, which means you've got to be super, super successful in order to be competitive, right? In the European context, desired status also depends on the level of patriarchy, etc, etc. But if you think about when men struggle to achieve desired status, when social media filter bubbles

and algorithms reinforce certain priors, and while cultural entrepreneurs feed those sensibilities by giving people either hope that misogyny is possible or that misogyny is right. Yes, so I think if we think at the level of abstraction about failure to achieve desired status, about these social media filter bubbles and algorithms and cultural entrepreneurs,

if we think at that very, very top level summary, then yes, we can tell a global story that exists on a spectrum. So we should expect men who struggle to achieve desired status to have more of these zero-sum mentalities. So that, you know, varies by class within the US and varies by region within the US. So in, you know, Appalachian ex-cold mining regions, we should expect to see it more strongly, just as we should expect to see it more strongly in parts of southern Italy, etc. So that's where we can be very local and specific.

Look, I've said this many times before. I'm a progressive, and so I'm typically not going to directly criticize any cohort that moves in a progressive direction. But I do think, and this question somewhat flips our conversation on its head, I do think that if you look at the data in the U.S., the data in Germany, even maybe the data in other parts of Europe, the only exception to this rule might be South Korea, in most of these countries, it is women who are becoming very progressive relative to previous cohorts and men who are becoming a little bit more conservative than previous. as cohorts. So there's a way in which the way I should structure this conversation should actually be the opposite. What I should say is not, let's explain what's going on with men. I should say, why are women around the world so liberal? Excuse me, progressive. How did they get so progressive in just 20 years? What is going on here? I really loved your explanation about why we might see this sort of, you know, this conservative backlash and the degree to which it, when you abstract up,

has to do with a kind of status anxiety to at the same level of abstraction, because I love the way your mind works in that capacity, at the same level of abstraction, why do you think we're seeing across such different cultures women becoming so much more progressive than they were just 20 years ago? Absolutely. And David Rosado has some fantastic analysis of this. So he looks at Western news media over the past 20 years. And he sees, you see, you. is what some call the awokenane, right? So there's much more reporting of gender bias and racial bias. So when I taught to young women across college campuses in the US,

so last year I was in Chicago, I was in New Haven, I was in San Francisco. When I speak to all these people, you know, they're much more, they're not only have a stronger, it's a stronger concern for it and a stronger perception of racial and gender bias and being much more animated about it. So I, yes, and I think that's because if the media increasingly reports about, you know, babies being imprisoned on the border and it then becomes very, very resonant in your face, you know, economists have tended to look at local place-based effects. So like I was saying earlier, about local economic stagnation. Because of social media and reporting, things can be very real, very visceral and very in your face as if they're a problem right now. And if, for a example, and to continue, if democratic fundraisers are sending people emails like, America is under threat, they're going to do this. If you don't give your $10 a month now,

they're going to, you know, do something terrible. So the whole way in which Democrats are trying to earn money, are trying to raise money for progressive causes, is by highlighting this existential threat, that this terrible, terrible thing is happening. So people are being bombarded, not just with the news about the racial or gender bias, but also Democrats. And, you know, once you sign up to one democratic event, then you can get locked into forever emails about how terrible the world is. So I think that many progressive think tanks and also political fundraisers have a vested interest for their own survival and to, you know, combat the rise of the right into amping up

these threats. And that makes it feel very real, very real. very visceral, that big existential threat. So you're being constantly told every single day. There are these terrible things happening at the border. There are these terrible things happening here. There is this, you know, in Flint, Michigan, people still don't have water. All these kinds of stories are being bombarded with you every single day.

I think there's something very compelling about that theory. I mean, one way to put these theories in juxtaposition is to say that, and this is sort of, you know, I'm offering a kind of grand thesis statement here because I came into this episode but really not particularly understanding what's going on. Seeing a few surveys, realizing the gender polarization exists in the U.S. around the world, but not really understanding why. Here's the thesis statement I'm sort of coming up with on the fly as you talk. With the caveat that there's a lot of diversity here, there are very liberal men,

there's very conservative men. They're very liberal women. There's very conservative women. In general, I think we might be able to say that men today are more aware of and sensitive to their status anxiety and social media allows them to both see and express that, well, you might say young women are more aware of and sensitive to injustice around the world, whether that's racial or gender-based injustice. And social media and news gives them ammunition to both gain information about and express solidarity

around those issues of injustice. And so it seems to be like the two active ingredients that you put your finger on, and it doesn't mean they're the only active ingredients. But the two active ingredients that are pretty compelling to me are this active ingredient of status anxiety, which is playing particularly powerfully acutely among the young male population and this sort of this new hyper awareness of injustice with all the benefits and drawbacks that might come with that among young women. To what extent do you think that misses something core to the theories even putting out here? I really like that angle that men care about

status, women care about justice. Not all of them, of course. Heterogeneity, et cetera, et cetera. That's an interesting way of that's an interesting way of seeing it. That said, that said, you know, So I was in Poland last year in three different cities in Poland. You know, there are still, you know, men's concerns about immigration are also about their perception of justice, like immigrants coming here and getting something. Like there's a sense of unfairness. So some of this, I think, you know, when men express concerns about women's gay and some of this is about justice and fairness, you know, about what is fair. And one could justice easily say, I'm arguing with myself now, that the progressive revolution, among Korean women is absolutely about status.

How could it not be about status in a culture where they have had lower status for a long time? So there are certainly objections that one can raise. I was just interested in the degree to which you seem to emphasize status for men and sensitivity to injustice for women because it's interesting to think

of how those are not the only. I'm certainly not trying to boil it all down to two words here, but those might be significant levers for either side. It's an interesting theory to sort of play with. No, absolutely. I mean, it's difficult to know. It's very difficult to know. You know, what are people's innate preferences? But is it that women have a stronger concern with equality generally and they might self-select into bubbles that feed on these ideas of justice and fairness? Yes, at a very, very abstract level, I'm sure many listeners will hate it immediately. But I think it's important to recognize that people have different ideas about justice. You know, for, you know, I'm really butchering that. answer. I'm really butchering that answer, but I mean like, for example, the idea that women may be so

concerned about racial and gender inclusivity that they would support a very illiberal form of justice of the zero platforming, right? So this can manifest itself in a different ways, but I like it. I like it. Final thoughts. Is there something that we missed? Is there, is there some big thing that you have focused on in your travels and your work on gender equality and inequality around the world that we're going to be kicking ourselves when we hang up that we've missed here. Derek, as for the many reasons why you might kick yourself, I do not know. But let me just say one thing. Let me say one thing.

You know, these sensationalist ideas that men and women are pulling apart, let me share that, you know, over the past years, you know, I've done a qualitative research in India, in Turkey, in Morocco, in Uzbekistan, in extremely patriarchal places where, you know, women and men are socially policed into conformity, where women fear to speak out and express their concerns and frustrations because they anticipate backlash. So for all our concerns about men and women come on your part, let's not, you know, idea, let's not think of that as some terrible scenario that, you know, this is just part of global cultural diversity, whereas, you know, in other places there is so much repression and social policing that women cannot dare say what they

think. Right. Nothing is going to create, right? Here I am, you know, worried about, you know, gender polarization, nothing is going to create more gender homogenization better than authoritarianism. Like, absolute tyranny will assure that no one thinks differently than anybody else. You're not going to see any kind of polarization in that climate. You're right. There is a degree to which this is all happening with the background music of some kind of freedom that men and women are at least free to think differently. How they think differently, sure, we can worry about its implications. But the fact that people can think differently, that is the kind of lowercase liberalism that we should all hope for. Alice Evans, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Plain English is produced by Devin Biroldi. We've got new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. If you like what you're hearing, give us five stars and a nice review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast for feedback and episode suggestions, email us at plain English at Spotify.com.