Recently, in the same week, a King’s College London study and a Financial Times analysis of multiple studies highlighted an unprecedented gender divide emerging within Gen Z. As a mother of two Gen Z boys who research the role of women in the media, I felt enormous pain and sense of loss. If our younger generations of women and men diverge in their core values and are polarized on important issues such as the impact of feminism, masculinity and gender equality, how can they build healthy, loving and lasting relationships in a hungry world ? of unity and social cohesion?
Troubled by these thoughts, one Saturday morning I went down to the kitchen to check on my 13-year-old son and his two friends who had stayed overnight. “What do you think about feminism?” I asked spontaneously, curious to hear their thoughts over breakfast before going to play soccer. My son rejected my question vehemently, asking me not to ask such “strange” questions. His negative reaction and visible discomfort left me perplexed.
Social rifts between different generations have been observed in the past, but according to FT analyses, in this century, for the first time, a real ideological divide has emerged and developed within same generation of young men and women. Since 2000, women aged 18 to 29 in South Korea, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom have become significantly more progressive while young men have become more conservative.
A study from King’s College London, a snapshot of current intergenerational views in the UK, revealed that men aged between 16 and 29 were more likely than any other group (including men over 60) to thinking that being a man is more difficult than being a woman. They are four times more likely to think this than young women (26% vs. 6%). Furthermore, almost one in five men aged 16-29 believe that attempts to give women equal opportunities have gone too far or too far (18% versus 8% for young women and 12% of all adults) .
Several social scientists and journalists attribute these divisions in the younger generation to a number of factors. Among these are: The #MeToo movement which inspires feminist values in young women. The identity crisis that men are experiencing in the face of the growing emancipation of women. The radically different use of social media by young men and women has led to diametrically opposed online worlds. And the economic struggles that push men towards more conservative and anti-immigration beliefs. No less significant is men’s increased consumption of hardcore porn online, which has deepened their objectification of women and increased the appeal of sexist influencers who advocate traditional female roles (like Jordan Peterson) and the subjugation of women (like Andrew Tate). .
Perhaps a little selfish, I decided to persevere with the question I had asked my son and his friends. The answers surprised me: I discovered that my son, who grew up in a feminist family, did not consider himself a feminist because he thought it was unfair to fight for women’s rights but not for men’s rights. He was neutral, he said he. Interestingly, his friends also thought that feminism meant giving better opportunities to women but not to men.
As disappointing as this conversation was for me as an expert on gender equality in the media, it was incredibly insightful. I realized that the next generation of kids, still unexamined by institutions like King’s College London, are anchored in the zero-sum narrative: “For women to feel better, men must feel worse” or, conversely, “women suffer, because all men are sexist”. One of the problems with many feminist and anti-feminist narratives is that they pit women against men. For example, articles calling teenagers and young people “annoying” do not help the cause in the slightest feminist. It’s hard to give up your power when you’re being beaten with a stick. There’s a danger that many feminist narratives leave men defensive and threatened, rather than encouraging them to support women who need it if our world is to become more equal. After all , women still represent just 5.8% and 10.4% of all CEOs at Fortune 500 companies globally and in the United States, respectively. Women represent a dismal 7% of the board chairs of 15 leading AI companies that are shaping our future world. Furthermore, huge pay and asset gaps remain between men and women. According to a recent Oxfam report, globally, men now own $105 trillion more in wealth than women, or four times the size of the US economy.
“If feminism provides equal opportunities for women and men, then we can be feminists,” my son and his friends concluded that Saturday morning after explaining that feminism means giving equal opportunities to all. I added that the reason feminism focused more on women was because they languished far behind men in terms of prosperity. “Hasn’t this problem been solved in England?” one of the boys retorted, giving rise to another typical misunderstanding. Well no, it’s not.
Feminism needs a rebrand because it is increasingly perceived as encapsulating an anti-male belief system that aims to exclude men so that women can thrive. Global searches for feminism/feminism on Google have decreased by 38% since 2017. We should move towards a movement where women and men can unite to work against the inherited patriarchal system that represses women’s talent in leading society and the talent of men men in taking care of themselves. and nourishment. Why not call it feminism? In any case, we must clarify that this patriarchal system has placed excessive burdens on men to provide and on women to care for everyone, relegating everyone to a narrow space that has deprived them of their integrity.
Analysis of global suicide mortality trends in 183 countries revealed that between 2000 and 2019, men were twice as likely as women to take their own lives. In 2020, four times as many men as women committed suicide in the United States
Only when men and women work side by side to dismantle a system that doesn’t work well enough for either of them will the ever-damaging zero-sum game give way to a more nourishing narrative that supports the fulfillment of all genders.
Luba Kassova is a researcher, journalist and consultant covering equality, media and social trends.
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