It has long been the case that American women are generally more liberal than American men. But among young Americans, this gender gap has widened into an enormous rift: According to recent Gallup polling, there is aĀ 30-point differencebetween the number of women age 18ā30 who self-identify as liberal and the number of men in that demographic who do the same.
Thatās largely because young women have gottenĀ muchĀ more liberal, while young men have stayed ideologically more consistentāor, according to other analyses, become more conservativeĀ and anti-feminist. (Of course, not every person identifies as a man or woman. But gender roles still play a big part in shaping our lives and politics, and in the context of this column, I am focusing mostly on the vastĀ majority of AmericansĀ who identify as one or the other.) Itās not happening just here either; the political divide between the sexes is a trend thatĀ researchers are observingĀ in some other countries too.
Iām as left as they come, if youād like, look at my comment history. I just donāt like that there is this big culture war issue that repaints an abusers and rapists vs. decent, normal people issue into a men vs. women issue, thus dividing people and forcing a wide swathe of men who are simply being crushed by the system into the right where they will be fleeced and exploited.