Men vs. Women: The Battle of Our Time

Billions of dollars in subsidies can't make men and women like each other.

In an age of declining birth rates, the reported chasm between men and women’s outlook on life seems to be widening, and not just in the United States.

A recent article out of the Financial Times revealed an alarming statistic; there is around a 20-30% (depending on the survey) gap between Gen Z women and men regarding their politics. As you may have already guessed, women are increasingly more likely to be staunch liberals, while the men are more likely to be conservative.

Gallup data revealed that in the US, women aged 18-30 are 30% more liberal than men their age. In Germany, it’s the same — a 30% gap. The UK, 25%. In Poland, about 50% of men aged 18-21 backed the hard right political party in the country. Only around 17% of women in that age bracket could say the same. What is going on?

Alice Evans, who studies this great gender divide, posits that men and women tend to agree in cultures where (1) there is interdependence, especially in countries with high religiosity or authoritarianism and (2) where there is regular, mixed-gender, offline socializing. In the modern, liberal (that’s big “L” liberal) West, these are all things we have in short supply, save in the workplace, where men may, understandably, be reluctant to talk to women.

Indeed, the FT article highlighted that “the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.”

But as I said, this divide is not just a Western phenomenon. Japan, China, and South Korea are also not free of this gap. And while Professor Evans does not make this connection as strongly, I will. Stark alienation between men and women results in the lack of children.

Despite South Korea spending almost $250 billion to encourage Koreans to have babies, no dice. The country’s birth rate for 2023 was a sordid 0.72 per couple, far too low to meet the 2.1 replacement rate that will help to take care of the country’s aging population. While I agree that the exorbitant costs of housing and educating children in Korea are a big damper on the Baby Question, there is a strong current of discontent between the sexes that runs even deeper than pure economics.

After I read this article in The Atlantic detailing the ever-growing group of Korean men and women who are electing to not interact with the opposite sex, I asked my Korean friend for his perspective. Luckily for him, he’s happily married, but he acknowledged that there is a lot of gender conflict in his country. He told me, in a nutshell, that “women over-claim their rights, and men do not accept them.” He mentioned that in South Korea, women have health leave if they have unbearable menstrual cramps at work, but measures like these were controversial and had “no social consensus.”

In China, it’s not much better. They have their ill-advised one child policy to thank for a substantial portion of this upset, but economics comes into the picture once again, as well as the decline of male-female interaction, the lack of religiosity, and the decline of the effectiveness of familial pressure to have children. The Chinese government is not thrilled by these developments (save the lack of religiosity) and has detained women’s rights activists over the years who are spreading “wrong views on marriage” by airing their grievances online. Lastly, like Korea, there are far more men than women in the country, resulting in quite the seller’s market.

On the ground, this results in a lot of male resentment. In South Korea, men resent women for purportedly being greedy, wanting to marry rich, and not saying yes to a date. The manosphere has flourished in the country. Now, 80% of Korean men in their 20s think that there is considerable discrimination against men, while only 38% of them think that discrimination against women is serious. Conversely, 84% of Korean women in their 20s contend that there is serious discrimination against women, while only 33.4% of them believe that there is serious discrimination against men. Interestingly, if you ask 50 and 60 year olds in the country, both men and women agree, in similar proportions, that discrimination against women is serious.

How do we get men and women living in the same world again, or at least in the same corner of the internet? Gallup data reveals that men haven’t changed too much over time. It’s us women who have jumped off the left-wing cliff. If this trend does not change, and quickly, men and women will find it intolerable to be together. Sharing values is key to a successful marriage, and without successful marriages, there will be no children.

I do not have the solution, but I can assure you that Professor Evans’ solutions will not lead us to egalitarian paradise. “Economic prosperity” will not solve our angst. These nations are the most prosperous nations on earth, despite the stresses of having to take care of the boomer generation. And working together for the last 50 years does not seem to be generating “cross-gender friendships” in the quantities necessary to bridge this ideology gap. Lastly, while helping “break filter bubbles” by getting men off Reddit and women off Instagram and Tumblr would be wonderful, you cannot enforce it top-down.

However, you can enforce it from the bottom up. Since women going adrift is one of the many reasons for this ideology gap, I say the responsibility falls on our shoulders to take the first step towards men. It’s time to get off Instagram.