Gender, generation and ideology

The generations have traditionally been quite homogeneous between them.

Of course, their way of thinking varies over the years, with the context, with the history of each one of them.

However, in recent years something has changed.

For the first time, ideological changes are observed in the same generation, depending on gender.

A few days ago, in a controversial article in the

Financial Times

, John Burn-Murdoch demonstrated and confirmed that women of the younger generation are moving – ideologically – much further to the left, while men of the same generation are moving much to the right.

A new gap.

What is surprising is that this change has been abrupt, especially in the last six years, as a Gallup poll in the United States shows: “Women ages 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries.”

The same thing happens in Germany, the United Kingdom and Poland, and in Spain, as analyzed by Ismael Crespo and José Miguel Rojo.

As indicated, the 2023 CIS Post-Election Barometer clearly shows that there is an ideological difference between men and women in only two parties: Vox and PSOE.

66% of the people who remembered voting for Vox were men.

56.1% of the people who remembered having voted for the PSOE were women.

This difference can also be observed in Latin America, where Borja Andrino and Montse Hidalgo analyzed for EL PAÍS the same phenomenon for Brazil, Chile or the recent elections in Argentina, where the difference in the vote for Milei between men and women was 12 percentage points.

This is especially relevant in the next and very intense European electoral cycle, where the extreme, autocratic or populist right is growing.

The European Council of Foreign Relations (ECFR) released a report this week that warns of a shift to the radical right of voters at the expense of Greens and Social Democrats.

Anti-European populists could win at the polls in nine member countries (Austria, Belgium, Slovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic) and take second or third place in another nine countries (Bulgaria, Estonia , Finland, Germany, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden).

The reasons why this triple gap is occurring - gender, generational, ideological - will require calmer studies and views without prejudice.

But it will not be ruled out to establish correlations - even if they are not causal - between underlying behaviors and movements with respect to the prominence of the feminist struggle and the male tilt to the right and the female resistance from the left.

As well as cultural battles - such as cancel culture - and their impact on voting by gender and generation in a more relevant way than what social, economic and territorial conditions meant in the explanation of electoral behaviors.

In a recent interview, the progressive thinker Naomi Klein warned: “The censorious passion of the left is dangerous, that surveillance of speech and the cruelty it displays when someone crosses the line.

We could talk about cancel culture, if it weren't such a loaded concept.

I have no doubt that it sometimes incorporates a certain element of thuggery, which tends to push anyone who steps out of line.

“I’m not the only person on the left who is worried about that.”

And he associated it with the impact on differentiated political behavior between men and women: “These young people may find the left suffocating, a place where a mistake can make your friends turn against you, and make them believe that the right It is that area in which it is possible to disagree, even if it is not true.

There is control on both sides of the mirror, but I think the right takes better advantage of that strategy to rally people to its cause.

I wish on the left we thought more about how to fatten our ranks instead of how to purge them.”

In this context, the paradoxical increase in youth loneliness in our hyperconnected societies can accelerate the process of isolation and self-referential bubbles that can trap our young people, preventing healthy and porous socializations.

With its differentiated consequences in their electoral behaviors.

“Digital connectivity raises profound questions about the quality of human relationships in the digital age.

But, in addition, the paradox arises when, despite the infinite possibilities of communication that we have, many young people feel increasingly alone” Arantza García points out in another recent article.

This trend has given rise to what some call “lonely youth.”

Nearly 21.9% of young Spaniards (2 out of 10) between 16 and 24 years old feel lonely, according to the exhaustive study

The cost of unwanted loneliness in Spain

,

from the State Observatory of Unwanted Loneliness (SoledadES) promoted by the ONCE Foundation.

The picture that emerges is alarming: lonely, young (and not so young) men, with serious socialization and self-esteem problems, hyperconnected sometimes to the point of being sick, with fear of the female gender and the advancement of effective equality between men and women. , accumulating suspicion and insecurities of all kinds - when not explicit hatred - and trapped digitally and politically by the protective vigor of the sexist and misogynistic populism of the authoritarian and extreme right.

Attention, attention, attention.

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