The phenomenon was highlighted by the Financial Time and would mainly concern the younger generation. The British daily argues that in several countries around the world, young women are increasingly inclined to harbor liberal ideas, unlike men who are more tempted by conservative ideas.
The journal draws on a large quantity of data, gleaned from social surveys, electoral surveys and polls in the countries concerned. It draws in particular on studies by the Survey Center on American Life, an American polling institute, and the work of Alice Evans, researcher at Stanford University on gender differences. The article thus establishes for several countries a scale between liberalism and conservatism.
For each gender, this scale represents the difference between the percentage of those considered “liberal” and the percentage of those considered “conservative.” On the y-axis, the value 0 thus corresponds to a society which would have as many conservatives as liberals, while the theoretical maximum is established at 100 (liberals only) and the theoretical minimum at -100 (conservatives only). ).
However, on the graph established by the British newspaper, in South Korea, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, the curves for both sexes reveal a significant gap for the 18 to 30 year old generation, which has started to widening throughout the 2010s. In the United States, the gap has now reached 30 points. It is around 25 points in the United Kingdom and Germany.
A gap which is also confirmed at the polls because in Germany, the far-right party is preferred by men (15% compared to only 9% of women). And in Poland, underlines the Financial Times, half of men aged 18 to 21 supported the nationalist Confederation party compared to only a sixth of women of the same age.
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This phenomenon specific to the younger generation would also be confirmed outside Western countries since the data revealed in South Korea a gap of more than 50 points between the two sexes and in the 18-30 age group, widened very recently, from the year 2016.
The situation in the Korean dragon is extreme, however, notes the British daily, noting that men voted overwhelmingly for the right-wing party in power unlike women who supported the liberal-democratic opposition party in a context of unprecedented demographic crisis. The birth rate is the lowest in the world, falling in recent years to 0.78.
Outside of liberal democracies, the great ideological gap is also observed in China, according to a study led by a researcher from the University of California published in the journal Sage.
“Movement
Conversely, in the United States for example, the analysis highlights a stronger support for conservative ideas among young men compared to their elders. Thus, more than 12% of men aged 18 to 30 agree that “women seek to obtain power by taking control of men” compared to around 5% for those in their sixties and even less for those over 70. years. In the United Kingdom, the proportion of young men who think that “immigration is destroying British culture” is the only one to increase.
