Sexist attitudes account for up to 13% of Gen Z's gender voting gap

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Generation Z men are less likely to vote for left-wing parties than women, and their political preferences can be linked to their sexist attitudes, a large-scale study has found. Research on 15,122 people in the UK and 23 other European countries found that politics is "increasingly a battle of the sexes, at a time of public concern about Generation Z men's involvement in online manosphere communities."

In the first cross-national study to examine how the youth gender voting gap is linked to sexism, Zoe Abrams, a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, analyzed survey data on voting behavior across Europe.

She found that:

• The voting gap between men and women is larger in younger than older generations.
• Generation Z men are still more likely to vote left-wing than older men, but the gap between them and Generation Z women is large because the women were so strongly likely to vote left.
• Statistical modeling shows that among those aged 20 to 25, the probability of men voting for a left-wing party is 45%, and the probability for women is 58%. Men have a 37% probability of voting for a right-wing party, whereas women have only a 24% probability of doing so.
• Differences in levels of sexism between men and women were significantly larger among Generation Z than among older generations. For example, Generation Z men's greater level of sexism—their belief that women exaggerate sexual harassment, seek power over men, or are easily offended—accounted for between 10% and 13% of the gender voting gap. Older men's voting for right-wing parties is less strongly linked to sexist attitudes.

"The marked differences in voting preferences among women and men in Generation Z can largely be accounted for by their differing attitudes toward gender equality and sexism," Abrams told the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Manchester.

"Alongside growing electoral and ideological divisions between young men and women, there has been heightened public concern about Generation Z men's rejection of gender equality and involvement in online misogynistic manosphere communities and the global influence of figures like Andrew Tate.

"There has been a concurrent rise of anti-feminist manosphere online spaces, which explicitly condemn feminist movements like #MeToo, call for the sexual subordination of women and the return of traditional gender hierarchies and are frequented mostly by younger men.

"For younger voters, politics and antagonistic attitudes toward women are more deeply intertwined than for any previous generation. The findings point to sexist attitudes as a new and powerful fault line in left-wing and right-wing voting in European democracies.

"As Generation Z form a larger share of the electorate and enter political office, sexism may become a central axis of democratic conflict. Politics is increasingly a battle of the sexes, at a time of public concern about Generation Z men's involvement in online manosphere communities."

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Abrams used data gathered in the 2023–24 wave of the European Social Survey. After adjusting for differences in Generation Z men and women in education, marital status, employment, religiosity and migration backgrounds, this revealed an even wider voting gap between their voting preferences, confirming that gender attitudes, rather than demographic background, were the key influence on voting choice. This effect was much weaker among older age groups.

Respondents to the survey were asked if they had voted in the most recent national election, and then what party they voted for in that election. Levels of sexism were measured by asking their opinion on how often do women seek to gain power by getting control over men, how often do women get easily offended, and how often do women exaggerate claims of sexual harassment in the workplace.

The 24 countries were: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. Abrams is a doctoral researcher in the University of Oxford's Department of Sociology and Nuffield College.

Provided by British Sociological Association