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How Wide is the Political Gender Divide… and Why?

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Leading up to Election Day, young women on TikTok posted videos of themselves heading to the polls to “cancel out” their boyfriends’ votes. This tongue-in-cheek trend highlighting the gender-based voting differences was cemented into reality when exit polls revealed a 16 point difference between young men who voted for Trump and young women who voted for Harris. It’s not surprising that many young women saw a vote for Harris as a way to oppose sexist, racist, billionaire Trump. Although as we argued at the time, the best way to do this would be to vote against both parties of big business, and instead vote for independent antiwar candidate Jill Stein. 

Young men voting for Trump despite his most dangerous qualities, or in the worst cases, because of them, signifies a concerning societal shift. In fact, a UK poll shows that Gen Z men are more likely than baby boomer men to believe that feminism does more harm than good. The growing gender divide isn’t new, nor limited to the US. But, the US presidential election exposed one of the sharpest expressions of the growing gender divide, with 58% of young women voting for Harris, and 56% of young men voting for Trump. This is a switch from 2020, when 56% of young men voted for Biden, and 41% voted for Trump. While young people overall still tend to vote Democrat, and not all young men will go down this route, the right wing has an increasing hold on young men.

Meanwhile, young women are moving to the left at a faster rate than young men are moving to the right, regardless of race or educational attainment. In fact, the partisan gap between young men and women has nearly doubled in the last 25 years, a trend greatly accelerated in the last eight years. Over the last eight years, young and working-class women have stood at the forefront of struggles around the world, from protests for abortion rights, protests for climate action, and protests against police brutality. Thousands of women marched on DC to protest the first Trump presidency in 2016. Women-dominated sectors such as education and nursing have seen strikes for better pay and working conditions. At the same time, women have come under attack, for example with the tragic overturn of Roe v. Wade under the Democrats’ watch. It comes as no surprise that young women are radicalizing to the left on a number of issues, and increasingly rejecting capitalism.

From Revolutionary Boom To Backlash

The way young people voted in the 2024 election needs to be contextualized within the global events of the 2010s that shaped a generation. To many, the wretchedness of capitalism was exposed, and real change felt possible. The 2010s were characterized by international mass upheavals, from the 2011 Arab Spring to the 2020 George Floyd Rebellion. Struggles against gender oppression radicalized a generation of women, from #NiUnaMenos in Argentina, to the strike for abortion rights in Poland, to Women, Life, Freedom in Iran and #MeToo which took down powerful, high profile men. 

It is in moments of mass struggle where the working class puts solidarity into practice, that it can come closer to seeing itself as a multigender, multiracial class unified against the bosses and the ruling elite. But the opposite is also true—when struggle is at a standstill, and the ruling class can more easily impose its divide and rule tactics to get the working class pointing fingers at each other. In opposition to the movements of the 2010s, the ruling class waged an all-out offensive to sow these divisions. The global reformist left, including in the US, squandered the opportunities to drive the potential of the working class to win big gains in the last decade, ceding ground for the reactionary right to claw back the gains that have been made.

The lack of a left alternative to the two parties of the billionaire class has left a space now being filled by the far right and their agenda to attack the most oppressed layers of society. This “anti-woke” backlash has come with an onslaught of right wing ideas, flamed by right-wing groups like Turning Point USA and the dangerous (and insufferable) online manosphere. 

Today, only 35% of Americans say the feminist label somewhat describes them, down from 51% in 2020. When polled, young men feel they have fewer opportunities than women, and feel feminism has “gone too far.” These kinds of ideas have been championed by anti-feminist male influencers like Andrew Tate, who claimed, “Women are manipulative by nature. They know how to use their looks and charms to get what they want.” Tate currently sits under house arrest for rape and sex trafficking of minors, continuing to tweet to his nearly 10 million followers on X.

The Democrats’ (as expected) unwillingness to fight on the side of workers has left the playing field wide open for the far right to sink its teeth into young men who feel angry and alienated from society. When it came to the ideas of feminism, queer liberation, and Black liberation, the Democrats talked out of both sides of their mouths, doing things like putting “BLM” in their social media profiles while tear gassing protesters. They used protests around the overturn of Roe v. Wade to campaign for midterms. This is because as a capitalist party, they’ll say what they think they need to in order to get elected, but their true allegiance is with the bosses and the billionaires, just like the Republicans. 

This embrace of “woke” ideas by a big section of the ruling class, including much of the Democratic establishment, was used to undermine movements like BLM and #MeToo. For many working people, corporations and much of the establishment taking up a “woke” image was seen for what it was: a disingenuous ploy. That left space for the right wing to launch their “anti-woke” attacks, seen on full display as a central pillar to Trump’s campaign with ads such as, “Harris is for they/them, not you.” 

Instead of empty rhetoric, we need working-class action to combat oppression in society. Racism, sexism, transphobia, and other dangerous, divisive ideologies are tools used by the ruling class to prevent the working class from uniting against them. That is the only way to build the strongest possible fightback against the bosses and their system in order to eliminate the basis for oppression completely.

The Democrats, of course, will never pin the problem of oppression on capitalism itself, which they will uphold at all costs. They have adapted to right-wing ideas instead of fighting them, seen on full display by Democrats like Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton voicing how he wouldn’t want his daughters playing sports with trans athletes.

What’s Going On With Young Men?

So, what moves a young man to wake up on Election Day and cast a vote for Trump, while his girlfriend votes for Harris? The answer… well, it’s complicated. In general, young people are in crisis. Gen Z has grown up only knowing a global pandemic, more war, more mass shootings, and more climate catastrophe. There is a sense of frustration, despair, and distrust of the system itself. This has a radicalizing effect—in both directions. It’s worth noting that Trump has made gains among women of all ages as well, but the messaging of the right has been sweeping up young men disproportionately. 

One explanation for young men moving to the right, is that young men feel they are falling behind. In every US state, young women are ahead of men in graduating high school on time. In every US state, women have more college degrees than men. This is a shift from 1970, as more women have entered the workforce, and mass struggles for gender equality in the 70s opened up more economic opportunities for working women. This is also in part because of young women today facing immense pressure to succeed.

Demographic analysts point towards growing gender discrepancies in school, beginning as early as kindergarten, where young boys are falling behind. The cutting of school budgets and the onslaught of standardized testing are putting extreme pressure on young kids to keep up. And, the short of it is, young girls are keeping up at a faster rate, as Richard Reeves explains in his book,”Of Boys and Men.” The divisions are even steeper between working class boys versus wealthy boys, where rich families can push their sons through the best schools and opportunities.

But differences in education and upbringings are far from painting the entire picture. The Andrew Tates, Jordan Petersons, and Elon Musks of the world have seized upon the insecurities of young men. Wondering why you’re falling behind? Well, have you tried blaming those uptight, radical woke women in your life?

It is true that the economy was the number one issue for voters of every demographic, which comes as no surprise as the Biden administration has totally failed to curb inflation and the cost of living crisis for working people. And, plenty of young men who voted for Trump do not identify with the worst elements of the sexist manosphere. But economic questions are never neutral—the question is who will pay, and who will suffer? What Trump presented was an economic plan packaged in the scapegoating of women, trans people, and immigrants, letting the billionaires off the hook. Trump promised to give men more economic opportunities, a message that reached young men trying to make ends meet. 

Trump & The Nuclear Family

In interviews with the New York Times before the election, non-college educated men shared their plans to vote for Trump so they can feel like providers for their families. This is an understandable sentiment as wages in jobs that don’t require college degrees stagnate, and the Democrats threw in the towel for raising the federal minimum wage long ago.

Trump’s promises for more economic opportunities to the “providers” of the family serve as a reassertion of the patriarchal nuclear family, the base unit of capitalism. Capitalist society asserts itself on the wider working class through the systematic subjugation of women through unpaid childcare and housework, and the reproduction of future workers ripe for exploitation at the hands of the bosses. 

The truth is, capitalism is failing all working people. But promoting the idea that men deserve more and the need for men to assert themselves as the head of the household are tools used by the ruling class in an attempt to stabilize capitalism in a highly volatile era.

As capitalism barrels towards more unfettered war and inter-imperialist conflict, the assertion of patriarchal norms and need for increased nationalism becomes more flagrantly expressed. In 2022, 49% of Gen Z men said that the United States had become “too soft and feminine.” Just a year later, 60% of Gen Z men said the same, which tracks with the outbreak of the Ukraine War, and the pressure of inflation and the cost of living crisis on working people. In short, capitalism needs young men to die in their wars, and the rhetoric of the ruling class is working to a degree.

Ultimately, attacks on women and the most oppressed do not benefit working-class men. They are sent off as cannon fodder for war, they are expected to carry masculine traits to assert dominance, and the gender wage gap hurts men’s wages to the extent that women workers are used as a cheaper workforce. Keeping women down only benefits the bosses in maintaining divisions in the working class, profiting off of competition, and taking advantage of the free household labor that women are typically responsible for. In this way, social and economic issues are deeply interconnected—sexism, xenophobia, and racism are baked into the economic system of capitalism itself, and replicated within the unit of that system, the nuclear family.

Fight Divisions With Solidarity

What’s something young men and women have in common in this moment? Those who want to run for office rank in the single digits of percentage points. Young people have a dwindling lack of faith in government institutions, which reek of the rot of capitalism, and offer no way out for youth up against the cost of living crisis, climate catastrophe, and war. This is a very understandable sentiment, and one which needs to be channeled positively into building working-class movements that take on capitalism itself.

The two parties of big business will dig their heels into the system that perpetuates oppression at all costs. We need a new party that speaks to the economic crises working people face that also fights tooth and nail against attacks on the oppressed. Unions can’t shy away from taking up fights against bathroom bills, mass deportations, and abortion bans. Working class organizations need to be built on the basis of genuine solidarity against the bosses and right-wing attacks. 

While young men shifting to the right is a significant societal issue, as we explained in our post-election article, it is not an irreversible trend. United struggle against the ruling class is not only possible, but necessary to win the kind of change needed for working people. As the drive towards war and global conflict continues, the ruling class is looking for a new ideology to stabilize itself. Old ideologies (which of course, never fully went away) such as “traditional values” are being resurrected to appeal to downwardly mobile young men. Appealing to young men’s sense of alienation with misogyny is a tactic the ruling class will try out in order to control society and keep working-class men and women from uniting against them. 

People of all genders will find themselves in struggle together against the boss in their workplaces. The way to win gains is to fight for maximum unity of the working class by joining fights against the oppression of women and other groups with the fight for economic demands that directly benefit the entire working class. 

The fight against oppression, and for class unity, is not a separate project from the struggle for socialism. Capitalism creates a basis for oppression to continue and to worsen, stoked by the ruling class. But that means we can close the gender gap and end all forms of oppression for good by fighting for a socialist society, where there is no economic basis for dividing people and favoring some groups at the expense of others. 

Struggles against oppression, in the here and now, can have a drastic impact on the working class’ views and can build confidence in what kind of change is possible on a united, working-class basis. It is this unity, and experience as a class, that is ultimately necessary to pave the road for revolutionary change. Only a multigender, multiracial, international revolutionary movement of the working class can bring down this system of exploitation, poverty, and war.

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