How Social Issues Are Driving a Wedge Between Young Women and Young Men

While Gen Z women are more progressive than ever, their male counterparts are a bit more skeptical of all the changes.

Let me just start this post off by saying that I got the inspiration for this data exercise from reading Dan Cox’s excellent Substack - American Storylines. It was specifically this post from March 20 - “The Gender Gap in Church is Growing.” Dan took four questions that focused on social issues from the Pew Religious Landscape study and demonstrated how young Christian men and young Christian women have differing views on abortion and LGBTQ+ topics.

What he uncovered was that Christian women aged 18-24 are significantly more progressive on each issue compared to men of the same age. For instance, 54% of the female sample said that “acceptance of transgender people is a positive change.” It was only 29% of the male sample. That’s not a small gap! It’s a chasm, really.

This entry is part of a much larger narrative emerging in the data that young men and young women are headed in completely different directions. Young men have stopped leaving church in droves and are probably just as religious as young women at this point. But the other side of that coin is that young men seem to be either moving to the right of the ideological spectrum or not budging from a more moderate position. At the same time, younger women are clearly trending toward the left - especially on social issues.

This Pew data is really helpful with regards to trying to track down exactly why there’s this huge gender divide happening among the youngest adults in the United States. So, I took the four questions that Dan plucked out of the Landscape Survey and wanted to just break down those responses based on a bunch of factors — gender, ideology, and age. My aim here is to try and unpack this causal puzzle as much as I can.

It’s always a good idea to start really broadly, so here is the share who answered affirmatively to each of these four questions in the entire sample and then broken down by the political ideology of each respondent.

First thing I want to point out is that huge majorities of Americans are supportive of abortion and of the gay and lesbian community. In each case, about two-thirds of the entire sample say abortion should be legal and that LGB acceptance is a good thing. However, there are very clear political divides in responses to these questions. For instance, 90% of liberals favor abortion compared to only 34% of conservatives. The gap on gay marriage and acceptance of homosexuality is about 50 points, too. Culture War issues are undoubtedly sources of electoral cleavages and it makes sense why politicians would use them as a rallying cry to whip up their base during election season.

The outlier on this is the statement, “acceptance of transgender people is a positive change.” Just 40% of the entire sample agreed with this one - easily the lowest of any of the four options. And, you can also see that conservatives are incredibly opposed to the transgender movement. Just 15% agreed that this was a positive change, compared to 73% of liberals. That’s a gap of 58 points. I also want to point out that moderates are exactly where the entire sample is on this statement - 40% in favor.

Now, let’s pivot to gender.

Okay - this finding is about as clear as it gets: women tend to be more progressive on these social issues than men. On the legality of abortion, women tend to be about five points more supportive than their male counterparts. That five point gap is also there on the issue of same-sex marriage. Women are eight points more likely to believe that “homosexuality should be accepted by society” than men. The largest gap is on the issue of trans Americans. 44% of women agreed with that statement compared to just 34% of men. Again, the trans question seems to be one that faces a lot more opposition than the questions of homosexuality or abortion.

Now, let me throw another factor into the mix - age. The Religious Landscape Survey only offers me a variable that refers to the decade of birth of the respondent, so this is as granular as I get. But I think there’s more than enough here to tell a pretty compelling story about what’s happening across generations.

One thing that I just need to make plain here - the gender gap on social issues is a ‘universal’ factor of American public opinion. We don’t ‘know’ much in the social sciences because people are just weird but you can’t find a single instance where men are to the left of women on these issues when you control for the age of the respondent.

Older women are more progressive than older men. Younger women are more progressive than younger men. It’s also generally the case that younger generations (regardless of gender) tend to be more left-leaning than older generations but I think it’s important to examine the size of the gaps between men and women of the same age.

Take abortion, for instance. The gender gap for people born in the 1950s through the 1970s floats around 6-10 points. The gap does narrow for people born in the 1980s and 1990s - down to just 3 points. But look at the youngest cohort - it balloons back to 10 points. That’s larger than any birth cohort born in 1970 or later.

That same pattern I just described is basically there for each of the other three questions, too. The gender gap for people born before 1960 is fairly large - then it narrows noticeably for people born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Then, for respondents who were born in 2000 or later it shoots back up. This is incredibly clear and compelling evidence that there is a growing divide among young men and young women. The gap on the trans question is 16 points - that’s higher than any other single birth cohort. It’s 17 points on whether “homosexuality should be accepted by society.”

You can actually see how young men are moving to the right on some of these questions - especially about homosexuality. In both bottom graphs, men born in the 2000s are more conservative on these questions than men born in the 1980s.

While I touched on this in the first graph, let me pivot back to the latent variable hanging around the background of this discussion - political ideology. Maybe it’s the case that women are more likely to be liberal than men, and that’s what is actually driving this gender gap.

Well, this does seem to tell a fairly compelling story about how gender and ideology intersect on social issues. On the topic of abortion, once you control for politics, the gender gap almost disappears. That’s also true of the statement, “gay and lesbian people should be allowed to marry.” The gap there is one point for both moderates and conservatives, but for liberals it does move to about 4 points. Definitely not a chasm, though.

The question about transgender acceptance does reveal a bit of a larger difference, though. Among moderates - women are ten points more likely to view trans acceptance as a positive thing. For liberals, women are seven points to the left of the average liberal man. You can also see a bit of a gap on the issue of “homosexuality should be accepted.” I feel like I need to point out this simple fact - liberal men are noticeably less liberal on social issues than women who are also liberal.

What would shed some real light on this would be a regression analysis for these questions. Let me start by showing you a really simple model that controls for variables like education, race, and income.

Yeah, okay - I think this gives me a lot more confidence in saying that women, on average, are more socially permissive than men. On the topic of abortion, the model predicts that 61% of women favor legal access compared to 55% of men. Interestingly, that six point gap is the smallest gender gap of any of these four issues. On the acceptance of trans people, women are nine points more supportive. When it comes to questions of LGB community, women are seven points more likely to support same-sex marriage and ten points more apt to express agreement that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

Pretty clear and compelling evidence that women just tend to be more socially liberal than men even when controlling for education, income, and race. But, of course, I left out a key variable - political ideology. As I showed you previously, that significantly narrowed the gender gap. Would that also be true if I tested that in a regression model that controlled for other things?

To me, this tells the whole story in a single graph. Ideology plays a huge role in driving how men and women view these Culture War issues. Look at abortion, for instance. Once you sort the sample into liberals, moderates, and conservatives there is no gender gap. The differences between the estimates are just not statistically significant. That’s also true of the question about gay marriage. You just can’t look at this graph and make the claim that women are more supportive than men once you control for political ideology.

However, that’s not universally the case. I think the question about trans acceptance is pretty instructive. Look at the differences among liberals. This model predicts that 69% of liberal women agree that trans acceptance is a good thing. For liberal men, it’s just 60%. There’s also an eight point gap among moderates in the sample. Even for conservatives, women are more accepting of the trans community than men. There’s also a persistent gender gap on “homosexuality should be accepted by society.” The gap is smaller here - four points for liberals, and six points for moderates. But look at that conservative result - 43% of conservative women think that homosexuality should be accepted compared to only 35% of conservative men.

I’ve thrown a lot at you in this analysis, so let me summarize some key points.

1. There is a growing gender gap on social issues among the youngest adults. You can see it on every single issue. Young women are significantly more progressive than young men. There’s some evidence that young men may even be more socially conservative than those born twenty years earlier.

2. A lot of the gender gap can be explained through political ideology. Women are more likely to say that they are liberal and liberals tend to be more progressive on these social issues.

3. However, as the last graph shows us - ideology can’t close the gender gap entirely. On the issue of the trans community, men are just less accepting. That’s true when comparing liberals to liberals and conservatives to conservatives. They are also less accepting of homosexuality, too.

I’ve said this before and I will reiterate this here - the last 5-10 years has seen a dramatic movement toward acceptance of the LGBT+ community. But there’s a backlash happening and it’s among younger men. How Democrats deal with that will tell us a lot about their viability in the next couple of elections.

Code for this post can be found here.

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Ryan P. Burge is a professor of practice at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.