Are young women being radicalised?

We often hear about young men being radicalised. Every time a European nationalist party edges upwards in the polls, a flood of op-eds about Andrew Tate and “toxic masculinity” hits the media. 

But what about young women? Have they been watching Andrea Tate?

Across the first world, the sexes are being divided, with young men veering rightwards and young women turning leftwards. In Poland, for example, the most popular party among young men has been the Catholic nationalist Konfederacja while the most popular party among young women has been Lewica (“The Left”).

Sometimes, the trend has been more pronounced among young women. In Spain, 30 per cent of men under the age of 24 consider themselves right-wing or far right while 40 per cent of women consider themselves left-wing or far left. In the US, Gen Z men have become slightly more conservative while Gen Z women have become the most progressive group in US history. In Germany, meanwhile, 25 per cent of young men backed the right-wing AfD but 34 per cent of young women backed Die Linke (“The Left” — can our friends on the left please get some more imaginative names for their parties?).

What is going on here? And will anybody in the future be productively heterosexual?

Attempting to explain this difference, we should begin at a common starting point. Both young men and young women are anti-establishment. I’m sure they have similar grievances about stagnating wages and soaring prices. Yes, fascists and communists had similar grievances as well, so this isn’t an argument for singing “Kumbaya” hand in hand. But it should at least be remembered that dissatisfaction spreads from shared roots.

Why does it spread in different directions? I’m sure an evolutionary psychologist could bring up interesting ideas about the foundations of sex differences in politics. Such big-brained speculation might be outside the scope of a short opinion column — and, indeed, the range of a dim opinion columnist — but I’m sure it has its place.

Still, why are young men and young women so different?

Part of it is about different priorities. In Poland, all female Lewica voters I have spoken to — which, granted, doesn’t mean “hundreds” but does mean “more than three” — have raised the issue of abortion, which is banned in almost all cases in the country. In the United States, young women are likelier to say that abortion is a critical issue than anything else. Of course, one’s attitude towards a moral issue like abortion should not be determined by popular opinion. But it is very clearly a dividing force.

When people bang on about young men being “radicalised”, a popular theme is social media. Young men open X, it seems, and Elon Musk blasts nationalism and anti-feminism into their souls. Well, perhaps there isn’t nothing to it. But perhaps it goes both ways. A lot more men than women, according to Pew Research, get their news from X and YouTube — both platforms that have been accused of enabling far right content. A lot more women than men, on the other hand, get their news from TikTok — the platform which hosts such colourful “libs” that it inspired Chaya Raichik’s notorious account. I’m sceptical of the belief that social media is a dominant force in guiding political tendencies. But perhaps it has done something to push us apart.

Certainly, it can’t have helped young women to see the more attractive side of right-wing politics that a lot of men have been drooling over ex-porn moguls and alleged human traffickers who spend their lives ranting about women, or an alleged sexual predator who was best known for gloating about having sex with the granddaughter of Manuel from Fawlty Towers, or a “proud incel” who supports “something like Taliban rule in America”. The “nü-misogyny”, as I have called it, has done no favours for the right. Sure, I don’t believe in shaping our ideas about the world around how people will perceive them. Still, if we are going to accept — as I think we should — that a lot of young men have been alienated from the left by the more bitter tendencies within feminism, it would be silly to ignore young women being alienated from the right by the prominence of men who not only dislike women but who have been accused of serious crimes against them. 

Beyond this, I think young women look backwards and see hundreds of years of monolithic maleness in the halls of power. That previous generations of women were so excluded from political, cultural and economic institutions gives them a special affinity with causes that emphasise inclusion and diversity.

It would be dim not to see where they are coming from. Still, from my perspective, the parties they are voting for are going to worsen rather than improve the lot of women. Modern economic policies are doing the opposite of keeping women in the home — they are making it very difficult to have kids at all. Modern immigration policies have endangered women, such as when it came to the Cologne mass sexual assaults or the UK grooming gangs. In the UK at least, a lenient justice system has enabled dangerous men again and again.

Eh, I’m not so stupid as to think that Gen Z women are avid readers of my opinion columns. But the right will have to find some way to appeal to them — for the sake of future election triumphs, yes, but also for the sake of basic social cohesion. Even if men and women of the future end up growing babies in jars, life won’t be very fun if they can’t get along.