this video was brought to you by incog. For the past week or so, Twitter has been obsessed with this graph from data journalist John Burn Murdoch at the Financial Times, which apparently illustrates the growing political divide between young men and women in several developed countries. And it's triggered a furious row on social media, with the right blaming the new gender gap on what they see as excesses of identity politics and modern feminism, and the left blaming on what they see as toxic masculinity and a reactive anti-feminist misogyny. So in this video, we thought we'd take a look at the growing gender gap and the data behind it, some of its potential repercussions, and finally offer some tentative explanations for what might be causing it. Now, the first thing we need to say is that while we're obviously grateful to John B. Murdoch for drawing attention to the phenomenon, the Financial Times aren't the first to notice that women are becoming more liberal than men. The so-called gender gap was first observed in the late '90s and early 2000s when

academics started noticing that men were no longer more left-wing than women. Yep, you heard that right. While it might be hard to believe today, until the '80s and '90s, men tended to be more left-wing than women in the US. For example, women historically voted Republican but started moving towards the Democrats from the 1980 election onward. In fact, you can kind of see this in the FT graph where the Blue Line starts off slightly higher than the red one. While in the UK, young women suddenly veered towards labor at the 1992 election while young men did the opposite. This gender gap where men were more liberal than women and which lasted from the end of World War II until the '80s is known in the literature as the traditional gender gap. Conversely, the gender gap we see today where women are more liberal than men is known as the modern gender gap. But while the modern gender gap has existed for the past 30 years or so, that piece in the FT suggests that it's widened.

significantly in the past few years. With Gen Z now, because much of the data involve essentially uses party affiliation as a proxy for ideology, it's hard to say whether this is because young women are getting more liberal or young men are getting more conservative. For instance, while at first glance, the graphs apparently suggest that it's mainly women getting more liberal, with the notable exception of South Korea, it could instead be argued that women have stayed the same but conservative parties have moved right and taken young men with them, which would mean even more women voting for Liberal parties, even if their politics haven't changed. Anyway, whether it's men moving right or women moving left, it's at least true to say that the gap between the two sides has widened according to recent data. In this sense, there are now three gender gaps: the traditional gender gap running from World War II until about 1980 when men were more liberal than women, the modern gender gap running from 1980 until about 2020 where women were more liberal than men, and what we might describe as the

Gen Z gender gap, which began a couple of years ago, refers to the fact that young women are now much more liberal than young men. While ining causation is difficult, here it's plausible that this widening gender gap could have some pretty severe social consequences. For instance, some commentators have suggested that this widening political chasm could be contributing to declining marriage and fertility rates in the developed world. As South Korea's gender gap has widened, its marriage rate has declined, and it now has the widest gender gap and the lowest fertility rate in the world. But what actually explains this gender gap? Well, while there are obvious see a whole load of factors, research suggests that the most significant factor in the modern gender gap was actually secularization. In the 20th century, conservative parties like Christian Democratic parties in Europe had strong links to the Catholic Church, while liberal parties were generally more atheistic. So, as women were more religious than men, and religion is a key determinant of voting behavior, perhaps unsurprisingly, women voted more.

conservative. While women are generally still more religious than men, the decline of religion and its strength as a determinant in voting behavior meant that women shifted left in the latter part of the 20th century. Religion might also partly explain the Gen Z gender gap. General Social Survey data from America suggests that in the last couple of years, young women have suddenly become less religious than young men for the first time in post-war history. There are also clearly case-specific reasons for this too. South Korea's gender gap, for instance, seems to be closely related to the fact that South Korea is one of the most culturally conservative countries in the world, with a higher than average fraction of men saying that women shouldn't work and one of the worst work environments for women globally. While in Europe, some of the Gen Z gender gap seems to be partly driven by contrasting views on immigration more generally, though commentators often point to the polarizing and radicalizing effects of social media or the increasing salience of cultural issues like feminism.

identity politics. While these explanations might be intuitively plausible to some viewers, they're hard to actually prove with data, so we're not going to go into them in too much depth. However, one related and data-driven explanation is education. Women today often spend more years in education than men, and education has become an ever more important determinant of voting behavior, especially in the US and UK, where one of the best indicators for liberal voting intention is whether or not you went to university. Finally, though, one other explanation could be that the gender gap just doesn't exist. For starters, it doesn't actually show up in other data sets like the Cooperative Election Study or the General Social Survey. Now, to be fair, the Gallup polling used in the FT does have a larger sample size than the GSS and a lower non-response rate than the CES. But even then, some commentators have suggested that this data overstates the gender divide by focusing more on how men and women identify politically rather than actual policy preferences, i.e. the

difference between what's known as symbolic ideology and operational ideology. For evidence of this, take a look at this 2008 paper, which suggests that while younger generations of women are increasingly likely to vote or identify as left-wing than their male counterparts, the gap between them on actual policy and values remains pretty consistent. Data from 2020 suggests that something similar is true for Gen Z. While young women are far more likely to identify as left-wing, when you ask them about actual policies, the difference between men and women is pretty minor and hasn't grown significantly between generations. All in all, the Gen Z gender gap is, of course, worrying, but it is worth interrogating the data before adding it to our ever-growing list of societal catastrophes. While you've been watching this video, you might not realize that shady forces are working in the background to collect personal data from various sites and bundle it together, ready to sell to a third party. These data brokers can sell this bundle of information about you to anyone.

a company to an online Criminal. Now you might assume that you're safe online. Perhaps you change your password regularly, or perhaps you're a hawk and always uncheck the box that signs you up for annoying newsletters. Unfortunately, though, this doesn't completely save you. Companies that hold your data can still fall victim to a data breach, meaning that those data brokers can still compile information about you to sell on to others. And this is where our sponsor, Incog, comes in. They reach out to those data brokers on your behalf, request that any data is removed, and deal with any problems that might arise. In fact, they're tenacious and will put in multiple data removal requests even after your data has been removed to ensure that it never goes back on the market. So, create an account with the link in our descriptions, granting Incog the ability to work on your behalf, and sit back as they make you safer. Plus, if you use our link, you'll get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incog plan. Thanks for checking it out, and thanks to Incog for

Why are Gen-Z Women so Much More Liberal than Men?

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