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International Area Studies Review
[ Article ]
International Area Studies Review - Vol. 27, No. 1, pp.1-20
ISSN: 2233-8659 (Print)
Print publication date 31 Mar 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69473/iasr.2024.27.1.1

The Growing Gender Divide: Changing Perceptions of Gender Equality among the Youth in the United States

Phoebe W. Moon ; Hannah June Kim
Assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Mercer University International Political Economy, Political Psychology, Gender, and East Asian Relations
Assistant professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Sogang University Public opinion, Gender, Modernization, and Democracy in East Asia

Correspondence to: Hannah June Kim, Sogang University, Kim Daegon Hall 509, GSIS, Sogang University, #35, Baekbeom-Ro (Sinsu-dong), Mapo-Gu, Seoul 04107, Repulic of Korea Email: hannahkim@sogang.ac.kr

Abstract

This study examines why support for gender equality is declining among young Americans. We show that the youth in the United States are becoming increasingly more traditional in their views of gender equality and contend that this is due to a shift that is being led by democratic dissatisfaction and growing economic anxiety. Moreover, we further argue that this conservative shift is creating a divide between young women and young men, where anger and ideology are changing their support for women. Empirical analyses of the World Values Survey and the American National Election Survey show that these predictors have significantly influenced gendered attitudes among the youth. The results suggest that these differences may not only undermine the potential influence young Americans can make as primary decision-makers in the adult electorate, but can also significantly influence the progress of gender equality in the United States in the years to come.

Keywords:

Gender Equality, Public Opinion, Youth, United States, Ideological Divide

AI Acknowledgment

Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies were not used in any way to prepare, write, or complete essential authoring tasks in this manuscript.

Conflict of Interests

The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A3A2A02090384).

Notes
1. Indeed, gender inequality continues to struggle with significant challenges despite efforts for progress. For example, according to two Pew studies conducted in 2023 and 2024 in the United States, when it comes to employment and pay, women make up 47 percent of the labor force while they earn only about 82 cents for every dollar a man earns. In leadership positions, female legislators have less than one third of the US Congress seats (28 percent) while only 11 percent of CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies are women (Schaffer, 2024). When it comes to working parents, moreover, 67 percent of working mothers reported that feeling pressure related to household responsibilities, which was almost double the proportion of working fathers (35 percent) who answered that they felt the same pressure (Aragão, 2023). However, in this study we attempt to focus on progress related to gender equality since we examine support for, or lack thereof, gender equality.
2. The World Values Survey consists of 2,596 respondents in the United States, with 632 young respondents that are included in this study.
3. The ANES data includes a total of 1,307 young respondents, with 597 male respondents and 710 female respondents.
4. Here, higher political party affiliations indicate more conservative values, higher gender values indicate female, and higher race values indicate White.
5. When dividing this up by dimension, among young respondents, 83.7 percent rejected the idea that “men make better political leaders than women do” while 89.4 percent rejected the statement “university is more important for a boy than for a girl,” 86.1 percent dismissed the statement “men make better business executives than women do,” and 94.5 rejected the notion that when “jobs [are] scarce: men should have more right to a job than women.”
6. When asked similar questions, among young male respondents, 27.8 percent believed that “women interpret innocent remarks as sexist,” 19 percent stated that “women seek to gain power by getting control over men,” 10.2 percent believe that “women complaining about discrimination causes more problems,” and 11.6 percent agree that “women demanding equality seek special favors.” Among young female respondents, the results for the same items were 23.5 percent, 10.1 percent, 8.0 percent, and 10.4 percent, respectively. Though it is a smaller margin, young female respondents were less likely to support these statements that seemed to show discrimination towards women.
7. We included both political party affiliation (party ID) and ideology separately because, while it can be assumed that the two are closely aligned, recent studies have shown that the two are surprisingly not well correlated. As a result, we included Party ID as a control for Model 4.

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