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BIG Questions Institute Bi-Weekly Update

February 28, 02024, No. 166 (Read online)​

The Growing Gender Divide

Hey,

Every once in a while, a statistic is released that seems shocking but logical, disappointing but not surprising – and we can’t stop thinking about it. A few weeks ago, we were made aware of one of these mind-blowing data points. Research out of Gallup and Stanford University illustrates a widening ideology gap between young women and men, unprecedented in previous generations. Schools we work with on every continent have approached us with distress, confirming the symptoms of the ideological gap showing up in their students. Educators of kids as young as 11 years old are hearing hurtful and shocking words, ideas, and actions coming from boys, targeting girls, even (and especially) in places where women have made great strides toward equality.

Here’s the graph that blew us away:

As John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times tweeted about this data, “I think this one of the most important social trends unfolding today, and provides the answer to several puzzles.” The researchers found that in a range of countries, all groups of people, young and old, men and women, have become more liberal on race, the workforce, and immigration except young men. The “societal rift” that’s forming didn’t characterize previous generations, so what’s going on now?

Polarization Trends

Alice Evans, a Visiting Fellow at Stanford, who writes “The Great Gender Divergence” on Substack, offered a useful summary of factors contributing to “gendered ideological polarization” that particularly explains the trend in Western nations. These include:

• Feminized public culture: More “feminist ideology” or female-driven decision-making is shaping popular culture. Add to that movements like #MeToo where women have been outspoken and young men react defensively.
• Economic resentment: When men feel like they are falling behind due to factors like economic stagnation, this has been widely found to fuel “sexist resentment, xenophobia, far-right voting, and zero-sum mentalities.”
• Social media filter bubbles: Algorithms isolate young men and women into divergent parts of the internet. On a typical day, the filter bubbles guide them to really different content, which can make views on “the other side” seem incomprehensible or intolerable and create echo chambers that make it really easy and perhaps rewarding to demonize the other side.
• Cultural entrepreneurs: Every time we heard from a school leader expressing frustration about a sexist incident at school, we waited for the moment they would mention the influence of Andrew Tate and social media on their students. Evans cites a survey where a third of young British men now rate Tate favorably, and over 90 percent have heard of him. This trend has hit schools hard.

None of these factors should be too surprising, but what can you do about this trend of polarization in your school? We consulted our colleague Justine Finn at RelationShift, who offered this super useful 4-hour workshop to our community in the fall, which we hope to host again in the spring. She offered many tools, including these:

• Strive for a balanced approach between Prevention + Resolution + Response, like three legs of a stool. If you only use two of these, your system is not stable. Specifically, these entail:
  • Prevention: Get proactive. Talk about equality, name the harmful behaviors and the positive ones.
  • Resolution: Behaviors that cause harm are addressed in a clear manner and process.
  • Response: How do you treat the student who has been harmed?
• Use this tool for school reflection on how adults can prevent sexual harassment and misogyny and promote healthy relationships (from Harvard’s Making Caring Common).

While the definition of what it means to be a man in the modern world is shifting (have you heard us describe how we are “between stories” in a liminal time? This is one more example of that.) and resulting in some serious societal dislocations, schools are on the front lines of responding to the day to day costs of such dislocations. What have you found to be helpful as you confront this challenge? What are you seeing? We’d love to hear from you.

Onward!

Will and Homa

What We're Reading

A few links to fuel your inquiry:

​45 Years of Microschools in Philadelphia: Inside the Growing Movement of Child-Centered Schooling Alternatives by Kerry McDonald

​The State of the Culture, 2024 by Ted Gioia

​The Curiosity Matrix: 9 Habits of Curious Minds by Anne-Laure Le Cunff

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Onward with hope,

Homa and Will