Are young men conservative now?
June 6, 2023
Last week, Richard Reeves noted polling data that shows “fewer than half of Gen Z men think that ‘feminism has made the world a better place,’” a finding that he says “we should all take pretty seriously.” Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies called it “striking new evidence young men in America are moving Right.”
It’s certainly an interesting finding. At the same time, one difficulty with polling interesting or novel questions is that it can be difficult to contextualize the results. Here, it’s not really clear what people mean by “feminism” or to what extent different people mean different things. I doubt someone like Nikki Haley would describe herself as a feminist. But from the vantage point of the “Mad Men” era, I think the idea of a married mother running for state legislature, winning, becoming governor, becoming UN Ambassador, and then running for president would very much seem like a feminist success story. A 25-year-old and a 75-year-old are likely to have very different perspectives, not so much on whether women should be able to have successful careers in politics as on whether this is what “feminism” means.
