"Every third young man has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them?", asked in one of the video messages on social networks, extreme right-wing German politician and Alternative for Germany (AfD) member of the Bundestag Maximilian Kra. He also offers a "solution" and recommends that young men not watch pornographic films, not vote for the Green party and regularly go for fresh air... "Real men are right-wing, real men have ideals, real men are patriots, and then there will be no problem with a girlfriend," Kra says.
It is not known how successful this advice was, but the party achieved huge success in the recent federal and state elections in Germany, largely thanks to male voters. In Thuringia, 38 percent of all men voted for the far-right AfD and in Saxony, 35 percent.
"A new political divide is emerging in Europe: a growing gender gap among young voters, with young women tending to be progressive and young men increasingly turning to the far right," says Javier Carbonell, a researcher at the Brussels-based European Policy Center (EPC), in an article on the think tank's website titled "How the economic decline of young men fuels an anti-feminist backlash."
Young men are not only significantly inclined towards far-right parties in Germany, but also in other countries where such parties have been making significant gains in recent years - in Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands... In the recent elections in Poland, almost half of young men between the ages of 18 and 21 voted for the far-right Confederation, but only a sixth of women in that age group did. The Financial Times also wrote about a "new global gender gap", citing research from the US, South Korea, Germany and the UK that shows that young women are increasingly liberal, while young men are increasingly inclined towards far-right political concepts. The FT's conclusion: "Generation Z is effectively made up of two generations."
Generation Z or "zoomers" are considered to be young people born between the mid- to late-nineties and 2010.
A paper by a group of authors published in March in the Journal of European Public Policy, based on the results of the European Parliament elections in 27 countries, concludes that "the electoral success of far-right parties among young voters is primarily based on support among young men, which peaked in 2024 at over 21 percent compared to around 14 percent among women in the same age group."
The EPC analysis assesses that "the rise in anti-feminist backlash among young men is not only a cultural reaction to feminism, but also a result of growing economic insecurity, especially for working-class men without a university degree."
Social media is teeming with aggressive anti-women content, and influencers who spread misogyny are very popular. The phenomenon is not limited to Europe. In the US, according to data from the Washington-based Equimundo Center for Masculinity and Social Justice, almost half of young men trust some of the anti-feminist propagandists of "men's rights" on social media, even if they incite violence.
The anti-feminist upheaval is also reflected in the measures taken by European governments. The EPC analysis recalls, for example, that courts in Bulgaria have declared the Istanbul Convention on the Prevention of Violence against Women unconstitutional, that Poland has introduced a near-total ban on abortion, and that Sweden has abandoned its celebrated pioneering "feminist foreign policy."
At the same time, as a reminder, women in the EU still earn an average of 12,7 percent less per hour than employed men, are still underrepresented in parliaments and governments, and a third of them have experienced violence at home, at work, or in public spaces.
But, "in recent decades, young men have experienced a real decline in their incomes, their well-being, their employment rates, their purchasing power, their higher education quotas, and their mental health," the EPC analysis summarizes.
This decline, as the data confirms, has "little to do with women's rise in political participation or their participation in the world of work, but is much more due to deep structural economic changes to the detriment of the working class and young people, such as growing inequality or automation."
As the British Economist reported in the article "Why Young Men and Young Women Are Moving Away", in developed countries 28 percent of boys, but only 18 percent of girls, do not reach the necessary level of reading comprehension skills set as the standard for the OECD's PISA study, which tests the knowledge of high school students. According to Eurostat data from 2023, in the EU, in the age group between 25 and 34, 48 percent of women and 37 percent of men have a higher education.
A survey conducted in 30 countries by Ipsos, UK and the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London shows that 57 percent of Generation Z men believe that their country has "gone so far in promoting women's rights that men are discriminated against."
In such circumstances, extreme right-wing parties are becoming embedded in the lives of young men, while women have turned to progressive and liberal political forces.
When asked why, German economist Marcel Fracher points out in an analysis on the website of the German Institute for Economic Research that "part of the answer is certainly that these are young people who have a large part of their lives ahead of them and who have yet to establish themselves in their jobs and social environments and overcome numerous insecurities."
An analysis by Javier Carbonell of the EPC states that "this gender gap not only threatens gender equality, but also the very foundations of support for democracy, as radicalized young men often show weak engagement in the realization of democratic norms."
To reverse this trend, it is necessary, on the one hand, to overcome the material causes of frustration - by investing in the housing sector, education, vocational training and the distribution of welfare for young people, especially uneducated men. On the other hand, a new definition of masculinity is necessary through the encouragement of positive male role models and the creation of new cultural narratives. But these measures must not be taken at the expense of women, i.e. it would be wrong to neglect policies aimed at encouraging women.
"A truly comprehensive approach to gender equality must involve young working-class men in analysis, policy formulation and initiatives, while advancing feminist politics and weakening anti-feminist resistance. Given that the growing influence of the far right among young men poses a serious risk of reversing past successes in achieving gender equality, the economic decline of this group should be urgently addressed by European democratic forces," concludes the EPC analysis.
Achieving this goal will take a long time, given the current state of mind. The Eurobarometer survey published in December 2024 asked, among other things, "Does family life suffer if a mother has a full-time job?" The majority of Europeans (51 percent) have no doubt that this is exactly the case - in as many as 17 out of 27 EU member states, an absolute majority of those surveyed are convinced that mothers working full-time harm family life.
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