"Gen Z is two generations, not one" (and four other stories)

Five reads on gender (in)equality and the backlash against feminism.

It’s the end of an intense week. So let’s get straight to the reads…

1) “Gen Z is two generations, not one”

In the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch looks at the striking data (with some hard-to-believe charts) which shows that young men and women are increasingly ideologically polarised. Under-30’s today, he says citing research by Alice Evans (whose newsletter is a must-read), “are undergoing a great gender divergence… Gen Z is two generations, not one.” More young women are “hyper-progressive on certain issues” and more young men are “surprisingly conservative”. A similar pattern shows up in the UK, US, Germany, Tunisia, South Korea, and China. In every country, he writes this “is either exclusive to the younger generation or far more pronounced there than among men and women in their thirties and upwards.”

Surely feminism, and the backlash to it, has a role to play in this trend? He writes:

The #MeToo movement was the key trigger, giving rise to fiercely feminist values among young women who felt empowered to speak out against long-running injustices. That spark found especially dry tinder in South Korea, where gender inequality remains stark, and outright misogyny is common.

On her Substack, Evans goes into more detail on why this divergence is occurring. She writes:

Evidence points to economic frustrations, social media filter bubbles and cultural entrepreneurs. In economically stagnant regions, young men are struggling to achieve high status. Social media filter bubbles and cultural entrepreneurs have created echo chambers of righteous resentment, channelling frustrations and zero sum mentalities against females and foreigners.

Recent polling from Spain, where the socialist government has pursued a feminst agenda since Pedro Sanchez became prime minister in 2018, provides evidence of that “zero sum” mentality. For The New European, Marie Le Conte writes on the survey:

Almost half - 44% per cent - of men agreed that society had “come so far in promoting women’s equality that men are now being discriminated against”. Similarly, 48% of men did not believe that there were disparities between the sexes…..[and] a staggering 52% of 18-24 year old men believe that the drive for gender equality has gone too far, the highest figure of any age group.

P.s Remember the Luis Rubiales furore last year?

2) “The time has come to declare gender apartheid a crime”

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned in Iran, has written to the UN calling for gender apartheid to be codified as a crime against humanity. In the letter, which you can read in full here, the human rights activist lists 19 laws that show “the elements of segregation and subjugation of women in Iranian society”. On CNN, Christiane Amanpour interviewed Mohammadi’s daughter, Kiana Rahmani, about the letter.

As long-time readers of this newsletter will be aware, momentum behind the call to codify gender apartheid grew last year, linked to the oppression of women in Iran and under the Taliban in Afghanistan. In December, another Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai, also called for gender apartheid to become a crime under international law. According to NPR, 2024 could be the year this campaign bears fruit.

3) Anti-feminism under Argentina’s Javier Milei

An Argentinian feminist writer and activist says she has been forced into exile. Writing in the Guardian Luciana Peker explains how anti-feminist hostility has increased since far-right libertarian Javier Milei became president in December. She writes:

Less than a month after taking power, Milei’s government closed the ministry of women, gender and diversity, seemingly reducing policies against gender violence to mere bureaucratic decoration, and has put at risk the right to legal, safe and free abortion, which was won in 2020. Milei has spoken out against feminism*, and has been verbally abusive to women, to the point that one female journalist walked off a live TV programme after he said: “I could take a 9mm [gun] and put it to your head.”

Peker’s piece also includes a paragraph that articulates beautifully why feminism is more than rights-focused activism. Feminism provokes such violent backlash because of its more broadly transformative potential:

The great virtue of feminism is not merely its promotion of sexual freedom, campaigning against the wage gap and stopping sexist violence. The power of feminism lies in its ability to transform the political landscape of a world drowning in resignation. It is not just about what is achieved, but showing that collective action does achieve things. Feminism transforms, unifies and revitalises. Feminism is hope – and that makes it the enemy of neo-fascism, which divides, individualises and crushes.

*The video at this link shows Milei railing against feminism at the World Economic Forum this year and explaining why feminism is anti-libertarian

4) Kenyans march against femicide

Following a number of recent murders of women, on Saturday protestors across Kenya called for an end to the violence. According to The East African, anti-femicide protests first took place in Kenya in 2019. As per the report:

The most recent are the murders of Starlet Wahu, 26, who was brutally murdered in a short-term rental apartment, and Rita Waeni, a first-year university student whose dismembered body was also found in another short-term rental apartment in Nairobi.

Africa has among the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. From the same report:

A study conducted by the Africa Data Hub estimates that there will be around 500 femicide victims between 2016 and 2024.

Studies conducted by UN Women show that Africa recorded the highest absolute number of female intimate partner and family related killings with an estimated 20,000 victims, followed by 18,400 in Asia, 7,900 in the Americas, 2,300 in Europe and 200 in Oceania.

5) Mansplaining historians

The term “mansplaining” famously has its roots in a 2008 essay by Rebecca Solnit, called “Men explain things to me”. In the essay, Solnit recounts a party where, on telling a man about a book she had written about a certain photographer, he responds by telling her about another book on that very same photographer. This, of course, turned out to be the book that Solnit had written. Charlotte Lydia Riley, a historian, has written a reflection on her experience in academia of the dynamics and frustrations narrated by Solnit. She cites Solnit:

Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

And Riley writes:

Once you start to watch out for it, as a woman, you notice men explaining all sorts of different things to you. Doctors explain how you feel pain, and how much; taxi drivers explain the way to your own house; men that you meet at parties explain how universities work, despite not having stepped onto a campus in twenty years. And so male historians explain things to me, all the time, without even realising that they are doing it, or that their faces have assumed – as Solnit describes – ‘that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority’.

Bonus: Virginia Woolf and the village girl at Cambridge | the only takes you need on the Barbie Oscars “snub” (here’s the second one, plus Hillary Clinton chipping in) | Ubiquity of Taylor Swift deepfakes renews calls for legislators to act already

Thank you for reading, see you next week.