How a Gen Z Gender War Is Reshaping Democracy

In democracies worldwide, a political gender war is intensifying among Gen Z voters. Recent elections in North America, Europe and Asia have seen more young men in their 20s break to the right, while more young women lean left. It's a departure from the days when young people of both genders voted progressive, and recent polling shows the same may happen in South Korea's upcoming presidential election. Young women are expected to lead a broad political backlash after months of chaos from the Conservative People Power Party, whose former president Yoon Suk-yol was impeached after a botched attempt to impose martial law in December. More of the country's young men are expected to swing right. One such voter is first-timer Lee Jong-min. He told Reuters that while he's confused by South Korea's political polarization, he will vote for the right-wing Reform Party's candidate Lee Jun-suk on June 3. The candidate has vowed to shut down the Ministry of Gender Equality, speaking to an issue that resonates with men like Lee, who resent mandatory military service. What makes me angry about the society is the fact that only men are required to serve in the military. As a young man, I find this to be one of the most unfair realities of living in Korea. At the prime of their youth, at 21 or 22 years old, young men, unlike their female peers, are unable to fully engage in various activities in society because they have to serve 18 months in the military. In total, over half of South Korean young men are expected to back right-wing parties, according to a Gallup Korea poll in May. The same polling shows that the number of women aged 18 to 29 who will swing toward the left-wing Democratic Party has jumped from 30 percent in 2022 to almost half. In South Korea and other democracies, Gen Z men are seeing an erosion of their relative advantage, especially since the pandemic. In the UK, where more young men are leaning conservative, males aged 16 to 24 are now less likely to be employed or pursuing education than their female counterparts, according to official data. In some countries, the gender pay gap among 20-somethings now slightly favors young women. EU data shows one of them is France, where men aged 18 to 34 voted in larger numbers for Marine Le Pen's far-right party than women in 2024's legislative elections. Daryl Bricker is the global chief executive of public affairs at polling firm Ipsos. We're seeing issues with things like, for example, an ability to actually start families and buy homes and do all of those things that probably their parents and their grandparents were able to do quite easily and thrive on. The Gen Z divide runs especially deep in South Korea. In 2022, all of a sudden, we saw the huge divergence among young voters, young men increasingly voting for the conservative party. Political economist Soo Hyun Lee of King's College London says young men are angry because they feel squeezed by competitive job markets and rising property costs, making the prospect of supporting a family daunting. And many blame feminism, believing young women are preferred for jobs. It makes young women to be an easy scapegoat for young men to vent their anger and frustration driven by economic insecurity. In the West, young men blame immigration as well as diversity programs. Germany's anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, or AFD, won a record 20.8 percent of the vote in February's general election. According to official voting data, 27 percent of men aged 18 to 24 voted for AFD, even though the party's leader is a woman, up from 7.7 percent in 2021's general election. They have the feeling that they're losing power. Molly Lynch is an 18-year-old Berliner who voted for the country's left party, which captured 35 percent of the vote from women aged 18 to 24, up from around 9 percent in 2021. A lot of young men are falling for more right-wing propaganda as well because they feel upset. They have the feeling that they're losing power, but it's actually only losing power over women that wasn't actually equal in the first place. U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign promised a manufacturing renaissance and attacked diversity programs. It resonated with around half of young white and Hispanic men aged 18 to 29, but didn't speak to young women, 61 percent of whom went for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. In Australia's May election, the Gen Z gender war was not evident at the ballot box. The voting is compulsory there, a possible explanation for why radicalized gender politics have not taken root as more extreme ideologies tend to be flattened out at the polls. So how does the Gen Z gender war end? Pollsters say it could drag on until governments address the core issues of home affordability and precarious employment. Some worry that the divide could make consensus on reforms harder to achieve. If the future generation is ever so divided among the line of gender, and then refuse to engage with each other to build social consensus, I do not think we can successfully tackle these huge issues through big reforms.