RW Johnson: The onward march of women: by the Left quick march

Key topicsWomen now vote more left than men due to education and work changesMen's conservatism grows with job losses and cultural shiftsRising female success leaves many young men feeling left behind.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By RW Johnson.Listen to this story instead:.Back in the 1970s the first Women’s Lib generation began to write about the sociology of gender in developed countries. Two large social facts annoyed and embarrassed them. First was the fact that because women tended to outlive men and inherit from them, more assets were owned by women than men, which was at odds with the idea of oppressed women. Second was the fact that women tended to vote more for conservative parties than men. The key reason for this seemed to be that women were much more church-going than men. This was a blow to those determined to cast women as natural “progressives”.But all this has now been stood on its head. Throughout the developed world women are voting markedly more to the left than men. For example, Mark Carney clearly owed his victory in Canada to the country’s women. While men clearly favoured his Conservative opponent, 44% of women voted for Carney against only 29% for his opponent – a huge and decisive gender gap.A key reason for this development seems to be the growing secularisation of women. Older women are often still church-goers but they are gradually being replaced by more secular younger age cohorts. However, if women were just as non-religious as men one would expect them to vote similarly – but in fact they are voting more to the left. Or, to put it the other way round, why are men in the developed world now so much more conservative than women ?Let us stick with women for the moment. It is still argued that women experience gendered socialisation. That is, that they are taught to be more compassionate and egalitarian. This is reflected in their greater preference for social and state-sponsored solutions to problems, while men tend to stress individual responsibility. There is also the decline of the traditional family to factor in. Far fewer people bother to get married these days and they also divorce more frequently. These trends, it is argued, leave women less protected than hitherto and thus in greater need of state protection and support. On top of that far more women go out to work than hitherto and this greater integration into the labour market is accompanied by a greater need for state protection (from sexism, sexual harassment, unequal treatment, lower pay etc). All these things predispose women to more social democratic solutions.On the other side, the decline of traditional heavy industries (steel, autos, mining – hard-hat industries) means that large numbers of men have lost well-paid jobs which were also heavily unionised. Many of them are now flipping burgers for McDonalds or doing other lesser jobs for far lower wages and they are not members of any union. Removed from that strongly unionate environment, they are free to drift to the right politically. Which is often what they do, for they are frequently embittered by the loss of their better-paid jobs – for which they need to blame someone.That said, women are not uniformly left on all issues. They are still more child-focused than men, take a stronger interest in education, in the provision of child care and other related social issues. Women of all ages also tend to be more supportive than men of state care for the elderly. Given that women typically outlive men, this may just be a case of women pursuing their own interest. Similarly, while women in the UK and the US are more sympathetic to transgender rights than men, they are also tougher and more authoritarian about crime – perhaps because they can more easily imagine themselves as crime victims. Similarly, polls in Israel show women to be more left on social issues but they are often hawks on defence – perhaps because, again, they can more easily imagine themselves victims of terrorism. And despite much social progress, women are still in general paid less than men, which may help to explain why they are more egalitarian.Doubtless, all these factors play some role, but it is worth pointing out that political campaigns based on playing to “women’s issues” tend not to work. Thus Hilary Clinton in 2016 made much of being the first female presidential candidate and how important it was to “break the glass ceiling”. This signally failed. Most voters had far stronger feelings about bread and butter issues. Similarly, in 2024 Kamala Harris based much of her campaign on women’s right to abortion. This also failed badly – indeed, she won a far smaller share of the women’s vote than Biden had in 2020. The point was in both cases that women’s rights were not a very salient issue. In 2024, for example, both inflation and illegal immigration were much bigger issues in America for women as well as men.In both the above cases the Democratic campaign was far too heavily influenced by the indignant feelings of well-educated middle class women towards Trump. I remember watching interviews with Michigan voters in 2016 in which a clearly outraged female TV commentator asked women voters how they felt about Trump boasting of his sexual exploits and how he liked to grab women by the crotch. One woman, passing through the factory gate and clearly exhausted by a hard day’s toil, looked quizzical and said, “Well, I hear worse than that on the assembly line every day”. She refused to be outraged and I suspect she voted for Trump. She had a family to feed and would clearly vote for the candidate she thought would be better for the economy, irrespective of the concerns which had outraged her (better educated and better paid) TV interviewer.I also remember talking with my daughter’s school teacher in the early 1980s. She talked about the way that the girls in the class were clearly ahead of the boys academically. “But the pity is”, she said, “it won’t last. I see it all the time. As they reach puberty many of the girls become silly and giggly. They become mainly interested in lipstick, high heels, boy friends, parties and fashion of any kind. At exactly the same time the boys begin to concentrate on the fact that the labour market lies not many years ahead, so they begin to work harder. They study more – and they overtake the girls. Yet it absolutely doesn’t need to happen. If the girls didn’t become so silly there is no reason that they would ever lose their lead.”The interesting thing was that over the next decade that all clearly changed. I was still teaching in Oxford at the time and every year we began to get more and more very able young women who were just as serious about their work as the young men, whom they sometimes out-performed. And the same thing seemed to be happening everywhere. Not only in British universities: some of the very best young women now came from the US, Canada or Australia.It wasn’t that these young women didn’t have boy friends or didn’t bother to look attractive, but it was clear that throughout the developed world the whole pattern of teenage female socialisation had changed so that the women were now just as determined as the men on doing well academically, securing top jobs etc. The earlier notion of teenage femininity with all the giggles, lipstick, parties and fashion was now despised as backward, a preparation for a bygone age. The new generation expected nothing less than complete equality but they took that in their stride. Few were interested in Women’s Lib which was now seen as old-fashioned.And that was probably the decisive change. Today, 57% of all university students in Britain are women, with men far behind at only 43%. The same pattern is visible throughout the developed world. And it is true throughout the developed world that graduates tend to vote more to the left than the rest of their age cohort. Here, I feel sure, is the chief answer to why women are now more to the left than men. Probably the larger number of women graduates is also one of the reasons why women often turn out to vote rather more than men. In the last US election 68% of women voted compared to 65% of men – and that 3% of women is a very large number, often decisive in close contests.Indeed, increasingly concern is expressed for the “left behind” men. In particular the younger male age cohorts are strikingly more conservative, sometimes even far right wing – a disturbing development. Much of the discussion of the woes and anxieties of this group seems to me to miss a huge and obvious fact. Which is that in all recorded history everywhere in the world until recently, society was based upon what are now regarded as patriarchal values. Men were the head of every household. All women took the man’s surname on marriage. Men dominated the top ranks of every institution and profession, often to the complete exclusion of women. Women were essentially dependents and stayed at home, cooked, had children and went to church. Male – even macho – values of bravery, strength and individual achievement were admired throughout society. The ideal representation of society was a rugby or American football team displaying all the masculine values while the women were merely cheerleaders, parading their feminine attractiveness and vulnerability in short skirts.In the last generation or two all that has suddenly gone. Women even play football and rugby, fight in the armed services and have invaded every male-dominated profession. And the rise of women is celebrated – major institutions like universities or large corporations take pride in announcing that they have a female CEO or Vice Chancellor and for many competitive positions it is a distinct advantage to be a woman. Given the durability and centrality of the patriarchal model to all human civilisations over thousands of years this change has been remarkably rapid – it has been essentially achieved in just two generations. And it has been almost universally far-reaching, affecting everything from nursery schools to corporations to the military.The equality of women is rightly celebrated but the sweep and suddenness of this change is undoubtedly related to the problems of many young men who now find themselves not only less considered than of yore but often also at an educational and social disadvantage. The success of politicians on the Right like Donald Trump in attracting the support of young white males undoubtedly derives from resentments and unhappiness with this social reversal and even from suffering the negative effects of affirmative action in favour of women and racial minorities. Moreover this reversal is very present in popular culture. If you switch on CNN you will frequently find yourself listening to discussions led by three or four confident young women in which terms like “toxic masculinity” are thrown around. One wonders if all masculinity is supposed to be toxic ? It sounds as if masculinity is intrinsically toxic. And is there such a thing as “toxic femininity” ? The phrase is never heard and one suspects that even to pose the question would be regarded as unpardonably politically incorrect. Can one be surprised that young men listening to such discussions feel repelled and ill-considered ? And this is just one example of a wider culture which can often seem unfriendly to men, particularly younger men who find themselves in the heat of competition for everything from jobs and university places to girl friends.Whatever one’s feelings about the new culture and the new social reality, it seems likely that it’s here to stay. Logically, the larger numbers of women graduates would lead one to expect that over time women will come to occupy more and more of the leading positions in society. And that most developed societies are likely to be governed from the left of centre. Meanwhile, we should not lose sight of the fact that the real goal has always been equality between the sexes, not seeing most of society’s prizes go to one sex or the other. But if we are to achieve that equality we now really need to devote more attention to the left behind boys.

RW Johnson: The onward march of women: by the Left quick march

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