John Murdoch-Burns has published an op-ed piece in The Financial Times on data survey results which show that young men and young women’s world views are pulling apart world-wide. He notes that the consequences could be far-reaching. Here at CTA, anecdotal reports from our clinician network members have been flagging up some puzzling gender differences in young people’s ideological positions. Murdoch-Burns’ op-ed helps to explain these early observations. The implications for clinical practice with young people are significant and it is important that we start to understand how to work effectively with this unprecedented gender divide. It is also relevant that new cohorts of trainee therapists – across all the psych professions – are in the main young and female and we need to consider what that might mean for future service delivery.
Read the whole piece with survey graphs here (we cannot repost the op-ed due to copyright rules). Below are verbatim extracts which make the main point:
“One of the most well-established patterns in measuring public opinion is that every generation tends to move as one in terms of its politics and general ideology. Its members share the same formative experiences, reach life’s big milestones at the same time and intermingle in the same spaces. So how should we make sense of reports that Gen Z is hyper-progressive on certain issues, but surprisingly conservative on others?”
“In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye.”
“It would be easy to say this is all a phase that will pass, but the ideology gaps are only growing, and data shows that people’s formative political experiences are hard to shake off. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.”
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