Opinion: A Truce for the Battle of the Sexes
This week, the Blue Ridge Center hosted our last event of the spring 2025 semester, a student-led discussion on the growing gender gap in politics that was co-hosted by the Civil Discourse Initiative. Since the event offered insight into Gen Z’s actual experience of and opinion on this topic, we thought we would offer an opinion piece by the BRC’s own Jacob Conrod. Here’s his take on why the gender gap exists– and what you should do about it.
Since the 2024 election, there has been an increased emphasis in the media on the rapidly widening differences between young men and women on politics. In the 2024 general election, Donald Trump won 49% of men aged 18-29, but only 38% of women in the same age bracket. By way of corollary, Kamala Harris won 48% of young men aged 18-29, and 61% of women in that category. Politics is just one arena where young men and young women seem to be parting ways. Marriage rates have fallen by 60% since the 1970s, and the share of 12th graders that report having ever dated has fallen to under 50%, compared to a peak of 85% in the 1980s. There have been many hypotheses put forward to explain why this is happening. One popular view blames economics: male wages are decreasing relative to their female counterparts, a side-effect of women making up a larger percentage of college graduates and white-collar jobs. However, despite this trend, women are still more likely to marry up economically - a rapidly shrinking pool of men. Another view blames the internet. According to this perspective, gender trouble, especially in dating, has come as in-person interaction is replaced by an online simulacrum of community. Even as coupling becomes less common, the vast majority of those relationships form via the internet. Theories as to why we have the gender trouble we do abound, much of it peddled within online spaces like the manosphere, itself a result of the alienation of man from woman. Solutions are far less common.
Fortunately for y’all, I have the answer. Although I think that both of the theories explained above have some merit, the latter is closer to the mark. The problem at hand is that men and women just… don’t talk to each other. And so for Gen-Z Americans, already a risk-averse generation, interacting with the opposite sex becomes an even more terrifying prospect than it used to be. This lack of communication is probably tied to other declines in American life, mostly the death of third spaces and the slow slide from religion to irreligion. Historically, churches and voluntary organizations provided places for the sexes to mingle that weren’t school or work. Hence, relationships had the opportunity to develop in the context of a shared community space, and in many cases marriages developed. Although churches and other voluntary organizations still serve that role today, they occupy a far less prominent place in American life than they did a half-century ago. In their place, many young people turn to the virtual third space of the internet, where their isolation from the opposite sex deepens with the growth of heavily gendered online subcultures - like, for example, the manosphere.
Fundamentally, men and women are the same as they’ve always been. What has changed is the way that we relate to one another. Although the gender gap in politics, economics, society, and ultimately relationships continues to grow, the recipe for turning it back is simple. If you are a man, talk to women. If you are a woman, talk to men. Engage with the opposite sex. Go to church, volunteer, seek out community. Turn off the computer. Be human.
By Jacob Conrod, 04/23/25