Z世代男性的性别观转变

Narrator: People often assume that younger generations will be more progressive. So, why are Gen Z guys' views on gender getting more conservative?

Narrator: Heejung Chung is a professor of work and employment at King's College London. And Leif Anderson is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Leif, great to have you in our studios. Heejung, great to have you on the line.

调查发现：Z世代男性观点保守

Heejung: I want to start off with you, Heejung. You conducted a 29-country survey, which included Canada, on gender equality. One of the most, I would say, surprising findings from your report tells us that Gen Z men hold the most traditional views of gender roles in society out of all the other groups. Why?

Heejung: Well, okay. So, our survey conducted a huge range of different survey questions. And one of the most surprising ones we found was it's a very simple question. Should women always obey their husbands? Now, you would think that Gen Z men, younger generation, the men will be the most progressive on this. But surprisingly, it was actually they were the most, let's say, regressive if not conservative to the point they were twice as more likely to say that, you know, women should always obey their husband, up to a third of them agreeing to the statement.

Leif Anderson的背景与初步反应

Leif: Leif, you're a student that fits right into this demographic by age. You are 20?

Leif: I'm 25. 25. All right. Before we get into things, tell us a little bit about yourself. You're a student, right?

Leif: Yeah. So, I'm a PhD student at the University of Toronto Scarborough, as you heard. I am originally from Minnesota. So, I moved here 4 years ago. And yeah, I've been studying empathy at UFT with my supervisor. And yeah, I grew up in a very small rural community in Minnesota. And I've migrated to a couple of bigger cities in Minneapolis and Toronto.

Heejung: I am quite observant. I do see a wedding ring there.

Leif: Yes. You are a married man at 25.

Leif: I am married at 25.

Heejung: Unusual these days.

Leif: Yes. I've been married for 4 years now.

Heejung: Okay. In March.

Leif: I do have to ask then, with what Heejung has had to say in terms of the the question that survey was asked, what are your thoughts on on sort of what men had to say in terms of obedience and and sort of paying attention or like listening to your wives?

Leif: Yeah. Just like Heejung, I'm I am a little surprised with how kind of split this is for Gen Z men. Cuz I am personally a little more I lean left. So, my wife and I, we very much are collaborative in our relationship. We both split household duties. We both work. My wife makes twice as much as I do. I'm a grad student. But yeah, we we don't find we don't really fit in cleanly into the really traditional gender roles. Though, I've observed this a lot in my social media feed and some of the folks that I grew up with. Well, let's talk about that. With your peer group, are you noticing that shift towards traditional beliefs? What does that look like?

Leif: Yeah. So, I notice a bit of a mix, as the data would suggest. So, even in the rural community that I grew up in, I mean, lots of folks are already married. Some folks already have kids. Um and I really haven't talked to them in a while because we disagreed a lot in high school. We would like I'm very left-leaning, as I said. So, we would disagree on fundamental religious things or in how we actually believe in gender equality. Um but a lot of the folks that I interact with now at in grad school and the students that I interact with at UFT, there's this real mix of folks. Like particularly in bigger urban environments, it's really dominated by folks who really believe in gender equality. At least the folks that I interact with. And so, this is my perspective and that can vary based on who you're talking to.

原因探析：经济压力与社会媒体的放大效应

Heejung: All right, Heejung, 50% of Canadian men believe we have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are now discriminating against men. When the data is broken down even further, the number rises to 57% of Gen Z men. Why are young men especially feeling this way?

Heejung: Well, okay. First of all, I want to say that although that number seems very shocking, Canada's actually not one of the worst countries. So, we have seen other countries where this number is much, much higher and has, well, especially the alarming thing is that these numbers have grown over the past kind of 7 years that we've conducted this survey. So, in countries like Korea, we're talking about the rise of like in the teens, 14, 15% rise with like a big significant, I think we're about three-quarters of men agreeing to the statement that it has gone too far. And the reason why Gen Z men feel this way is that I think there's a huge amount of grievances amongst younger generation that the younger generations feel like they don't have the same job opportunities. They don't have the same opportunities in terms of being able to afford a house, being able to live a good life, that hard work doesn't necessarily pay off anymore, which was something that was promised and perhaps to a certain degree achieved by their parents' generation, maybe their fathers or grandparents. And I think for women, a way of kind of addressing those issues was feminism. To feminism as a way of mechanism to address some of these grievances or problems of society, to address these issues. For men, unfortunately, because of a lot of that voices that came out, including maybe Trump, but also a lot of other politician, including Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea, etc., etc. There's been a lot of voices that telling young men, especially in social media, that oh, your current situation isn't really great and it has deteriorated and perhaps it's because women are taking all those opportunities. In some cases, it is now geared towards immigrants. Oh, immigrants are taking your jobs. Immigrants are taking your opportunities. But for a large group of especially young men, it is women. And to be honest, up to the ages about like 20, 20 late 20s, it may feel like for young men that girls are doing better. So, girls do generally better in most countries at school. And we have seen a huge growing number of women, more women than men going into higher education, tertiary education and beyond. And also in the very early stages of jobs, it feels like for a lot of men, a lot of manufacturing male-dominated occupations are in decline, whereas a lot of service jobs, female occupations are in the rise. So, it may feel like, oh, things are going not so great for me, but there's still all this oh, women's inequality, equality and that a lot of girls are actually getting a better deal than I am, which is absolutely not true. And I think one of the things I want to also highlight is if you ask people, and this is from our last year and this year's kind of the survey. So, okay. Okay, so things have gone too far, right? Oh, but let's just see. Who has more opportunities in terms of jobs? And people say, oh, yeah, men do, right? Or if you say, oh, has it, you know, in terms of leadership positions, have women achieved so much that it's now equal or is it men that still have the upper hand? They say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it is unequal there. How about sexual violence? Oh, yes, it's unequal. So, if you go to these itemized issues, people they also understand that we have not achieved gender equality. However, the rhetoric around feminism hasn't having gone too far, DEI policies having gone too far, is very, very prevalent in the psyche of the population.

Leif: All right. Throughout that, seeing you nodding your head. I'm imagining some of this sounds relatable, whether it is rhetoric or some of it is reality. When we talk about the affordability crisis, we talk about housing, sort of the situations from probably what your parents faced to what you are. Talk to me a little bit about that. Any of that for you?

Leif: Yeah. So, primarily like as I'm nodding my head, Heejung, like I see this a lot with a lot of my peers. Like this really resonates with a lot of young men who are feeling like, oh yeah, I'm not having as many job opportunities. I mean, I come from higher education. I'm very educated. Did my undergrad. Um but my rural community did a pretty good job of trying to curb this by pushing some folks to vocational school or having these careers where it's very clearly going to manufacturing. Um but there is this confusion and this frustration that a lot of men feel and that politicians and social media influencers have really latched onto this fear and confusion and are essentially validating this confusion and emotions that young men are feeling. Um I haven't been pulled into that as much because I come from a family who can fund my education. They've been able to help me move to different cities and now I'm doing a grad degree. But SES can come into this.

Heejung: What do you mean by SES?

Leif: So, yes. Socioeconomic status. Thank you. Um but yeah, I come from a little bit of a wealthier family. I don't feel that economic strain as much. But when we're looking at the rhetoric that's in these social media posts of like So, I personally see lots of fitness influencers on my Instagram feed.

Heejung: Yeah.

Leif: And as we see from things like the manosphere and stuff like that.

Heejung: Just fitness. It's not just fitness.

Leif: So, it can easily, if you get involved in fitness social media, you see that on your feed, it can easily get into conspiracy theories and validating that frustration that you have. But then those social media influencers have some ulterior motives to make money and keep you engaged through the anger that you're experiencing. Um that's why I was nodding my head as Heejung was talking. Um cuz I can resonate with.

Heejung: Yeah. Yeah, because I think I think we need to be very careful here because I don't think it is just people who are in the lower socioeconomic strata that are experiencing this. I think what we find is that a lot of especially men or young men coming from you know mid mid income or even higher income classes may also have these very kind of traditional conservative or if you may have misogynistic ideas that have been spread again by social media, politicians, etc. which the algorithm is feeding off of because as uh Leif said like um anger is one of the biggest [clears throat] ways in which algorithms can get you keep coming back and stay longer in these social media platforms. But some of the studies that have been conducted for example in Korea where it is a bit of an extreme case find that it's actually the middle class and people who had privilege, people who had power the threat of losing that power may actually be one of the biggest causes of feeling that backlash or of feeling the need to be kind of uh going against gender equality ideas. So rather than just considering this being of a certain class, it might actually cut across a whole range of different uh social classes. But I also want to highlight that it's uh so in our survey uh approximately four or even more than four out of five men say uh a woman with a successful career is attractive. Mhm. Uh approximately 40% again four out of of 10 men identify as feminist. So it could kind of be like we might actually have two very distinct, very polarized groups of not just men and women, but also among men that you have the likes of you know in where it's very feminist, very liberal and understand that gender equality actually is benefiting men as much as women. On the other hand a whole group of young men who have been made to feel kind of worthless feeling lost in today's society and being kind of lured into the messaging of misogyny, of kind of anti-DEI rhetoric.

应对之策：倾听、赋能与监管

Leif: Well, on that note...

Heejung: ...this is a very worrying trend. Yeah. Well, Heejung, on that note, let's I want to change gears and on what we can do. Uh so Mhm. I'll I'll start with you, Heejung. What can we do to support young men, whether it is uh that specific group, the latter group that you mentioned or or just young men in general?

Heejung: Yeah, I think we just have to first listen because one of the reasons why if that rhetoric was in social media or if mass media in politics there was grievances to begin with. Those kind of messaging would not have been attractive if there was no grievances. But we have to really understand what are some of these fears and and issues that are you know um that young people are facing right now. So we really need to go and understand that. But also I think we need a real kind of just as much as like we had our first, second, third, fourth waves of feminism, young men now or men in general need to really come into kind of groups of like, "Okay, what can we do in terms of a collective uh identity that could really fit into modern day world with the changing nature of with the rise of AI, technology, and and etc. and and the social inequalities. And to really be able to almost like learn from the previous feminists to find the collective voice in terms of bringing out these immense of beautiful masculinities that could really replace these kind of misogynistic hegemonic masculinities that we see.

Leif: Leif, what what can we do to support young men? Yeah, I very much resonate with what Heejung is saying in terms of making sure that Gen Z men and like younger men particularly feel heard and listened to. Um perhaps not validated in the intolerant views that they're espousing from social media. Um but yeah, having a conversation about these things like this even though this reality that some men are living in where oh yeah, this inequality is taking away from me uh like taking opportunities away from me. I feel like I should be the sole provider and the dictator of my relationship. Those are things that we shouldn't be supporting, but we need to make sure that their fear and confusion is heard. Um and fostering this collective identity. Um and also being intolerant of all these voices that are preying on all of the emotions that young men are feeling. Um and like we need to be intolerant of intolerance um is something that I often say because we need to give young men these other options. Like there are other options besides being intolerant of inequality. Um we can't just morally derate um young men just because they're young men. Um we have to really listen and engage in um conversation to foster really um productive conversations and move forward as a society and as a collective.

Heejung: May I just add one more thing? It's just that I realized one of the things that we haven't talked about is that the role of well obviously social media influencer or politicians who are really capitalizing, monetizing, and gaining a lot from you know the spread of these kind of ideologies or ideas. But we also have to think about I think we're now at a a point in society where we're coming to terms in terms of what tech companies and social media companies are actually doing to our society. And I think this rise of these kind of manospheres are actually a way of which this is kind of technology has manifested in terms of shaping society with a huge amount of social cost because um we haven't spoken about the social cost of these ideologies. There has been a rise of misogynistic behaviors of young men in schools. There has been a rise of kind of uh partner abuse, domestic abuse amongst teen and early uh 20-year-old kind of um couples as well. You know, there's a huge amount of problems that these kind of ideas are causing direct harms to women, girls, but also young men themselves. So we really need to come to terms that oh, maybe we do need some guard railing. We need to kind of look into who is benefiting from this, who's making money out of it, and then also saying maybe we need to then try to have some sort of regulation so that we don't keep continuing these kind of phenomenons.

Leif: Unfortunately, we are going to have to leave it there. I know this is a big big conversation. Heejung Leif, really appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you so much.

Heejung: Thank you.