Gen Z has often been hailed as the most progressive and socially conscious generation yet. But a new global study from King’s College London reveals a sharply different picture when it comes to views on gender equality. Rather than moving in lockstep toward a more egalitarian future, young men and women in this cohort appear to be drifting further apart than any generation before them. While many young women report frustration over persistent sexism and unequal opportunities, a significant number of young men question the extent of gender inequality or feel that advances for women have come at their expense.This growing rift,researchers warn,could shape everything from workplace dynamics to politics and public policy in the years ahead.
Gen Z gender divide widens on equality attitudes across continents
Across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, young women are increasingly rallying around policies that tackle structural sexism, while many of their male peers voice doubts about whether inequality still exists at all. In focus groups and survey data, Gen Z women were consistently more likely to support stronger workplace protections, equal pay enforcement and comprehensive consent education. Their male counterparts, though, showed a higher tendency to describe gender equality as “already achieved” or as an agenda that “unfairly favours women,” a pattern particularly pronounced in parts of North America and Western Europe. This divergence is compounded by online echo chambers, where influencers and algorithm-driven feeds amplify antagonistic narratives about feminism and “men’s rights,” sharpening a rift that cuts across borders.
Yet the split is not uniform. In several countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa,young men report high levels of support for shared caregiving,girls’ education and protections against gender-based violence,frequently enough shaped by community activism and lived experience of inequality. Meanwhile, in some high-income states, the gender gap is fuelled less by formal rights than by perceived competition over jobs, status and cultural recognition. The table below illustrates how this divide plays out in different regions, highlighting where attitudes among Gen Z are drifting furthest apart:
| Region | Gen Z women (support for stronger equality policies) |
Gen Z men (believe equality already achieved) |
Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | 72% | 48% | 24 pts |
| Western Europe | 68% | 45% | 23 pts |
| Latin America | 76% | 59% | 17 pts |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 70% | 62% | 8 pts |
| South & East Asia | 64% | 50% | 14 pts |
- Digital culture: Transnational social media trends are reinforcing both feminist activism and anti-feminist backlash among young audiences.
- Economic pressure: Scarce jobs and rising living costs intensify zero-sum views of opportunity between young men and women.
- Local norms: Community-based movements and education programmes can narrow the divide, especially where boys and young men are actively included.
Social media culture online misogyny and backlash against feminism reshape young views
For many teenagers, algorithms now act as unofficial civics teachers, serving up an endless feed of gender “hot takes” before they have had a chance to form their own views.TikTok stitches, Reddit threads and YouTube rants often flatten complex debates into viral soundbites that portray women’s rights as a zero-sum game. Simultaneously occurring, a booming ecosystem of influencers markets a nostalgia-tinted version of traditional masculinity, presenting feminism as the cause of male loneliness, economic precarity and romantic frustration.This content is packaged to feel rebellious and “anti-mainstream”, even as it recycles familiar tropes that cast women as either manipulators, gold-diggers or threats to male status.
Young people who log on in search of solidarity or answers instead encounter an attention economy where outrage wins. Comments sections fill with gendered slurs, and women who speak about harassment or inequality are met with coordinated dogpiling and dismissal. In this ecosystem, nuanced feminist arguments struggle to compete with punchy, meme-ready narratives that tell young men they are the “real victims” of equality. As an inevitable result, many Gen Z users increasingly absorb a worldview in which feminism is framed less as a movement for shared rights and more as a opposed campaign against male identity, reinforcing a digital culture where backlash is not a fringe reaction but a central feature of how gender politics is consumed.
Education workplaces and policy failures deepen mistrust between Gen Z men and women
In lecture halls, open-plan offices and hybrid Zoom meetings, many young men and women are occupying the same spaces while moving further apart in how they interpret fairness. Gen Z women often point to everyday experiences-being talked over in seminars,steered toward unpaid “organising” roles,or seeing male peers fast-tracked to visible projects-as proof that equality is unfinished business. Many Gen Z men, meanwhile, interpret anti-harassment trainings, diversity quotas and scholarship schemes for women as signals that they are becoming the “disadvantaged” group. This friction is intensified when universities and employers deliver top-down equality initiatives that are heavy on branding but light on follow-through, leaving both sides feeling that the system is more interested in optics than in justice.
- Tokenistic policies that announce change without shifting power or resources
- Opaque complaints procedures that rarely lead to visible consequences
- Performance-driven equality metrics that reward numbers, not culture
- Unpaid emotional labor falling disproportionately on young women
| Setting | Gen Z women often say… | Gen Z men often say… |
|---|---|---|
| University | “We still face bias in class and assessments.” | “Girls get more support and special programmes.” |
| Workplace | “Harassment reports rarely change anything.” | “Equality rules make it harder for us to advance.” |
When formal structures fail to resolve these tensions, mistrust migrates online. Algorithms reward outrage,and so viral posts about campus controversies or workplace disputes are stripped of nuance and repackaged as evidence of a broader “war of the sexes.” In this climate, attempts at gender training, inclusive hiring or safer campus policies can look, to different audiences, like either overdue protection or hostile discrimination. The result is a feedback loop in which:
- Women see institutional hesitancy and backlash as proof their concerns are minimised
- Men see critical conversations about masculinity as personal attacks
- Both interpret the other’s distrust as bad faith rather than as a response to systemic gaps
Instead of building solidarity, poorly designed policies and inconsistent enforcement risk turning shared spaces of learning and work into battlegrounds, where every new rule is read less as an invitation to fairness and more as a warning that the other side is winning.
Researchers urge inclusive curricula male allyship and targeted digital regulation to rebuild consensus
Researchers behind the study argue that narrowing the divide between young men and women requires early, sustained engagement in schools and universities, where ideas about fairness and identity are formed and contested. They call for inclusive curricula that weave gender equality into history, citizenship, digital literacy and sex education, rather than relegating it to one-off workshops. Such approaches, they say, should foreground diverse role models, critically examine harmful stereotypes and give students tools to question the content they encounter online. Crucially, the report stresses male allyship as a core learning outcome: boys and young men should be encouraged to see equality not as a zero-sum loss of status but as a framework that benefits their own relationships, mental health and future prospects.
- Embed gender themes across subjects, from social studies to media literacy
- Normalise allyship by highlighting positive examples of men challenging sexism
- Regulate platforms that monetise misogyny and amplify polarising content
- Support digital resilience so young people can identify and resist extremist narratives
| Policy Focus | Main Goal |
|---|---|
| Inclusive curricula | Build shared facts and values |
| Male allyship | Reduce defensive backlash |
| Digital regulation | Limit profit from misogyny |
Alongside classroom reform, the study urges governments and tech companies to adopt targeted digital regulation to curb the reach and profitability of content that exploits gender grievances for clicks and revenue. Rather than broad censorship, experts recommend data-driven interventions: algorithmic openness, age-appropriate design standards and stricter rules on monetisation for influencers whose content repeatedly promotes harassment or dehumanising narratives about women or men. Combined with education that equips Gen Z to recognize manipulation, these measures aim to rebuild a fragile consensus around equality by addressing both the messages young people receive and the systems that reward the most divisive voices.
Key Takeaways
As this latest study from King’s College London makes clear, the battle lines over gender equality are being redrawn-not between men and women alone, but within a single generation. Gen Z is coming of age amid culture wars, economic insecurity and digital echo chambers that are reshaping how young people understand power, opportunity and fairness.
Whether this divide hardens or narrows will depend on what happens next: how policymakers respond to young people’s specific concerns, how educators address gender and identity in and out of the classroom, and how social media platforms amplify or challenge polarising narratives. What is certain is that gender equality can no longer be discussed as a settled consensus among the young. For a generation often described as the most progressive in history, the question is no longer just how far equality has come-but how far apart its youngest adults already stand.
