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My theory is that it has to do with women on average being more agreeable (in the Big 5 personality trait sense) than men.

I think the average person, whether male or female) tends to not give a huge amount of thought or obsessive research to abstract things like principles and political ideology; they just sort of go along with whatever the norms in their geographic area and socioeconomic group are. Now, as obsessive nerds like me realize, these norms tend to be a bit incoherent and contradictory, but publicly deviating from whatever your tribe believes can get you a lot of raised eyebrows. Women are more sensitive to possible repercussions from failure to fit in; and most girls learn pretty early on that it’s best to just agree with whatever the dominant female in your group says, whether it’s “On Wednesdays we wear pink” or “Transwomen are actual women!” or “Burn the witch!”

In our current society, the loudest female voices tend to be leftists; which is interesting. Historically, I think the dominant females tended to be the older women and we still have the cultural tropes of the Prim and Proper Spinster, the Stern Librarian, and Busybody Old Lady who used to enforce society’s norms. But these days, our society is much more fragmented and age-segregated; we no longer have grandmas chaperoning dances and kids don’t hang out in libraries any more. Younger generations spend far more time online, but there aren’t many Prim and Proper Old Ladies on TikTok or X so the dominant female voices tend to the more ardent leftists. The more moderate or conservative women tend to not spend as much time; possibly because they have families and jobs and stuff to do - so the loud voices are heavily skewed to journalists and activists who don’t seem to have much else to do. I notice that among my cohort (50ish); the single, never married ladies are the ones who spend the most time posting angry political crap on Facebook, while the rest of us just want to post pictures of our kids and pets and what we ate for lunch.

I think men are also prone to just going along with the dominant view in their milieu; but men are in general somewhat less sensitive to possible rejection by peers for disagreement. I am a woman who has a lot of male friends, and I’ve noticed that men feel pretty free to disagree with each other, and often seem to enjoy a bit of argument. However, that sort of thing can be quite distressing to women; I remember how my female friends who played on a coed ultimate frisbee team were very concerned about some of the male players who were prone to arguing about the rules, and wondered if something should be done before it “destroyed their friendship.” They were also concerned about the other male players who were “caught in the middle” and how the arguments were affecting them. My husband was one of the other male players and he laughed when I told him this - he said the only way the arguments affected him was he sometimes became annoyed that the disputes delayed actually playing the game. It didn’t bother him in the slightest that his friends were arguing; but most women have a visceral reaction to disagreements within their group.

So I think maybe men are inclined to be broadly liberal or conservative depending on who they hang out with; but are more likely to reject particular notions that don’t really jibe with their observations and experiences so they don’t necessarily toe the “official” party line. For example, I live in a very liberal/progressive area; but some of my male friends who would describe themselves as liberal or progressive politically also like guns, don’t think transwomen should be in competing in women’s sports, and enjoy listening to Joe Rogan even if they don’t necessarily agree with all of his guests - all of which would be considered forbidden “right wing” behavior by most liberal/leftist young women.

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Thanks for the comment, I think a lot of this is right on the money. It's easy to forget that we're still technically in the birth era of the internet. Heavy internet usage is fairly common among young folks, but quite rare among the elderly, despite their excess of free time. I wonder how much our society will rebound, once the large swaths of habitual internet users start hitting retirement age.

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I don’t really think most women follow an internal moral compass the same way men do. Men are guilt driven. Women are shame-driven. That’s why they are so susceptible to moral panics from witch trials to BLM to COVID to the current dismantling of constitutional democracy. I suspect this is why societies that survived over time limited their power to varying degrees.

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The self-esteem study finding that more egalitarian cultures have wider gender difference in self-esteem is interesting and I think could be central to the widening political gender differences in Western countries.

I once heard Cokie Roberts and Steve Roberts (married and respected journalists) talk about what makes women and men different. Cokie said that she thought the key difference was that Steve was much more confident in making an argument, on the fly, so to speak, than she. She said she needed to feel more “buttoned up” - more research and analysis. She said this could be because of lower self-esteem and because, as a woman, she anticipated more criticism of her opinions. (I say “and” not “or” because both feed off each other)

Consider that if today’s women feel the same, they are more likely to “go down the rabbit hole” on the Internet to research issues. They are therefore more vulnerable to the algorithms designed to incite reactions (so they keep clicking) instead of making sense of “too much information” (so they stop clicking).

Liberal arguments are more likely to thrive by going down the rabbit hole because they tend to be more theoretical. Conservative arguments are more practical, antithetical to wasting time going down the rabbit hole.

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Great take. I’d say this applies to the disparity at top colleges as well, where the theoretical dominates over the practical. Always makes me think of the great visual metaphor from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford is confronted by the swordsman displaying dramatic flare with his weapon waving it around but then Ford just pulls out his gun and shoots him.

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Rob, your findings may explain why Trump did better among suburban women vs Hillary than he did vs Biden.

Thinking about what Cokie said about anticipating criticism. Consider that the criticism she anticipated was as likely to be from women “at home” as men. This was Trump’s unanticipated advantage over Hillary.

Now that younger women are more likely to work than have kids and be liberal (and not be hypercritical of women in power), Biden’s unanticipated advantage is that they’ll vote for him to support Kamala.

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Ugh. I don't know any women who support Kamala. And people are STRAINING to support Biden—it's hard work!

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So, better schools and wealth lead to a more liberal bias. Sure, it’s fun to indulge your feelings with luxury beliefs, easy, consequence free affirmation, you are indeed a good person, compassionate and kind, what’s not to like!

We are a very lazy society.

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One of the inevitable conclusions of Rob’s work is that top universities need to be immediately defunded. It is already absurd for working taxpayers to subsidize what are essentially hedge funds with dormitories, but it is completely insane to pay for madrassas whose graduates hate you.

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Sevender, permission to use the hedge fund with dorms and madrassa lines, simply brilliant, bravo 👏

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Granted, although it’s increasingly just the only accurate description.

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That an abundance of material and opportunity magnify sex differences is an interesting hypothesis. However, I also suspect that the current trend of young women skewing increasingly Leftward will self-correct via the forces of natural selection (women chasing careers and celebrating abortions instead of marriage and procreation win Darwin prizes).

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The problem is the sector of society that today have above average replacement rates tend to marry the government and pass along low IQ genes.

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This is frightening in so many ways.

I have a more simplistic theory. We have thousands of years of evolution combined with the biological differences in males and females that programmed common general behavior. In a relatively short amount of time in our human existence, in most democratic industrialized countries, we have supported and/or allowed changes to culture, society and the economy that have upended those norms.

The changes have made many people nearly psychologically insane as they are completely ungrounded in understanding who they are and what they should do. It is clear that many educated liberal females are not well mentally and psychologically. The statistics on medical diagnosis prove it.

But educated females continue to dominate more of society and the economy. From a perspective of observation and experience, the level of female rage exhibited - in this time when females are so blessed with all this advancement, is another set of evidence that they are not well.. And... their crazy is making everyone else miserable too.

We are basically well into an experiment pushed by feminists to supplant male dominated systems with female domination - something that has never been attempted before, or never succeeded, in the history of human existence.

We now understand that it isn't working. Human nature is what it is, and the design of working democratic societies is libertarian paternalistic, not collectivist maternalistic, because the latter is in direct conflict with the principles of democracy.

We cannot have it both ways... we cannot enjoy the tenants of individualism, freedom and liberty and adopt a female-dominated existence. The social and political chaos we are experiencing is directly related to the "progress" the feminist movement has made... and it has to be stopped and reversed back to normal and long-standing gender behavior and roles.

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All these men saying the women are sick and crazy. What do your women readers have to say about that? You must have some.

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No, women are females and females are generally biologically and otherwise programmed to certain views, tendencies and behaviors that don't work well in positions of dominant societal leadership. The incompatibility is resulting in female rage to change the system so they feel more at home in positions of power... but there has never been an example of this working in our history.

I report to a board of directors that is comprised of 5 females and 7 males. The females voted for employee satisfaction as my primary performance criteria. Thankfully the 7 males voted to put that WAY down the list to be replaced by financial and other business goals. The males frankly don't care that much about happy employees except if unhappy employees appear to be contributing to business problems.

Had I been handed what the females wanted, the employees would be happier until the business became insolvent.

This is an example of what I am talking about. There are drivers in interests and motivations that are different for females and males... and the males have always dominated. We are experimenting with female dominance and it isn't working well at all.

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As a male with a beef. you're an expert on females, like Sigmund Freud. Got it.

I do think feminism got a lot of it wrong. But I think corporate culture got a lot of it wrong, too. To be a managerial male is not so glorious a woman should aspire to it. So two wrongs make a wrong squared.

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I don't have any beef. I have worked for and with females for over 40 years.

No, corporate culture has not gotten a lot wrong. It has evolved over more than a century in a Darwinist evolution. What has not worked is obsoleted to be replaced with what results in success.

You are confirming my point. You demand that a female-friendly structure is better, and yet you have no evidence. In fact, the evidence is plentiful that a female-friendly system is worse and unsustainable.

Please explain why in the history of humans there is zero record of female-dominated countries, states, societies, cultures, empires, etc. And don't use the intellectually weak and dishonest excuse that men are brutes that use their physical strength. There are many examples of small and physically weak men being the dominant leader.

Today we see a feminist led attempt to push females to the front of social dominance and it is a mess. Nobody is happy... even the females that benefit from it. And it does not work.

Maybe one day in the path of human evolution we will reach a place where society functions well enough with female domination... for example, the norms have sifted where women are the breadwinners and warriors... either evolved to be more emotionally controlled or society has adopted the more volatile emotional reactions and the covert nature of their display that is standard female... and men stay home to care for the children.

The problem today is that these changes have been forced and it is social chaos. Women are programmed by the feminists to think that they want the dominance, but they are unhappy in the role. Then they lash out at men... who are already dealing with a decline in their social and economic status and trying to figure out how to be girly-man and be happy about it. Everyone is miserable.

By the way, you seem to oppose what Rob has written here.

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"Please explain why in the history of humans there is zero record of female-dominated countries, states, societies, cultures, empires, etc." I'm not sure this is true, though I am not going to dredge up bogus or mythical examples to disprove it. I think you state it with a little too much confidence, though. In some Plains Indian warrior cultures, elder women were advisors. Men didn't go to war without consulting them. This isn't "dominance," but it isn't submission either. Catherine the Great was pretty dominant, but she was an outlier.

You say I demand a "female-friendly structure" and you equate that with "female domination." Those would be two different things. "Female-friendly" to me would be that the contributions of women would be welcomed with respect. Not kowtowed to. Not condescended to or silenced. Humans do engage in power struggles, but they do other things too. Maybe males see everything in terms of power struggles and women were wrong to try to play that game.

It's hilarious to say that women are more emotionally "volatile." Men (in WASP culture at least) are more emotionally repressed, because emotions are regarded as "feminine," until they blow up and hurt someone, or kill themselves.

I don't "oppose" what Rob has written, I disagree with part of it—his hypothesis that in privileged situations it is revealed that the old gender stereotypes are what people "really want." He analyzes so many phenomena in the light of social class, why not this?

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Word salad. Just do your own research and provide any examples of female dominated societies. You throw out twaddle of de minimis junk like native Indian tribes and Catherine the Great. Come on.

Give me real example to back up your denial.

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P.S. I like men. I don't like it when they mansplain women, self-servingly "understanding" our "true nature" as submissive and destined to serve them. Let us explain ourselves—but let us be self-searching and honest about it, not brainwashed by feminism OR by retro-traditionalism.

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Reputation destruction. Personal attack. Victimhood posture. Are you sure you’re not a false flag?😂

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Yeah. you caught me. I'm really a man in drag.

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Annie,

A. you cannot produce an example

B. growing difference between men and women in societies promoting gender equality is

a fact, finding not a Rob‘s hypothesis

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Yes, in response to overwhelming data showing the concentration of mental illness among liberal women, let’s ask how women *feel* about it. Too perfect to make up.

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I believe there was a recent study that showed this effect is mainly driven by Simpson paradox. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/mfhyw/

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Wow, I hate dismissing studies as drivel in their face, but….

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Desires are never satiated. Children who are granted their every wish and given every toy they ask for, don't become content and satiated. They want more, more more, more. Wealthy people don't become more relaxed and less concerned about a reversal of fortune--they fear it more.

So as women gain more wealth and power to enact their preferences in society, they don't become more content and regress to the mean, they go "hey I like the taste of this power and influence, but you know what would REALY taste good? MORE!

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Rob

Always enjoy your posts.

And thinking of the ancient explanation of male and female roles . . .

“Then Jehovah God said

: “It is not good for the man to continue to be alone. I am going to make a helper for him, as a complement of him.’’

Men not intended to be alone , self-sufficient.

Need women to complete their life and personality.

To become ‘one flesh’.

Seems clear to me that men designed to focus on outside world.

Finding and collecting assets for the women and their children.

Providing and protecting women is the goal of male activity.

I don’t understand why women can’t accept their importance, their essential significance.

Copying male thinking requires abandoning the overwhelming importance of people and replacing this with focus on material things.

Sad.

Thanks

Clay

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Could this be a confounding variable in Jonathan Haidt’s thesis? It’s really just increased equality that has led to all the things he blames social media for. I guess it’s not totally confounding because social media does allow for amplification of behavior but the behavior itself is changing because of equality, not because of social media?

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The studies you cite only explain THAT men and women differ more in egalitarian societies; they don't explain WHY, or they don't explain it convincingly. Your hypothesis seems to be that "intrinsic" gender differences/preferences emerge when people are freer to do what they want, i.e., as a luxury of affluence, privilege, and options. This doesn't ring true to me. It's more "essentialist" than anthropological surveys would support (and as such is an artifact of a male speaking in a time when males in affluent societies are trying to recoup cultural ground they fear they've lost to feminism).

The exaggerated gender differences feminists rebelled against were in turn artifacts of the Industrial Revolution, when production moved out of the home and middle-class women were left behind in it. Before that, gender differences were probably more confined to the physical, where they arguably belong. Men have more muscle strength, size, and aggression—but women did quite a lot of heavy physical as well as administrative work on the farm or in the home shop. This is probably still much more true in the working class than in the professional-managerial class, and I'll bet if those surveys were broken down by class, that would show up. You may be documenting a class-specific phenomenon.

(Sexual and reproductive differences are of course the height of the divergence between the sexes, but their influence really dominates only one-quarter of life, the second quarter. It would be an interesting question how parenthood changes or intensifies liberalism and conservatism, and whether this differs for mothers and fathers.)

Some of the alternative explanations in the comments ring truer. To Esme Fae's suggestion that women tend to be higher in agreeableness and so more likely to conform and "follow the leader," I would add that women are still socialized to be compassionate, caring, and "nice," and thus socialism is coded as "feminizing" (the nanny welfare state). Rising fascism always seems to come with (and from) anxieties about the loss of the specific warrior archetype or stereotype of masculinity (with all its bullying of boys who aren't warriors).

In general, granting the physical differences and their psychological influence, the dividing up of common human qualities into "feminine" (emotion, vulnerability, nurturance) and "masculine" (reason, assertion, ambition) seems to me to alienate men and women from each other and to require each to "bind one foot," as it were. Only two of our 46 chromosomes are sex chromosomes. True, they influence the expression of genes on other chromosomes, but they act more like photographic filters than like a division into two mutually uncomprehending species "from Mars and from Venus."

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Interesting case in point, demonstrating how radically ideas of what is "masculine" or "feminine" change over time: https://nautil.us/magic-died-when-art-and-science-split-650412/?utm_source=tw-naut&utm_medium=organic-social

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I think Comradity's quotes from Cokie Roberts are right on the nose; that is Cokie's observation that women don't have the same self-confidence/esteem to make an ad hoc argument like men do, but have to try to research and back-up every nitty-gritty detail because you know that, as a women, you're not likely to be taken seriously. Also most women don't like conflict and confrontations: maybe because of our less powerful physicality and maybe because we're taught/socialized to be that way. Probably both evolution and socialization. Women's lesser musculature makes negotiating a better choice for survival and its long documented women are more prone to peace initiatives as opposed to military solutions. Over the decades or centuries women’s attitudes, proclivities haven't changed that much. They've always been more "liberal" than men - if that means less punitive and more "permissive." A really great book on the subject is "Women in American Politics", by Martin Gruberg 1968 a heavily researched compendium of womens political positions and participation. For instance, "The Women's International League with tens of thousands women members in 34 countries backed a strong United Nations, a general and complete disarmament, multilateral economic aid, but NO military aid, they worked to pass an anti-lynching bill and an anti poll tax bill and a permanent Fair Employment Commission and reforming immigration laws". "The WIL was created in 1915. It's most notable campaign was for the Nye Committee investigation into the munitions industry. Many more women’s grass roots groups were campaigning federal support for education, PTA's, temperance, anti-corruption inquiries, consumer's leagues, health and sanitation, maternal and infant health and voter education. Many of these initiatives are still with us today. So women have always been "liberal."

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Dear god, enough. As someone who has suffered through four fucking decades of corporate life with women in power, I and every other male with a corporation job can attest women have no problem demanding and getting their way, not sometimes but always. The mewlings about self esteem are just cry-bully camouflage so those who dish it out don’t have to take it. And the more effective this bullshit has become, the worse contributors women have become. When I started I worked with some fairly genius-y women whose likes I have not seen in a decade, replaced by emo airheads who spent 90% of their time at work discussing interpersonal issues because they think CAPM is a shoe brand.

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Maybe you've made this observations but if not, re these two points from the article (below), perhaps this is why the Gaza protests happened at more elite universities (per the Washington Monthly).

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/24/are-gaza-protests-happening-mostly-at-elite-colleges/

"1) Students are more liberal at higher ranked schools (vs. lower ranked schools).

2) The higher up the college rankings you go, the larger the political gender divide gets."

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Free to be whatever you want. Makes perfect sense.

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Really interesting article. The gap between men and women in western societies certainly seems to be a complex paradox. Right now, the loudest voices seem to be liberals and I think that has a lot of pull to drawing support from impressionable college students. What is interesting to me though, is how men haven’t followed. Men are less agreeable in general and more willing to pushback. However, men do follow in suit to the desires of women for likely obvious reasons. So indirectly, women drive men’s behavior. Though this doesn’t seem to be the case as far as political views.

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First of all, women have that resilience due to the natural ability to give birth and care of the kids. Before that, they have to find the best matching partner. This is the most emotional and hormonal period of their life. This is coincidentally the college time. there they fall pray to the fine predators that are the mind manipulators.

I lived long enough to notice the fact that most of the women are in fact, due to that hormonal matching impulse, on the venue of self-destruction. I experienced first hand, at young women around me, this tendency of disregarding all the norms of self preservation, basic judgement, and even discernment. That finally, led to dramas like divorce, addictions, then to tragedies like dead children and even suicides. If we add the social upheavals like riots and wars the equation becomes more grim. Therefore, considering the cases of people I encountered in my life, I came to the conclusion that men are destroying the best in the women they met, and ,consequentially, most of the women are self-destructive in most of the part of their life. Only in rare cases of good nurturing environment in the early life, can counteract these personal disasters.

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Rob, you say that “The higher up the college rankings you go, the larger the political gender divide gets”, which is only true in absolute terms (17 vs 12 percentage points). In relative terms, which is the more relevant for your argument here, the difference at higher ranked schools is 31% vs. 36% at lower ranked schools.

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