Almost a third of generation Z men and boys think a wife should obey her husband, according to a global survey of 23,000 people that found young men hold more traditional views about gender roles than older generations.
A third (33%) of gen Z males also said a husband should have the final word on important decisions, according to the 29-country survey, which included Great Britain, the US, Brazil, Australia and India.
It found that gen Z males (born 1997-2012) were twice as likely as baby boomer men (born 1946-1964) to have traditional views on decision-making within a marriage, with just 13% of men in the older cohort agreeing that a wife should always obey her husband. Among women, 18% of gen Z and 6% of baby boomers agreed.
People of both genders in Indonesia (66%) and Malaysia (60%) were most likely to agree with the statement, compared with 23% in the US and 13% in Great Britain.
The annual research of over-16s was conducted by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London and revealed a stark difference in the beliefs of different generations of men when it comes to gender roles:
Almost a quarter (24%) of gen Z males think women should not appear too independent or self-sufficient, compared with 12% of baby boomer men.
Attitudes toward sexual norms also differed sharply across generations, with 21% of gen Z males thinking a “real woman” should never initiate sex, compared with only 7% of baby boomer men.
More than half (59%) of gen Z males said men were expected to do too much to support equality, compared with 45% of baby boomer men. For women, the proportions were 41% and 30% respectively.
Despite being the most likely to believe a woman should not appear too independent or self-sufficient, gen Z males were also the group most likely to believe women who have a successful career were more attractive to men – 41% agreed with this statement.
Prof Heejung Chung, the director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and the leader of the research, said there were some encouraging signs that support for gender equality remained strong, such as in the agreement there should be more women in government.
But when comparable data was available, it suggested views were becoming more traditional. In 2019, 42% of people globally said women’s rights had gone far enough in their country, compared with 52% now. In Britain, this equated to a 12-point increase.
“I think there are a lot of grievances, a lot of fear of men losing social positions,” Chung said. “And there’s a vacuum that’s being filled with rhetoric and voices which are trying to pitch young men against gender equality, against young women, against migrants.”
The results of the survey also suggested gen Z males have more traditional expectations of their own behaviour and choices, for example:
Thirty percent of gen Z males believed men should not say “I love you” to their friends, compared with 20% of baby boomer men and 21% of gen Z women.
Twenty-one percent of gen Z males believed that men who took part in caregiving for children were less masculine than those who did not, compared with 8% of baby boomer men and 14% of gen Z females.
Both genders felt women had more choice in dating and relationships (22%), household roles (24%) and the clothes they can wear (34%), while men were considered to have more choice in hobbies (18%) and jobs (39%).
Julia Gillard, the chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and former Australian prime minister, said the results were troubling. “Not only are many gen Z men putting limiting expectations on women, they are also trapping themselves within restrictive gender norms,” she said. “We must continue to do more to dispel the idea of a zero-sum game in which women are the only beneficiaries of a gender-equal world.”
Chung said economic factors may also play a part. “In previous generations men were able to, in sociologist terms, perform masculinity through breadwinning roles, through their financial contributions, things like buying a house, being a provider and protector.
“Increasingly for young men across the world, those opportunities are not as easy. So they feel maybe a loss of the opportunities, and they have not been given positive, diverse notions of masculinity.”
The data revealed a gap between what people personally thought about gender roles within the home and what they thought society expected.
In Britain, only 14% of people personally felt that women should take on most responsibility for childcare, but 43% said women were expected to be mostly or entirely responsible.
