Gen Z Wants Out of the Gender War
It’s not just Trump, dating apps, or social media. It’s a generation growing up with mounting economic anxiety, on separate tracks — and no one is stepping in to bring them back together.
Teen girls and boys have always had a different set of priorities, but since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, a widening gender divide has emerged between young men and women, especially in their politics, with young women identifying as overwhelmingly liberal. Gen Z feels this divide intimately on campus, online, and in their relationships.
I write a lot about the youth gender gap. I’m obsessed with it. I’ve had thousands of conversations with young people across the country, and it comes up every single time. It’s one of the biggest phenomenons of our generation. Through listening to Gen Z, I’ve realized the divide is exacerbated by a lack of intervention looking to bring young men and women together, which is already resulting in tangible consequences — lower birth rates being one of them. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, many young men and women are looking for a way out of their full-fledged gender war.
Gen Z’s gender gap isn’t just political. The split between young men and women emerges in the classroom, their extracurriculars, the content they consume (or are fed by gender-driven social media algorithms), their goals and visions for the future, the way they think about dating and relationships, and yes — who they vote for.
In our Trumpian era of post-Me Too, post-Roe, and post-Covid American politics, where teens and young adults’ points-of-view are often dictated by online rhetoric and a childhood defined by lockdowns and Zoom school, it’s no wonder that young men and women see the world differently — and have trouble socializing as a result.
As Riley, a 21-year-old college student in Arkansas, told me last spring:
“I feel like [the pandemic] kind of stunted my social abilities with guys specifically. I never had a boyfriend in high school and so I feel like I never really learned how to interact with men. And now I’m just scared. I’m like, ‘I don’t know what to talk to you about.’”
Couple that experience with the fact Gen Z men and women are growing up on different tracks, where young women are outpacing young men in high school and college completion rates, and young men’s participation in the labor force has dropped since the early 2000s.
There is strong data showing young men and women on different paths. So when I say the divide is manufactured, here’s what I mean. Just this week, the New York Post published a piece titled “The young and the dateless: Why Gen Z, millennial men aren’t approaching women anymore.” Beyond feeling the divide first-hand, which they do, young men and women are constantly peppered with noise telling them that they’re at odds — and that gender dynamics are even worse for them than prior generations.
What if, instead of focusing on the many ways young men and women are growing up with differing worldviews and a diverging of priorities, we focused on finding ways to make it better? In truth, young men and women are often talking past each other. With the help of good-faith actors, they could realize they’re on the same page more than they think.
The political gender gap has gotten a lot of attention in the past year, and for good reason. While young women voted for Vice President Kamala Harris by a 17-point margin in the 2024 election, young men voted for Trump by a 14-point margin. Similarly, this year, young women supported Democratic candidates Zohran Mamdani, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherril at much higher rates than young men.
But few people are actually asking young people what’s driving the divide — or what could fix it. So as part of our 2026 prediction listening sessions and Reality Check, we asked nearly 50 Gen Zers ages 16-26 to tell us exactly that.
Our respondents weighed in from all different corners of the country and came from a wide-range of backgrounds, but their answers were shockingly similar.
Young people see the gender divide manifesting in ambition, their politics, social media feeds, dating lives, and visions for their futures. Their proposed solutions emphasize in-person connection, focused on conversations with people they may disagree with but share common experiences.
The main takeaway: Blaming the gender gap on our politicians and algorithms misses the point. Those are just symptoms of a larger problem. Gen Z lacks resiliency, and on the whole, isn’t used to having tough conversations or working through the kinks with people who have a different perspective.
To really understand what Gen Z is telling us, it’s best to listen to them directly.
🔑 What You’ll Unlock: Highlights from this edition
What’s driving the gender war, according to Gen Z
What they say could heal gender divides in 2026
My analysis