The Girl Power Generation Reaches Adolescence
Age-appropriate engagements and the myth of the tradwife: A listening session reveals the truth behind this week’s gender discourse
Last night, I spoke with five Gen Z women to discuss gender, identity, and relationships.
I heard how these young women really feel about everything that’s been in the news this week.
In many ways, young women have more opportunities (and choice) today than ever before. But by no means do things feel equal, or easy.
You might be thinking that this sounds familiar, such has been the plight for women since the beginning of time. That’s fair.
But what’s unique about growing up as a Gen Z woman is the way that social media algorithms have sorted them by their gender in an unrelenting virtual world that mimics — but doesn’t mirror — the real one.
And when it comes to politics, they only know an ecosystem dominated by a president who was elected for the first time just weeks after the release of an Access Hollywood tape that would have ended anyone else’s political career — and elected a second time after being found liable for sexual abuse. And in some major ways, they have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers years ago — after all, this is the first generation in more than 50 years to reach adulthood without the federally protected right to an abortion. Even six years post-Me Too, just this week, two members of Congress resigned following allegations of sexual misconduct.
For these young women, at the core of their gender identity is the fact that they were raised to expect freedom and equality as a given, yet have come of age in a culture that still imposes expectations that say otherwise.
They were raised in the early 2000s, when “girl power” (as one young woman put it last night) was all the rage (think Princess Diaries, Kim Possible, Legally Blonde, even Hannah Montana). Many of them came of age during the peak of the girlboss movement in the late 2010s, amidst a cultural backdrop that included the Women’s March and the Me Too movement. Over and over, they were told that they could do anything they set their mind to.
Yet a lot of this was just vibes — cultural trends around empowerment that did little to actually change the systems that hold women back from equal pay, fair treatment in the workplace, and balanced partnerships. Like their mothers before them, today’s young women seem to be damned if they do and damned if they don’t — feeling judged or penalized for either starting a family or prioritizing their career, or exhausted by trying to do both.
Meanwhile, the dynamics of dating haven’t kept pace with cultural change.
As one young woman put it last night:
“It’s kind of confusing.”
All of this happens against a backdrop of constant noise about the gender gap. This week alone, there were dozens of headlines about Gen Z women:
Yale youth poll data showing Gen Z women are still so far away from Gen Z men politically
A deep-dive cover-story from the UK’s New Statesman on ‘Angry Young Women’ in the UK (who are politically, socially, and emotionally far apart from young men and increasingly alienated in the “femosphere”) showing that the Gen Z gender gap is not solely an American phenomenon
A WSJ article on how ‘The Family Will Survive Girlboss Feminism,’ breaking down why birth rates are falling… Mary Julia Koch writes it’s not that women don’t want to have kids (I agree) but that it’s the result of a “mismatch in standards” between men and women more than anything else
So what? Raised with a phone in their hand and a social media profile to curate amid crippling economic anxiety, Gen Z is an inherently individualistic generation. This is even more pronounced for the youngest half, who are keenly focused on themselves. That impacts how they feel about the opposite gender.
As one young woman shared last night, amongst her friends, she sees a trend of “decentering men” and focusing more on self-improvement and female friendship.
This plays into how they think about their futures — when it comes to their careers, their partners, and themselves.
At the same time, the prevailing narrative that Gen Z women don’t want to get married or have kids isn’t true. For many young women, they just aren’t ready to do that yet. If paid leave felt more accessible or child tax credits were more pronounced, that might help — but many young women struggling financially don’t trust there are adequate systems in place to support starting a family right now.
And as the dialogue around what it means to be a young woman continues to shift, they’re weighing the pressure of the expectations placed upon them and trying to keep up in real time.
Hear more of what they had to say….
Inside today’s full report
The “acceptable” age to get engaged
Why tradwife culture is a myth
The dual income dichotomy