There’s a growing discourse that says the social and political attitudes of young men and women are polarising, but is that the full picture? Most young men do support gender equality, so, is this framing productive?

While society has been advancing towards greater gender equality, there has also been a rise in vocal anti-feminist movements, calling for the return of traditional gender-roles.

Our recently commissioned YouGov survey revealed this trend: one in three British men aged 16-24 believe traditional gender roles play a positive role in society and should be preserved. These narratives can be traced most clearly in the ‘manosphere’- an online community where men argue that men, not women, are the victims of oppression.

As a woman, this suggestion is distressing because in so many ways women are still fighting for their most basic rights – for safety and for autonomy over their own bodies. Further, the ‘manosphere’ feels threatening because whilst generations before me have fought for a trajectory of progress on women’s rights, this group of young men indicate a turning tide on generational change.

This anti-feminist rhetoric is also concerning because it isn’t confined to a dark corner of the internet, rather, it is playing out in public discourse and politics. Gender has become an important fault-line along which voters are divided: young women are becoming increasingly liberal, while young men are turning to the far-right.

This polarisation is perhaps most visible in the US election, which in many ways feels like a contest between angry men and worried women. Trump has played into male anxieties by framing young men as the victims of the left-wing agenda, all the while making misogynistic comments and undermining women’s rights. While women aged 18-29 – who are the ‘most progressive group’ in US history – are struggling to support a man who has a record of sexual assault, a majority of men in this age bracket back Trump.

So, why are these political divides emerging? Why do young men increasingly feel like victims in a world where significant gender-inequalities persist?

One explanation draws from psychology and understands that our perception of self is not formed in a vacuum, but emerges through functions of social comparison. While men still enjoy significant privileges, as they compare their slowing trajectory of progress to the gains being made by women, they sense they’re falling behind.

There is some truth behind this feeling. Over the past decades young women have been out-performing men in education and now we are seeing similar trends in the labour market. A recent study found that while the gender pay-gap remains strong among older groups who are more likely to have started families, in the UK young women in their early 20s are more likely to be employed and earning slightly more than their male counterparts. As the job market continues to move away from manual labour while swathes of women continue to graduate from college and university, an increasing proportion of young men are finding themselves outside of the economy. As older men are more likely to be in stable jobs and relationships, we can understand why it is young men who feel most threatened by these advancements.

Understanding this context is important – not because it justifies the toxic rhetoric of the ‘manosphere’ – but because it helps us see why young men experience cognitive dissonance when their male privilege is called out, while they feel it slipping away.

It is important to remind ourselves here that privilege is not narrowly defined to employment or income. It is about the fundamental way a person is raised and received by society. Further, it is important to reiterate that equality is not a zero-sum game. The achievements women have fought for should be celebrated – their success needs not come at the expense of men and is not the cause of men’s disengagement. With this in mind, we should resist leaders who politically capitalise on gender-divisions because the solution to women’s advancement is certainly not a return to traditional gender roles, but an investment in tackling men’s disengagement.

Additionally, it is vital that we look beyond discourses that are divisive and homogenising in the way they pit men against women. Whilst our brains have an evolutionary bias towards retaining alarming news, and while the media is disposed to writing stories on division, these narratives do little for progress. Having worried about these growing anti-feminist movements, I was surprised to find some hope in our YouGov survey; whilst the ‘manosphere’ might generate a lot of noise and bluster, only a minority of British men aged 16-24 think feminism has gone too far (21%). More young men believe feminism has not gone far enough (31%).

In other words, there are more men who are on side, than in opposition. These stories of optimism are rarely reported in the media, so here is an important message of hope.

We need to get better at approaching difficult conversations with empathy and with greater nuance. We need to look beyond our in-groups and echo-chambers to create spaces where we can build understanding and bridge division. It shouldn’t be women’s responsibility to accommodate or explain why feminism still matters, but if we do not try to have these conversations from a point of mutual-understanding, we may struggle to continue moving forward on gender-equality.