Why Are We Asking Why Young Women Are So Liberal?
Let's scratch our heads about a different question
“How the Last Eight Years Made Young Women More Liberal.”
That’s the headline of a New York Times piece that reports that, unlike their young male counterparts, young women are increasingly likely to embrace lefty politics. The survey has generated plenty of attention because America wants to know: Why are so many young women liberal?
But there’s another way to frame the issue: Why are so few young women liberal?
Given the stories they’ve been told their whole lives, it’s astounding that “only” 40% of young women identify as liberal.
Here I won’t refer to the pros and cons of liberal arguments. I assume that, like people in general, most young women don't come to their positions based on carefully weighing the evidence for and against various positions.
So let’s return to the original question: What accounts for the rise of liberal young women?
The New York Times and others highlight the rise of Trump and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but it’s easy to overstate the impact these recent factors had on the leftward lurch. Yes, Trump is a special kind of crazy, but he’s just the latest in a long line of “Hitlers.”
Maybe the primary cause of the leftward turn isn’t mysterious at all. Maybe it has a simple explanation.
Maybe so many young women are liberal because that’s what they’ve been told to be.
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The Cause of the Turn
All the chatter stems from a recent Gallup report, which highlights four issues most responsible for the turn toward liberalism: abortion, climate change, gun laws, and race relations.
Gallup discovered a growing percentage of young women self-identifying as liberal. During the George W. Bush years, an average of 28% of young women between 18 and 29 identified as liberal. During the Obama years, the figure jumped to 32%. It jumped again during the Trump/Biden years, and now stands at about 40%.
Given how they’ve been educated and entertained, shouldn’t the percentages be much higher?
After all, nearly every significant institution in America is leftist: entertainment, media, education, tech, nonprofits, unions, the administrative state. Even traditionally right-leaning strongholds like religion and business have veered left.
Which institutions count as right-leaning today?
Maybe small business. Maybe the military, but even those in uniform have gone wobbly. And in terms of cultural influence, other institutions dwarf small business and the military.
You could make the argument that the leftist monoculture starts with the government, but I’ll instead highlight its close cousin, the university.
Many assume universities have always been leftist, but the biggest names began as divinity schools. It’s true universities have leaned left for many decades, but an institution that leans one way isn’t a monoculture. That’s because there are still enough dissidents around to keep the majority somewhat in check.
Although the seeds had been sown earlier, the university’s transformation into an intellectual monoculture began only about 30 years ago.
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Preaching, Just Not on Sunday
Today the university stands as a new type of divinity school. It preaches different dogmas including ones germane to the “big four” issues highlighted by Gallup:
Abortion is a fundamental human right.
We must address climate change with harsh measures.
The U.S. is a uniquely violent society.
The U.S. is irredeemably racist and sexist.
Today’s Sunday school operates Monday through Friday. Universities teach students the catechism until they graduate or drop out, and professors, TAs, and administrators deliver the lessons with little or no opposing points of view.
Only 38% of Americans have college degrees, but the influence of the university’s worldview spreads far beyond the diploma holders. Schools of education have emerged as some of the most politicized bastions on campus, and they produce teachers who instruct millions of school kids.
I feel sorry for heterodox people in the education field.
I know quite a few, and recently met a woman who just earned a PhD in education from one of our nation’s most prestigious universities. She reports years of self censorship, and says she was almost never able to be herself. Who knows how many talented would-be teachers took one look at the ideological gauntlet waiting for them and opted for a different path.
Teachers and administrators who disagree with the monoculture must choose between their careers and their beliefs. So the young women who responded to the Gallup survey have been educated by teachers who either affirm the catechism or pretend to.
They received the same monoculture worldview from the movies and shows they watch, the music they download, the news they consume, and apps that devour so much of the rest of their time.
Innovations such as “liking” and “retweeting” allowed fundamentalists to use public shaming to enforce dogmas. As we explain in The Coddling of the American Mind movie, tech companies introduced these features between 2009 and 2012, well before the rise of the Orange Satan or the Roe reversal.
That’s roughly when The Maddening began.
Yes the past eight years have been tumultuous, but let’s not fixate on the past eight years.
Before then, universities, propped up by nearly a half-trillion dollars in yearly taxpayer subsidies, had already begun the process of mainstreaming tribalistic dogmas such as “microaggression training.” They had already begun to teach students that systemic forces will hold them back.
Rates of anxiety and depression among Gen Z had already begun to shoot up. Race relations, which white and black Americans had long described as pretty good, had already begun to shoot down.
Students had already begun aping their intolerant professors by shouting down speakers who dared to offer opposing points of view. Can We Take a Joke?, a film I directed, was the first mainstream film to document the early days of cancel culture.
The ideological transformation of young women has been decades in the making, and maybe there’s no need to complicate the question of why.
For us humans, the path of least resistance is to do what we’re told.
But consider what has received so little attention: Young women are the ones most likely to identify as liberal, but even most of them identify as something else.
Maybe the more interesting question to ponder is why, given its cultural dominance, liberalism attracts so few young women, young men, and Americans of all ages.
If you’re fed up with groupthink in entertainment, media, and more, please consider subscribing to Shiny Herd.
Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His written work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, USA Today, Reason, and The Washington Post.
His recent film work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.
Ted and his wife and producing partner Courtney Moorehead Balaker are now making a narrative feature film based on Rob Henderson’s bestselling book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
It has always been funny to me that by demographics I should be liberal, but I'm not. Young college-educated white women are disproportionately liberal, as are atheists (I think 80-90% are liberal), as are bisexuals (I think LGBTQ+ members are probably also 80%+ liberal).
The Economist had a "build-a-voter" interactive before Biden dropped out that said based on those demographics there's a 95% chance I would vote for Biden. But no one talks about the outliers, as you said. If anything, they're the most fascinating group!