After Grace Richardson broke up with her long-term boyfriend, she entered a period she affectionately refers to as her “rat girl summer”.
“I was using Hinge, I was going out, I was meeting people. I was 23, flirty and thriving,” the Sydney musician and podcast producer says.
It was during this season of self-discovery that Richardson met a man whose views, she says, “immediately set off alarm bells”.
When Richardson mentioned her job, he revealed his favourite podcast was one that “gets feminists on and makes fun of them”.
When she said she enjoyed going to the gym, he told her “men weren’t attracted to women with an athletic physique”.
“From there the conversation descended,” Richardson says.
She says her date told her women were “past their peak” after 24, that he didn’t “believe” in the gender pay gap and argued feminism had gone too far because women, in his view, now had “more rights than men”.
“You hear about this stuff online but I had never expected to sit down with someone and have a conversation about it,” she says.
Her experience may not be an isolated one. Research suggests there is a growing gender gap among gen Z voters, with election results around the world showing young men are shifting to the right while young women are becoming more progressive.
At the 2024 US election men aged between 18 and 29 turned out in force for Donald Trump, favouring him by 56% to 42%, while women of the same age voted for Kamala Harris by an even wider margin, 58% to 40%.
Young men at the 2024 UK election were twice as likely to vote for Nigel Farage’s rightwing populist party Reform UK (12% to 6%) while young women were more likely to vote Green than their male counterparts (23% to 12%).
This trend isn’t just a Western phenomenon, according to Intifar Chowdhury, a lecturer in government at Flinders University.
“In China, Taiwan and South Korea – particularly South Korea – the gulf between genders is quite wide and the young men are much more conservative than women,” Chowdhury says.
So what about Australia? Are we likely to see a similar pattern emerging at the federal election?
Generation gap widens
Dr Sarah Cameron is circumspect. A political scientist at Griffith University’s school of government and international relations and a chief investigator of the Australian Election Study, which has surveyed voters on their political attitudes and behaviours after each election since 1987, she says the gender gap in politics is “much smaller” than the generational gap.
Polls tracked by Guardian Australia over the past year show Labor ahead 61.2% to 38.8% on a two-party-preferred basis among 18- to 34-year-olds, and marginally ahead among those aged 35 to 49, but significantly behind among older age groups.
“Younger generations are much further to the left than previous generations were when they were at the same stage of life. That’s the biggest difference we are seeing among young people in Australia,” Cameron says.
“Young women are a bit further left, in comparison to young men.”
Chowdhury agrees. She says long-term trends show men and women shifting leftwards – though young women are doing so more quickly.
“There is a gender gap, in the sense that women are moving to the left at a quicker pace. But they aren’t moving in different directions,” she says.
Cameron attributes women’s shift left to their increasing participation in higher education and the workforce, as well as greater representation on the Labor benches in parliament. Chowdhury points to the #MeToo movement and the former Coalition government’s response to sexual assault allegations that followed.
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Both Cameron and Chowdhury, however, note a substantial number of gen Zs will be voting for the first time in 2025, which could change existing assumptions.
Chowdhury points to a recent poll in the Australian Financial Review which found 37% of men aged 18 to 34 preferred Peter Dutton as prime minister, compared with 27% of women in the same age group. It also found 32% of women in the same age group would give their primary vote to the Greens (equal with Labor), compared with only 20% among men.
Anthony Albanese has been actively courting young female voters, including by appearing on Abbie Chatfield’s It’s a Lot podcast and the Happy Hour podcast with Lucy Jackson and Nikki Westcott.
Frustration with major parties
Darien, 19, a music student at the University of Sydney, says he hangs out with “mostly progressive people”, but there is a gap between his male and female friends, particularly when discussing social issues.
“There is a divide between the genders – I’d like to think in my group there isn’t, but it’s there,” he says, citing the debate during the voice to parliament referendum as an example.
“A lot of my female friends were voting yes and sharing posts about it – I know that they had issues with some of their male friends who weren’t.
“There’s probably also a divide during conversations around things like reproductive rights.”
Darien says most of his friends are more across US politics than Australian but he tends to avoid the topic because it’s “only going to create conflict”.
“When it comes to Australian politics, people know less. My friends tend to either really not like Peter Dutton or just don’t know who he is. I know that some of my friends don’t like Albo a whole lot. I personally think he’s doing an all right job,” he says.
“But there’s this sort of us v them kind of mentality that’s developed, which makes it difficult for conversation around these topics to go anywhere.”
Chowdhury says it is important not to paint a picture of young men as a “looming reactionary force”, describing the discourse as “harmful” and “divisive”.
“Many gen Z voters are going to vote for the first time and they’re voting during a cost-of-living crisis,” Chowdhury says.
She says young voters’ frustrations may stem more from economic challenges – such as stagnant wages, rising costs and dwindling opportunities – rather than “a feminism backlash”.
“Economic concerns can really shape an election,” Chowdhury says. “People might be voting for the Coalition because of that, but we’re very quick to rush into making this conclusion that they’re moving to the right, so they must be conservative on all things.”
Hannah Ferguson, the founder of Cheek Media, a feminist platform aimed at educating young people about politics, says she sees a growing “anti-establishment streak” in young Australian men, who are frustrated with the “political system as a whole”.
“The difference between us and the US is that a lot of young men are fed up with both parties, as opposed to the divide in America, which is based on that tribal red or blue, Democrats or Republicans,” Ferguson says.
“I do think there will be a divide between how young men and women vote – on the whole, young men lean further right, but I think we’re not anywhere near the toxicity of the US.”
She also anticipates young people will turn to more independents and the Greens as a result.
As for Richardson, her date marked the end of rat girl summer.
“I had a good run, and I met some nice guys, but this one just left a bad taste in my mouth,” she says.
Richardson emphasises their conversation, which stretched four hours, was not heated or aggressive. She says she stayed because she wanted to understand his perspective and challenge it. But by the end, she realised his views were “entrenched”.
“It made me take the blinkers off a bit,” Richardson says.
“I felt disappointed, scared and misunderstood. It made me realise the hill is so much steeper than I thought it was.”