As Gen Z, my generation, begins to emerge in the political sphere (there are now 10 MPs in the House of Commons born after 1995), so does a new political gap. This gap is not one of class, religion, conformism or geography, but one of gender. This in itself is not news. The Times published an article in January 2024 titled ‘A new global gender divide is emerging’, which situates Gen Z’s simultaneous hyper-progressiveness and conservatism within the context of gender: women under 30 are voting for more ‘progressive’ parties, and young men for more conservative ones. John Burn-Murdoch’s article observes a trend unrestricted to the UK and reveals that China, Germany, Poland, South Korea, Tunisia and the US follow the same pattern. This is almost exclusive to the countries’ younger population.
As a more conservative 21-year-old woman, I was unsurprised. At university, most of the students nodding their heads or enthusiastically discussing my views are men. Mia (17) from Essex is a political advisor to a member of the Youth Parliament and an aspiring politician. Even in these early stages, she has experienced sexism and relatably stated: ‘The moment people find out I’m a feminist and conservative’ people think ‘I am [either] some kind of raging feminist or someone complicit in women’s oppression as if there is no feasible position in between’. Personally speaking, female friends decide to avoid my politics like a bad smell, or as strongly as they would a man who lists himself as conservative on Hinge – I am not joking here. “I swipe left if men put ‘conservative’ in their dating bios”, writes privately-educated Blanca Schofield, and upon discovering that I am dating someone conservative, friends have, in response, not-so-jokingly uttered ‘traitor’, and ‘I would never even kiss a Tory’. In our generation's fast-paced and reel-run world, stating you are conservative renders you a ‘Tory Boy’ – centre-parted, tweed-clad, Schöffel-sporting, and home counties-educated. Or, even worse, a woman who enjoys being with one.
Both around me and online, young women feel that to brand yourself conservative is to side with a sexist, or anti-woman culture, and who could blame them? The women of Gen Z have grown up seeing the cultural aftermath of #MeToo, which produced a divide not only between the right and left, but also between the genders. We have also seen conservative men become increasingly vitriolic online about women’s rights and bodily autonomy, and disappointed conservative men have unfollowed me after seeing me repost Pro-Choice articles and statements. Conservative men, according to most young women, would see harassment and sexism perpetuated under the guise of tradition and conformity. For that reason, they conclude that the left is better suited to tackle it in the name of progress.
What I am inching towards is a consequence of the growing divide not yet highlighted: those conservative women falling from the precipice.
I am probably right in assuming that many moderate-to-conservative women have been self-censoring as I have in an attempt to not be seen as gender traitors. Of course, you do get the occasional woman who is unashamed, a woman who is unafraid of branding herself a ‘Tory’ and doesn’t leave her feminism behind in the process (see: Dehenna Davison). However, slightly more often than this unicorn appears the woman who chooses to explicitly align herself with those conservative men who are anti-feminist. These women try so hard to distance themselves from left-wing women that, at least to me, they begin to commit a strange form of self-sabotage. They are popular and on some days, to my disappointment, they litter my algorithm. Women like Hannah Pearl Davis or ‘JustPearlyThings’, who argue that “instead of getting a divorce, women should learn to stop arguing with their husbands”, along with the quieter ‘reclaiming your feminine energy’ twentysomethings, are a consequence of this gap.
Over the past few months, my feminism and conservatism have wrestled. In social settings, I have found myself self-censoring in an attempt to avoid pitting myself against the women of my generation, padding out decidedly moderate views with assurances and soft insults – emphasising my Pro-Choice stance and interest in feminist literature. After all, I am no ‘traditionalist’, and I believe women’s liberation is a constant and complicated battle. And, I certainly do not align myself with those conservative men who hide their misogyny behind a façade of traditionalism – those who dream of trad-wives in cute aprons who scorn veganism.
Although many people do not take them seriously, these online presences represent one way Conservative women navigate this situation – otherwise known as ‘bash your own sex until you can seem reasonable to right-wing men’. It seems understandable: young right-wing men, particularly online, brand progressive women ‘unreasonable’ and ‘devoid of logic’. Yet, women who adopt these stances originated from and perpetuate this new gender gap, and they seem to enjoy the otherness that it bestows upon them from the men who support them. I won’t go into the whole ‘pick-me girl’ can of worms as it is neither helpful nor useful for this article. Instead, I am attempting to point out a false dichotomy (the left-wing feminist and the right-wing sexist), and help stop it from becoming a reality reaffirmed by the ubiquitous scourge of political tribalism.
Currently, to be progressive is to be pro-woman; if you are a feminist, you should be left-wing – right?
How, then, do I define conservative feminism in a moment where the two terms are antithetical to each other in the Gen-Z mind? I will admit that I struggle myself, often speaking in terms of negatives (‘not that’) in an attempt to construct some solid answer. When I stumbled across Louise Perry and her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century (2022), I felt like I may have found a positive answer, or someone I could finally find agreeable in a sea of Hannah Pearls. The book covers and criticises the sexual revolution of the mid-twentieth century and its consequences after its author made a U-turn in her beliefs whilst working in a rape crisis centre. ‘We have smoothly transitioned from one form of feminine subservience to another’ she writes, ‘but we pretend that [the left’s] is liberation’. She writes with the same candidness about women and sex that left-wing women take pride in, but with a different perspective – one that questions the moral certainty of ‘progress’ that has been made without being nostalgic about life before. Her article ‘Why the next wave of feminism is conservative’ was published later that same year and argues that a rightward feminist shift is going to result from two internet-fuelled phenomena: the politicisation of otherwise non-political women during the TERF Wars, and the accessibility of online platforms to busy mothers – a larger and much quieter group of women.
I would like to think that she is right and that the next wave of feminism will be a conservative one. However, Louise Perry is a 32-year-old mother and many of the women she speaks to are older. I am yet to see a similar confidence among my generation. This is possibly due to age, or the fact younger women have not yet faced the realities of motherhood and the bear-like maternity that comes with it - ‘to say that this new right-leaning feminist movement is maternal is not to say it is cuddly’, Perry insists. I am not yet a mother and I am not yet fully appreciative of this sentiment. I will claim, however, that conservative feminism criticises the left’s unwavering fight for progress in women’s rights and questions their moral certainty. It does not advocate for equal outcomes and recognises that this pursuit has been at the expense of women – in the workplace, motherhood and their relationships with men.
The consequences of the gender-ideology gap are frightening and far-reaching. When young men and women part ways, society suffers. Burn-Murdoch draws out Korea, where the marriage and birth rate have fallen drastically, ‘dropping to 0.78 births per woman in 2022’. Not surprisingly, the Korean gender-ideology gap is the widest of all the countries surveyed in his article. While there are certainly other factors at play in determining birth rates, the gender-ideology gap is surely one of the most significant – especially when the political divide has become so important in issues like dating.
The answer is not for young conservative and moderate women to self-censor, or otherwise form the front of the anti-feminist line. Rather, we should begin to enter political discourse honestly and openly, and begin to embody the supposedly shocking notion that conservatism does not equal anti-feminism and that the left has not been right in its fight for equal outcomes. Women who otherwise would not identify as liberal are being taught to accept this false dichotomy by the left, and this is an issue that can only be directed by those passionate and quietly concerned women further right.
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