Just 35 per cent of British women under the age of 25 hold a positive view of men, according to a new poll.
The findings show only 11 per cent of young women hold a very positive view, while women under 30 are three times as likely to hold a negative view of men compared to the over-30s.
According to the poll carried out by Merlin Strategy for the New Statesman, young women “don’t care for” young men, believing the feelings are mutual, and citing an over-focus on sexual motivation and a lack of care about political issues, with women aged between 18 and 30 found to be the most progressive demographic in the UK by far.
The research found that young women are 26 percentage points less likely to feel positively about capitalism compared to young men.
They were also found to be much less likely to believe the economy works in their favour and far more pessimistic about their own and others’ futures. Even though young men are more likely to be unemployed, it is young women who are 21 points less likely to believe they will earn more than their parents.
And more privileged women were found to be the most pessimistic of all, with women in middle-class professions less likely to believe they are valued by society or that they will succeed in life when they work hard than their working-class counterparts.
Under-25s were also found to be twice as likely not to want children as young men, and said they feared the prospect of being pressured into having babies by a Reform UK government.
When asked how she felt about the boys she knew, a girl called Ruby told the New Statesman: “I don’t care for them. They’re not bad people, but they refuse to call out their friends who make other girls uncomfortable. They’ll laugh at jokes that are sexist, racist, homophobic; they don’t care about political issues… I don’t think they like women a lot… I feel like a lot of it is quite sexually motivated with men.” She said men would only discuss subjects such as toxic misogyny if they fancied her.
The group of young women she was with all agreed they would not date a man with different politics, with one telling the publication: “I don’t think I’d even be friends with one. They don’t see you as human.”
Evelyn was the only one to admit having male friends and shared her concerns about what content they were consuming online. “The stuff that’s being said about women is crazy,” she told the New Statesman. “They’re getting all these reels, talking about, like, bad stuff about women. And I get reels of women saying bad stuff about men. I try to think, not all men are like this, but…”
