Republican men see masculinity as under attack, but most Americans seem to disagree

Episode Summary

Many people expected that Donald Trump's fate would be decided by women last year. It was, after all, the first presidential race since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court had decided to roll back a national right to abortion.

But Trump upended that possibility by deciding to run a campaign that was focused very heavily on men and trying to attract the votes of men who didn’t commonly participate in voting.

That’s why I wanted to bring Juliana Menasce Horowitz onto the show today. She’s a senior associate director of research at the Pew Research Center where she and several colleagues have come out with a very interesting report about how gender is presented in American society and how people think they present in that regard.

The transcript of this audio-only episode is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

04:15 — Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caring

11:57 — Why the Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like “Baby Boomer” or “Gen Z”

20:07 — The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groups

27:04 — Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?

30:16 — Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinity

32:43 — Influence of family and media on gender identity

37:10 — Role of religion and coaches in gender identity

38:29 — Marital status and gender identity

41:40 — Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender roles

46:26 — Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically based

52:06 — Conclusion

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: You have so many interesting findings in the report here, but one that really stands out in particular is that the Republican men that you talk to really seem to see the topic of masculinity and being a man quite a bit differently compared to other demographic groups.

JULIANA HOROWITZ: Yeah, sure. So yeah, that's something that we sought throughout the report. We asked several questions about, um, you know, to, to sort of get at some of the topics that have been out there in the, in the public discourse and the political narrative about men and masculinity.

And one of the things that we wanted to look at is whether the public perceives masculinity as being under attack. And so we asked the question about, um, you know, about whether people think other people in the [00:02:00] US have mostly positive or negative views of men who are manly or masculine. And, and for the most part, Americans don't see masculinity as being under attack based on that question. But Republican men were the most likely to say that people in the US have mostly negative views of men who are mainly or masculine. Um, and then we also asked some other questions that got at, um, you know, different traits that people think society does or doesn't value in men. And personal ratings of masculinity and femininity. So basically how people see themselves and through, you know, throughout the survey, through all these different topics, including the self ratings Republican men really stand out in being different from democratic men and from Republican women and democratic women,

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they do. And just zooming out on the question a little bit. So only 25% of the entire sample said that people have a mostly negative viewpoint of manly or masculine men, but among Republican men, that was 45% who said that?

And that was, as you said, pretty unusual. So what was the finding with Republican women? What did they think on that same topic?

HOROWITZ: Right, so among Republican women, we saw that about a quarter of Republican women said that people have mostly negative views, um, compared to 20% of democratic men and only 13% of Democratic women. So Republican women and democratic men actually had fairly similar views on this. And then democratic women were the least likely to see masculinity as being under attack. Under attack. And one of the things that's interesting too, is that for those who say, especially for Republicans actually, who say that people have negative views of men who are masculine, um, the vast majority of those Republicans say that that's a bad thing, right? So it's bad that people have negative views.

It was different. For Democrats, it was a little bit more mixed. So for Democrats who say that people have negative views of masculine men, um, 45% said it was bad. Only 17% said it was good, and 37% said it was neither good nor bad. And so they had more split views as to whether it was a bad thing or sort of [00:04:00] neutral.

Neither good nor bad that people have negative views of masculine men. Before Republicans, both men and women, um, who said that that was the case, they, they overwhelmingly saw that as a bad thing.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that is interesting and we will come back to that in a little bit.

Less of a partisan divide on whether men are valued for being caring

SHEFFIELD: But one thing that also is interesting is that you and your colleagues also asked the survey respondents whether Americans place enough value on men being caring or open about their emotions, or soft spoken or affectionate. And the partisan divide was not nearly so great on this question, which I found kind of fascinating.

HOROWITZ: That's right. And, and I wanted to mention, I wanted to, to be clear that we didn't present these traits as being masculine or feminine. I mean, we chose. A balance list based on, you know, based on what, what we read and based on what we know of how society sees these straits as being more associated with masculinity or femininity. Um, but we didn't present it that way to, to our respondents. And so, yeah. So a majority of Americans overall say that there's not enough value placed on men who are, you know, open about their emotions, soft spoken, um, caring, affectionate. There were differences. You know, Democrats are more likely to say that there's not enough value placed on, on men who have these traits, but even among Republicans, um, you know, the, the balance of opinion was that there's not enough, even if it wasn't a majority saying that, that Republicans were on the side of saying there's not enough value placed on men with these straits, it was a little bit different.

Um. On the traits that might be considered more traditionally masculine. So confidence, assertiveness, um, being a risk taker, being physically strong there. Overall, we saw more, um, more mixed views among Americans overall. We didn't see a majority saying too much, not enough or about right, but we did say we did.

See for the most part, people tended to be on the side of saying there's too much value placed on these traits for men than saying there's not enough. But Republican men were more likely to say that there's not [00:06:00] enough value placed on men who have these more traditionally masculine traits.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and just to underscore your earlier point, the traits were not said to be associated with any particular expression of being masculine or feminine or male or female.

But you did also talk about some other traits on the list here. And they were broken down, including some traits that are perhaps associated with quote unquote toxic masculinity. And there with these traits, the partisan dynamic did come back a little bit more. Isn't that right?

HOROWITZ: Yeah, well, so actually there, there, there is a little bit of a party of party division there, but for the most part, so, so in this list we ask about certain behaviors and, um, we, we ask people the extent to which they find these behaviors acceptable for men to do. Some of the things on the list that majorities of Americans, um, and this really crossed, you know, crossed parties even though there, there might have been differences, but it's majorities of both Democrats and Republicans who thought that things like throwing a punch of provoked, um, drinking a lot of alcohol when out with friends, having many different sexual partners or joining in when other men are talking about women in a sexual way. Majorities of Americans across party saw these as, as unacceptable behaviors for men. And so there were differences of degree, there were differences in the share saying that, but for the most part, this was not one where we saw or sort of our, our biggest partisan gaps.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I guess it was, uh, more of a difference, uh, uh, by gender in this case, right?

HOROWITZ: We did see some differences by gender here too. Yes. Um, but again, like it was, um, you know, women were more likely to say these behaviors are unacceptable. But majorities of men also also said that.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It was just by a higher percentage,

HOROWITZ: exactly. There's a, mm-hmm.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, no. And then there were some, some age differences with some of these, uh, behaviors, such as, uh, [00:08:00] a divide between, uh, what people thought about the idea of men putting a lot of effort into their style and fashion, and also playing a lot of video games.

There were age differences there that were interesting.

HOROWITZ: Yeah. Those were interesting. Young people, both young men and young women, were more likely to say that those were acceptable behaviors for, for men to do. And so it was interesting to see that, that age gap there. Um, it was picking up more than, you know. I think sometimes we do focus on gender and party because that's where we see a lot of our gaps. But in this case, when it comes to, yeah, to putting a lot of effort into how you look and playing video games, both young men and young women we're the most likely to say that those are acceptable things for men.

SHEFFIELD: Now, what about in terms of. Of whether, uh, men can take care of the house or, uh, take charge in day to day, uh, activities and things like that.

HOROWITZ: Yeah. We asked a series of, of questions about behaviors or, you know, or things that men do that we presented as being specifically, you know, when thinking about men who date women or who are in a relationship with women. Um, and this was, um, well the one item where a majority said it was acceptable was, um, we asked about men, you know, focusing on taking care of the kids and taking care of the home while their wife focuses on, on working for pay. And 57% of Americans said that that was acceptable for men to do. Um, we, um, you know, we, we do see that as more acceptable among younger adults, but a majority across the board say that's the case where we saw a little bit more. Um, you know, when, when it was interesting was when it comes to splitting, the bill went out on a date. Um. It was interesting because we, you know, like that was more acceptable for, um, that that was more acceptable for older women. So it was, it was interesting because we saw both, um, this was a really interesting one. Like younger men thought it was [00:10:00] acceptable to split the bill on the date, and younger men were more likely than young women to say that that was the case. And then for women, it was the older women, women 65 plus were more likely to say that it was acceptable, um, to split the bill when, when, on a, when a man is out on a date with a woman. So I thought that was interesting, but that was one where we saw a difference between young men and young women where young men said, yeah, that's acceptable.

And, and young women were less likely to say it's extremely or very acceptable. I mean, they, they thought it was acceptable too, but they tended to fall more on the somewhat acceptable and not firmly on the, on the extremely, very acceptable side.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, uh, but then also on the partisan, uh, their, uh, differences that they were pretty significant on that question as well, splitting the bill. Uh, there was a 20 point gap, uh, and yet, so while Democrats, 44 percent of them said that it was extremely acceptable, uh, to split the bill, it still wasn't a majority.

of Democrats. So I found that kind of interesting,

HOROWITZ: It wasn't the majority. And you know, what I didn't do was look to see the age differences within parties because we know that, you know, a lot of young women also lean democratic. And we know that young women are less likely in young men to say this is highly acceptable. And so it would be interesting to go in and kind of look at the, whether it's young women who might be pulling Democrats out, you know, not. Getting to a majority saying that. So I think that'd be an interesting thing to look at. But yeah, on a lot of these, so for example, on taking care of the home and children while their wife works for pay, there was a difference there too. Um, with, you know, two thirds of democrats say that that would be acceptable compared with about half of Republicans saying that that would be, again, like, I should say, highly acceptable. 'cause we did have a, a, um, a category that was somewhat acceptable. So it's very few people saw that as like,

not unacceptable,

SHEFFIELD: yeah, or inappropriate. Um, yeah.

Why Pew Research Center no longer uses terms like "Baby Boomer" or "Gen Z"

SHEFFIELD: And now one thing that [00:12:00] is, um, different also, if, if people are reading the, the web version of this, um, is that you guys are not using, generational labels, uh, which is a pretty big difference, uh, within the Pew Research Center. Um, the center was a big proponent, uh, historically of, of, of generational labels, but now, uh, you and your colleagues have decided to move away from those types of labels.

Can we talk about that?

HOROWITZ: Of course. So that's something that's happened over the last few years, maybe the last three or four years. And as we were gearing up to start looking at Gen Z, as Gen Z was moving into adulthood, we started doing some mythological explorations to see, you know, over time our surveys have moved from the phone to the web. One of the things that we started exploring was whether we could compare some of those surveys, because we have surveys going back a long, a long time, and we wanted to be able to look at other generations where they were coming into adulthood like Gen Z, and we realized we weren't able to do that because of the methodological and the mode changes. And then during that time, we started talking to different people, um, and there were some public, um, critiques of our, not just our work, but of using generational lens in general in social science research. And so we engaged with some of our critics. We had a lot of conversations with our critics, with other people, um, other researchers who used generational analysis and just really thought about. You know, and also thinking about the changing landscape and how generations have been used more recently, not by us, but you know, by people using it to really, um, you know, propagate stereotypes and talk about millennials, avocado toast, and those types of, those types of things that weren't really useful for understanding people and how they think and how they behave. Um, and so in thinking about all of that and doing some of the methodological explorations, some of the conversations that we've had with [00:14:00] other, with other social scientists, what we decided to do is that, you know, in something like this, we're not really looking at generational differences. These are just really age differences, right?

To understand generational differences, we need to look at people when they were the, the same age to make sure they were not talking about life stage. We need to be able to, right? We need to be able to isolate some other effects. So, um, one example that I like to give is, you know, if we're studying parents and. Let's say that we find that millennial parents or Gen Z parents or tend to be more overprotective, and then we can create a whole narrative about overprotective millennial and Gen Z parents. But when you control for the age of the children, right? Gen X parents who have young children, let's say children younger than five, are just as overprotective. And so you might look at it and call it a generational difference, but what you're really picking up is that they're raising little, little kids. And so maybe when those millennial and Gen Z parents are raising high schoolers, maybe they won't be as overprotective. So it's not something inherent in their generation.

And so, Yeah.

And so it's important to, to, you know, and then, and so, you know, we're still gonna be, we're, it doesn't mean that we're never gonna do generational analysis, but we will do it when we have the data to be able to, you know, there, there are some long trends in government data, for example, that do allow us to go back and look at people, you know, generations when they were at the same age. And then we can compare it that way so we can isolate the life stages. Um, you know, there are times where we might decide to not use sort of the predefined generations. And so for certain things it might be interesting to look at people, you know, look at four year cohorts, like people who turned 18 during a certain president's time if you're studying voting behavior or so. So just be more intentional about the research questions that we're asking when we're using, um, generations. But we, we think that age is a really important, um, it's a really important [00:16:00] demographic characteristic to look at. And so we'll still be looking at at age like we do in this report.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. When it's, it's. that, you know, it can be easy to mistake, you know, a generational value with a moment value. So like, you know, the idea of children having unsupervised play outside of the home, you know, that's, that's, uh, often talked about as some sort of generational. Divide, but it could be just simply a function of, well, this is what everybody thinks at that is, you know, having kids, um, as you're saying, um, but then also there was, uh, some of the other, um, In the research for the reports that I've seen released from the center on this topic is that generational analysis also tends to, um, agglutinate too much.

In other words, taking people who age groups that may actually have significant differences and implying that they're the same. So, and I think perhaps, You know, the, maybe one of the more discussed differences or examples of this is the idea of some scholars, what they, what they're calling zillennial group is older and older millennials are different, either one of the, of the stereotypical two groups.

Yeah,

HOROWITZ: like the, sort of these predefined generations or, you know, span many, many years. And so, you know, if you're, if we're thinking more in terms of, you know, certain events that might have been influential in people's lives, depending on what age they were, um, right. It might be that the, that where you'd break that, that generational category might be [00:18:00] different. Um. Yeah, so then you end up with these different names for the older, you know, older ex, younger X-ers and um, older millennials and, you know, and maybe it would've been better for some research to talk about people in their forties, for example. Right. And maybe you're comparing people in their forties now to people in their forties 20 years ago, or when, right.

And, and so maybe there's a life stage too that's happening in their forties, and doesn't matter if you're calling them, you know, millennials or X-ers, but, you know, and, and so yeah, I think that, um, I think that, that sometimes these categories can be useful and sometimes it's just too big a group that came of age or experienced the world at, at very different times.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly.

So there does seem to be some real significant divides. Between older and younger Gen X people. And then also we could say the same perhaps with people in the quote unquote millennial generation, that the older members of the generation came of age before social media was a thing, and then the younger members came of age and once it had been, and so that could present some differences as well, and why generational talk is perhaps not as useful .

And at the same time, there are also some intergenerational differences, at least if you talk to some people with regard to political opinions and gender. So some researchers have said that there is a very large gender gap within what is commonly called Generation Z, that it's bigger than in previous generations. But in this survey, that is not what you and your colleagues had found in terms of political identification.

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean there's, you know, we've always seen a gender gap in political identification. That's, that's not new. We're not seeing some of the same, you know, the magnitude of the gender gap among young people that some other organizations are seeing. Um, but you know, in, in some elections the gap is [00:20:00] wider and some elections still narrow, but it's been there. Um, you know, we, we've seen it for the last few decades. It's not necessarily new.

The challenge of sampling smaller demographic groups

SHEFFIELD: And it is a tricky question because in a lot of surveys that are done, let's say 1500 voters or so, something like that, when you get into the subsamples, the subsets of the overall samples, so specific demographic groups that are a little bit smaller, the statistical significance can be a lot harder to determine.

And so that's a problem in and of itself. But then there's also the question of waiting of the polls, and that has become more of an issue within polling. And it's also very common, but at the same time, it's not very commonly talked about. I think in the press, uh, people talk a lot about various other techniques, but waiting is something that I have not heard a lot about in terms of the pollster discussion about polls.

So could you talk about that a bit for us, please?

HOROWITZ: Yeah. I mean, before I talk about waiting, one thing that I wanna mention, um, you know, you were talking about the subgroups. And I think that one thing that people don't realize when they're looking at, um, right, when they're reading an article about a poll or they're seeing, you know, there's a chart and it has all the different, the subgroup analysis and it has like the overall and then they look at the margin of error, right?

And it's usually in the bottom of the chart, I'll say the margin of error, but that margin of error is for the whole group. That margin of error is for the whole population. There's a different margin of error for each, for each of those different categories. And so as you get into smaller and smaller groups, your margin of error gets bigger. And so a survey that has a margin of error of plus or minus three points, that's for the overall survey. But when you're talking about young people, it'll be like, that margin will be bigger depending on the size of that group and other factors. And so I think that's something that people don't always realize.

They're just applying that same three plus or minus three points to every subgroup. And the smaller you get, the smaller that group gets the. Bigger that margin's gonna be. So that's something that I think [00:22:00] is really important for people to, to know as they're,

as they're looking at, at some of these things. Um, in terms of waiting, I mean the right, like ideally we would do a random survey and we would end up with a sample that looks like the US population or whatever population you're trying to, you're, you're trying to get. Um, that doesn't always happen. People respond to surveys at different rates. And so, you know, your goal really is to get to something as close to representing, you know, people representing the share of their population that their group should be. But that doesn't typically happen. And so we have statistical adjustments called waiting where we, you know, assign more weight to, to balance out their responses, to be representative of the population that you're targeting. And you know, we're talking about nationally representative samples here 'cause we're talking about. Elections, but then people also have to model the electorate. So when you're talking about registered voters or you're talking about likely voters, then you also have to think about what did the electorate look like last time? What do we, you know, what, what is the electorate gonna look like this time? And then make adjustments also based on that. But a lot of those adjustments, um, you know, the demographic adjustments are usually done to account for the fact that there are certain groups older, more educated, for example, that are more likely to respond to surveys. But you don't wanna have a sample that is like overeducated or a sample that skews older. Um, you know, and so usually we will look at parameters from the government, right? We're looking at census data and we're waiting our data to be representative of the population overall.

But the goal really is to reduce the weighting as much as possible, because then that introduces not to get too technical, but introduces design effects.

And then, then your margin of error gets bigger and. You know, so that really the goal is to have to manipulate. I, I use manipulate. It's certainly not the best word. It's a technical word, but it's not, I don't, I don't mean it in any nefarious way, but like, you don't wanna, [00:24:00] right, but you don't wanna, you wanna have to, you

wanna adjust, you wanna adjust your data as little as possible, but you want your data to be representative.

You don't want it to be skewed. Um, it's not helpful to anybody if you have a highly educated sample that doesn't reflect the electorate or doesn't reflect the population.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it's still a little bit tricky because you don't know how representative these people in the smaller groups that are being weighted up, whether they themselves are representative of the group from which they are weighted. It's almost a little bit circular in some sense, right? Right.

HOROWITZ: Well, , most pollsters, when they draw their sample, they are doing all they can to really work that sample to get a response from people. So for example, um. You know, back when we did phone surveys, it was the num, you know, usually there were at least seven calls made, seven call attempted calls attempted before you decided that that person is, is not responding.

Right? Same with the online surveys. Like you're, we're sending a lot of reminders to people. So it's not the type of thing where, you know, we send out our invitations to take the survey and then, you know, let's say people with four year college degrees or people over a certain age or they respond, people in other groups maybe don't respond as quickly, and so we just give up on them and figure we'll just weigh up whoever's in there, right?

Like we really do, um, do as much as we can to make sure that, that people, that, that we're really trying to get those people in to make sure that we are getting a representative sample of those groups. And so, um, so that the, so that those adjustments can be really kept to a minimum.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's only in the context of that while pollsters are trying to keep things as scientific as possible, there still is a bit of an art in terms of determining how much weight to give to different groups. And that this can cause some misunderstandings when polls are read by the general public. And [00:26:00] probably the most prominent example of that is with regard to racial demographic groups. So oftentimes you'll see people saying, oh, look, there's a study that says. 45% of black Americans like Donald Trump. And that may or may not be true, of course.

Uh, but at the same time, it's easy for people to draw these broad conclusions when the group, the sub-sample of Black Americans is just a very small group with a very high margin of error for that group.

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean, and I, I agree. I mean, like some of the subgroups, especially if you're, if you're starting out with, um, you know, with a survey that might be perfectly appropriate for a national representative. At a sample, but when you're drilling down to small groups, you might end up with very large margins of error.

And so it's, you know, without really knowing the size of those subgroups, and, you know, and it's often the case that, um, a survey will tell you the overall sample size, but then it's not necessarily telling you the, the sample size of some of the relevant groups that you're looking at. Um, and so it can be hard to, to assess that too.

Does self-reporting introduce error in polling?

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. But while we're talking methodology here, I think there's another. Issue worth discussing, which is the problem of self-reporting and self-diagnosis.

Because it can be hard sometimes, I think, to get the respondent to a poll to understand the question in the same way that the pollster sees the question. And that can result in different answers across people's perception. And one example I think perhaps that might fit with that in the current poll that we're discussing here today is that when you ask people, are you feminine, are you masculine? They had some very different perspectives across gender and also across partisanship, and that might reflect some of these perception differences. Do you wanna talk about that?

HOROWITZ: So what we did was we asked everybody to rate themselves on a masculinity and a femininity scale. So, [00:28:00] um, and then we subtracted their scores that they gave themselves on the femininity scale from their scores on the masculinity scale, and created one continuous scale on one end as high people who see themselves as highly masculine.

On the other end are people who see themselves as highly feminine. And then we have people who lean masculine, lean feminine, and then the, the midpoint, which is neither, or they gave themselves the same rating for the, for both scales. So they're equally masculine and feminine, or, or they gave themselves zeros for both.

And so what we found is, um, we found a big party gap among men. And so what we found was 53% of Republican men seeing themselves as highly masculine compared to 29% of Democratic men. We didn't see a gap of nearly the same magnitude among, among women. We did see a small, a modest six point gap with Republican women being more likely to describe themselves as highly feminine. But it was a, it was a very small gap. Um, and, um, you know, but, but with, but with men, we saw a very big gap. And it was mainly driven by conservative Republican men. 60% of conservative Republican men placed themselves in the highly masculine side of the scale. Um, and with more moderate, more moderate Republicans and more moderate Democrats, um, it was around 40%.

So they were more similar. And then liberal democratic men were the least likely to rate themselves as highly, um, highly masculine.

SHEFFIELD: Well, and there was a partisan difference among women as well, or an ideological as well. So like the conservative women, 44 percent of them said that they were highly feminine. Whereas 28 percent of liberal women said that they were. Um, femininity.

HOROWITZ: Yeah,

that's right. I mean, like, not to the same. Yeah, definitely not the same magnitude of difference that we see among men, but you're right, there is a, there is a difference among women too.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I found this particular breakdown interesting though, because.

They're, these are two very subjective questions, and they're based on self-reporting [00:30:00] because what someone labels as their own political ideology might be different than what a more neutral observer might describe them as. And the same thing might be true with regard to whether they are feminine or masculine, quote unquote, on both of those.

Age differences in self-perception of femininity and masculinity

SHEFFIELD: Now further on this, on these two questions though, there were not a lot of racial differences, but there were some interesting age differences that I think are worth noting here.

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I thought the age differences were, were more interesting. I think in part too, because there's been so much talked about in terms of young men today and you know, are young men drifting to the right and I mean I can, I think again, like different. Surveys were showing different things. And for some surveys it's really showing women, young women drifting farther to the left. But one thing that was, was interesting is that we didn't see the sense of hyper-masculinity among young men. Young men were actually the least likely to describe themselves as highly masculine. It was older men who saw themselves that way. And um, and we saw that among both parties, right? Because we looked to see is this just picking up the fact that young men lean more democratic overall than older men?

And so is that what it's picking up? But it, it wasn't, I mean, with Republican men, the difference was more younger than 50 and 50 plus rather than the 18 to 29 year olds. So, um, Republican men younger than 50 were less likely to describe themselves as highly masculine than Republican men, 50 and older. Um, and then with Democrats, we did see differences across age groups with the, um, under 30 group being the least likely to describe themselves as highly masculine.

But yeah. But we saw the same pattern with both parties, that it's the older men. Who are more likely to place themselves on, on that highly masculine end of the scale.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that, you know, may have some correlation likely with the fact that You know, uh, the groups that the age groups that Donald Trump does the best with tend to be older men, uh, compared [00:32:00] to other demographic groups.

HOROWITZ: Yeah. And I mean, again, like those older men are more conservative and, you know, and we also, I, I took a quick look at this by Trump supporters and Harris supporters, and we didn't publish it because it looked very much like the, the party differences that we see as you, as you might expect in the strong, the strong Trump supporters, um, you know, look more like the conservative men that we saw.

And so, and so it wasn't super interesting because it really was just telling us what we already knew, but looking at the party differences. Um, but. But yeah, as you would imagine, men who are strong Trump supporters are more likely to rate themselves as highly masculine as we see here with conservative Republican men.

Influence of family and media on gender identity

SHEFFIELD: In terms of gender expectations or, um, concept gender self concept, um, there, there are some interesting differences, uh, across genders among younger people about social media versus television and movies.

HOROWITZ: Yeah. So we have this question in addition to asking people to rate themselves on these, on these two scales, we also wanted to get at. Where are people hearing or where have they heard, right? Like some, some people are still young in their young adulthood and some people are older, but where have they learned, where have men learned what it means to be a man?

And where have women learned what it means to be a woman? And we asked people the extent to which, you know, different sources or people in their lives, um, had an impact on, on them in learning how to be a man or how to be a woman. And a couple of interesting things there. Um, before we get to social media and, and, um, TV and movies, one thing that I thought was really interesting was that both men and women at the same rate.

So about two thirds of men said their father was highly influential for them. Um, same share of women say their mothers were highly influential for them in learning how to be a woman. But men are more likely to say [00:34:00] their mothers were influential than women are to say their father was influential to them in learning how to be a woman, which I thought was really interesting. Um, in

terms of that was, a,

SHEFFIELD: I can just say the number, uh, yeah, it's 47 percent of men said that they learned from their brother and 32 percent of women said they learned from their father,

HOROWITZ: yeah,

so I thought that was really interesting finding. And, um, in terms of social media and, and TV and movies, one of the things that we were wondering about is whether we would see young men more likely to say that they're learning from social media, right? We've heard a lot about through the man is fear and the, and the influencers are out there.

And so we really expected to see, um, maybe young men more than young women saying that social media has been a highly influential source for them in learning how to be a man. But that's not what we found. We found that, um, young women are actually considerably more likely than young men to say that they, that a lot of what they learned about their own gender, um, came from social media and also from, from pop culture, from TV and movies. And so I thought that was an interesting gender difference where, um, where women are the, are more likely young women especially, are more likely than young men. To say that these are, these are important sources for them and how to learn to be a woman.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, when I looked at this, to be honest, I thought that this might be another example of a self-reporting potential problem. Because most Of the time when you ask people, do you trust the media, the majority of them generally will say no.

But then at the same time, clearly they are using it to know about the world in some sense or another. Whatever they think the media is in their minds isn't necessarily mapping how they use it. So they trust it on some level, even though they say they don't trust it. It. And so, I mean, is this just young men not knowing where they're being influenced or they maybe are not telling the truth?

I mean, who can we even say? Um,

HOROWITZ: have to be aware that they're [00:36:00] being, that they're being influenced by the source. Like in this case in particular, I mean, like, I, I take your point with the question about do people say they trust the media? In this case, um, I don't think that this is necessarily a response that's controversial, right?

Or something that people might wanna not say that they turn to, to some of these sources. And, um, and you know, I do think that, you know, this is a self-administered web survey. And so I think sometimes when people have to say something to a live interviewer, we know that there's social desirability that sometimes makes people not wanna answer a certain way. Um, and you know, in this case we do know that there's also, there are also, um, you know, influencers that are talking about, you know, about things that might be related to being a woman, um, from, you know, policy issues to clothing, to different things. Just like there are male influencers talking about clothing and, and things like that to men. Um, and so we are right. I mean, people need to be aware that they're, you know, it, it, it is possible that they're consuming certain things. And certain media and certain, you know, and things on social media without necessarily being aware that that's an influence on them.

Role of religion and coaches in gender identity

HOROWITZ: But I think it's interesting also just looking at it relative to, to some of the other things that they say are influential to them because we did ask about religion and about, and again, about their parents and about coaches and, and friends.

And so we can also, um, you know, we can also look at that item relative to some of the other ones. And that's, that's pretty low for, for men and for young men.

SHEFFIELD: now you guys didn't have it in the report, but I am curious if there were any age, uh, differences with regard to, uh, religion or religious leaders, uh, impacting people.

HOROWITZ: Yeah. I'd have to go back and look. I mean, if we didn't have it in the report, it's usually because we didn't see a big significant difference.

SHEFFIELD: Mm

HOROWITZ: Um, but yeah, I [00:38:00] don't, I don't have that number off the top of my head. But, but in general, where we saw big differences, we, um, you know, we tended to, to report on them because we, we knew that, you know, for us, age was an important one to look at.

And that, in that question in particular, um, in terms of, you know, both, we wanna look at men and women separately, but then among men and among women, we were interested in,

in how different age groups were, were learning about these things.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

Marital status and gender identity

SHEFFIELD: Now, did you have a question about marital status in this survey?

survey?

HOROWITZ: We did. Yeah, we did. And we did find that for, um, for people who were married and, you know, like men, married men, um, often say that they're, that there were, we, we looked at married or living with a partner that, um, they're likely, very likely to say that they learn about being a man from their, you know, from their, from their partner, from their spouse or partner.

SHEFFIELD: Mm hmm. Now, were there any other notable differences that you can think of? I'm not, I won't put you on the spot if you can't, uh, think of that. It's just

HOROWITZ: I, I know. Yeah, there. Um, yeah, I mean, like the one, I think the most notable one really was the one that we already talked about with, um, the share of men saying they learned from their mothers about what it means to be a man compared to women saying they learned from their fathers. And then some of the, and the ones we talked about with young people in particular on, on social media, um, for the most part they were very similar.

So for example, 33% of men said that they learned from religion or religion, religious leaders, what it means to be a man. And you know, 30% of women said the same about learning from religion and religious leaders about what it means to be a woman. Um, the one, there was one that was different. Um, men were about twice as likely to say they learned from sports coaches. You know, and, and some might have been thinking about coaches they've had many years ago, um, depending on where they are in their lives. But that was, you know, it was 28%. So it was lower than some of the other things that we asked about. Um, but [00:40:00] men were more likely than, than women. 12% of women compared to 28% of men pointed to sports coaches. Um, but other than that, like in terms of their teachers and their, their friends, you know, we asked men about their male friends and women, about their female friends. Um, and we saw similar shares of both pointing to their friends of the same gender as being highly influential. So we didn't, we didn't see huge differences on a lot of these.

SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, so just continuing this a little bit further, some. People who do political analysis have tried to argue that relationship status might be another dividing line or a source of political identity in recent years.

What do you think about that?

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's interesting, right? Because we can't, like, right, because so, so married or partner men were, you know, slightly more likely than married or partner women to say that they learned from their partners. So it's 45% of men and 38% for women. So it's not, it's not a huge, a huge difference there. But I mean, it's, we can't, we can't compare them to, but we can't ask somebody who's not partnered. They've learned from their non-partner, right? Like, we can't, you can't compare those, those groups and, um, but the, but the, but the fact that so many people who are partnered, you know, either married or living with a partner, say that they learned about being a man or a woman from their, from their spouse or partner, I think is, I think is interesting.

And I think it's, um, you know, it's, it's something that people who are not partnered don't have that, a partner as a resource for, for that in particular.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

Societal acceptance of non-traditional gender roles

SHEFFIELD: Well, and in terms of some of these changing values, uh, one of the topics that you asked about was, did people think that society was sufficiently accepting of men taking on family rules that had been typically associated with women? And there were not a lot of differences, generally [00:42:00] speaking, across various subgroups, but there were some party differences here.

HOROWITZ: Yeah, there, there were a big party differences here. Um, when it comes, I mean, we asked both about being accepting of women. Who take on roles are more associated with men and men who take on roles more associated with women. And, um, you know, overall people answer those two questions pretty, pretty similarly.

So I wanted to mention that. And 43% said that society is not accepting enough of men who take on roles associated with women. And 44% said the same about women. Um, and in terms of party differences, I mean, um, big differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question about men who take on roles associated with women. Um, we have a majority of Democrats, 59% of Democrats saying the society isn't accepting enough. Republicans were more split. They were split almost exactly evenly between those who say too accepting and not accepting enough with 45% saying it's about right. Um, and so a more neutral, a more neutral answer.

So we, we do see big differences and, and we see differences. We see differences by gender. They're not nearly as large as the differences that we see by party. And then we see some differences by gender within each party. Um, so we have, um, Republican women are a little bit more on the side of saying society isn't accepting enough than they are on, um, society about right.

And Republican men are the opposite. They're a little bit, or I should say that again. Um, Republican women are more on the side of saying society isn't accepting enough of these men than to say society is too accepting. And Republican men are a little bit more on the side of saying society is too accepting than not accepting enough. Um, but half of Republican men say it's about right.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So that would be an interesting thing to keep tabs on for sure. Um, and I'm, I guess, you know, when I was looking at this, it did make me think, you know, there's, uh, not [00:44:00] very, not a lot of stuff that you're having to hear about, about dating and relationships. So it made me think that perhaps that, uh, you guys are going to be getting into that a little bit further.

Is that right?

HOROWITZ: It was funny. I was just thinking about that. Like we, we did do something, we did a big study on dating and relationships, um, about five years ago when I was just thinking that, um, you know, it might be time soon to repeat some of that.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I think that'd be really interesting if Pew could go back and do a study on that, because. There's just so many articles and social media posts about people saying that online dating is just so much worse than it used to be. And uh, but I don't know to what degree that attitude is commonly believed or not.

And then there are lots of other related dating topics as well. So have people's opinions changed with regard to. What they expect out of a potential partner in terms of the education level or their political opinions, or their wealth or their height, weight, et cetera, lifestyle. Um, there's just a lot of different variables that could be looked at here, I think.

HOROWITZ: And we did and we did ask that. I mean, I don't, again, I don't have the, I I didn't study up on that report 'cause it's, it's been a while since we've done it. But we did ask questions about that, like, about education and about, you know, like whether something would, you know, like would make you more likely, less likely to date someone who was, you know, a different, um, you know, we had different characteristics at that time. We also asked about somebody who was a, a Trump voter. Hillary, uh, a Clinton voter. Right. And so, um, we had some, some interesting things there too. But one finding that I wanted to, to point to in this, in this current survey is, um, we asked a series of questions about whether men. Are doing better now compared to 20 years ago, or, and whether women are doing better or worse now than 20 years ago across several realms. And one of them was in finding a romantic partner and people answered fairly similarly for how they think things are going now for women compared to 20 years ago versus men. [00:46:00] Um, and for both groups more said things, um, that men are, you know, men are, men are doing worse and women are doing worse than 20 years ago when it comes to finding a romantic partner. Um, by, by fairly large margins, more so than they say things are better or the same for for men and women in that realm. So Americans are definitely seeing it as, as something that

SHEFFIELD: is

HOROWITZ: has become harder for people in general.

SHEFFIELD: All right.

Republican voters seem to think hobbies are biologically based

SHEFFIELD: Well, so why don't we end the discussion here with talking about where people believe that some gender differences come from.

Uh, because I thought there, there were some pretty astounding findings in the study here. Especially in terms of partisanship.

I mean, they were huge. It looks like that 62% of Republicans in the poll here said that the hobbies that men and women have are basically biologically oriented, that they are driven to engage in them because of their biology rather than their social expectations or the way that they were raised. This, to me, was one of the biggest partisan gaps in the report when I was looking at it.

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting too. I mean, like overall, we asked, the way we first asked people whether they think men and women are different across different rounds, and for the most part, with the exception of this question about what their. Good at in the workplace for that one 57% overall said that, um, they're basically similar, but when it comes to how they express their feelings, their physical abilities, their hobbies and interests approach to parenting, um, a majority of Americans, two thirds or more said that men and women are different. But when what we, where we really saw differences by gender and by party was on this question. Like for each thing that they said, men and women are basically different on, we then asked if they thought these differences were mainly based on biological factors or whether they were based on different societal expectations for men and women. Um, and so yeah, across all of these, like the one that, um, the only one where we didn't see a big [00:48:00] gap by party or by gender was on physical abilities. Large, very large shares of both Democrats and Republicans who see differences in that way. Said those differences are mainly driven by biological differences between the genders, but on all the other things.

Right. Their hobbies and interests, like you just pointed out, how they express their feelings, their approach, the parenting, um, majorities of Republicans said each of those, um, for each of those, they said the differences were mainly driven by biology. And Democrats said that they were mainly different driven by, um, the different expectations that that society has for men and women.

And I thought that was really interesting.

SHEFFIELD: Now, did you guys do any interviews with individuals, uh, in response to that question? Cause I would be interested to hear

HOROWITZ: We didn't, yeah, we didn't, we didn't probe further on on that. Um, unfortunately, but, but I think even like, I think their results, um, speak for themselves. I think it's, I think that was super interesting to see where, you know, like their. There can be agreement that there are differences between the genders, but then where, where then people diverge is why are those differences?

Right? And if you think they're rooted in biology, then that you, that can't be bridged. Right? But if you think that they're driven by societal expectations, then societal expectations and cultural norms can change. Right? And so I think that that's, then you get into different, like, ideological differences on whether there should, you know, whether things should be done to make men and women more equal.

If you think that it's driven by biology, then that's, you know, then, then that's something that's fixed. Right? And

if they're, and if it, you can do anything to and if it's driven by societal expectations, then, then, then you might think that those are things that, that might change or maybe have changed over time or could change more.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well these are all really interesting findings, but, uh, let's see. So are [00:50:00] there any other aspects here of the report that you think we might need to touch on, or do you think we're good to go here?

HOROWITZ: I think we're good. I mean like, just the one thing that I would say very quickly is that, you know, I touched on these questions about whether things are better or worse for men and women now compared to 20 years ago. And there were three items in particular when it came to the workplace. So getting well, paying jobs, getting, um, leadership positions in the workplace and getting into colleges or universities where majorities, large majorities of Americans think women are doing better now than they were 20 years ago. And fewer than half say that things are better for men now compared to 20 years ago. Um, and also people think that changing gender roles have benefited women more than men. But what's really interesting also. Is that the vast majority of Americans don't think that the gains for women have come at the expense of men. And so I thought those were an interesting set of results that people do think that men have fallen behind or been stagnant in some areas that women have made progress on. They do see more progress for women. Um, but for the most part, um, people don't blame women for, for, you know, for men either falling behind or not progressing.

And I thought those were, were interesting and important findings.

SHEFFIELD: Uh, yeah, absolutely. And actually, the idea about, uh, asking, you know, getting into there, there were some prejudices on the question of getting into a college of university or well paying job that's which, you know, might, you know, I, you know, when you look at some of the messages that Donald Trump is putting out, he doesn't say that explicitly, some of his supporters do kind of touch on that.

Perhaps they are responding to something that's out there.

HOROWITZ: In general, both like men, um, you know, Republican men were more likely than Republican women to say that men are doing worse now, and democratic men are also more likely than Democratic women to say that men are doing worse now [00:52:00] in those areas. So that's, so that's a gender difference overall. That's independent of party.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely.

Conclusion

SHEFFIELD: Well, we could probably dissect this poll and a lot of other ones for a lot more, but we both have things to get to and I appreciate you joining us and I appreciate everybody listening to us for this conversation.

Um, so for people who wanna keep up with you, Juliana, what are you recommendations for them?

HOROWITZ: So they can go to peer research.org and um, you know, all of our reports are available online, or data sets are made available to the public. And, um, you know, that's the best way I'm not a big social media person.

I am on x. Um. I honestly don't remember my handle. Um, but, um, because I don't ever, it's, it's very rare that I post anything. So, um, but there are institutional accounts for the peer research Center. So if you search for the peer research center on X, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, um, you will find our institutional accounts there.

And they post lots of really great stuff from all of the research areas at the Peer Research Center. Um, and so, um, there's a little bit in there for, for everybody depending on your, on your personal interests. We have a lot of different, um, research groups within, within the center. But, um, but yes, I would definitely encourage you to, to search for a peer research center on your favorite social media platform.

We're not on TikTok, um, yet, maybe one day, but we're on Instagram and X and um, and LinkedIn.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also, uh, there are some really good mailing lists that Pew has as well.

HOROWITZ: That's right. We have several newsletters and mailing lists, and so if you go to pewresearch.org, there's a place where you can, where you can subscribe to those, to those newsletters as well.

SHEFFIELD: Cool. All right. Well, thanks for being here and good to have you.

HOROWITZ: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody joining us for the [00:54:00] conversation and you can always get more if you go to TheoryofChange.show. This episode was audio only, but most of ours are video as well.

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