When I was eight years old, we had a “dress as your hero” day at school. I insisted on dressing up as my mum. I suppose I was not yet too embarrassed to admit to idolising my parents. Though as far as I recall it was an easy choice —obviously my mum was my hero.
As far as I was concerned, she was, and still is, the cleverest person on the planet. She wasn’t my hero because she was really good at baking cakes (which she is), or because she used to sew many of my dresses by hand. It was her intellect and independence that inspired me to go into school wearing knitwear and a pair of fake glasses, with my hair pinned-up with her signature claw clip.
Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by high-achieving, outspoken women. At university, all my tutors were women. Since graduating, I’ve worked mostly for female CEOs, with female line managers to coach me through the perils of early adulthood. Christ, Malala herself was in the year above me at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford back in 2018.
My life has consistently been filled with the kinds of women who’ve made my own forays into academia, the workplace, writing, relationships easier. It is thanks to them—and the generations of women that came before—that I have the freedom of choice. Thanks to these women I feel no shame being: “a girly swot” (smart), “bossy” (assertive) or “a slut” (comfortable in both my body and sexuality).
I have a lot to be grateful for. And this was reflected in a recent survey by Ipsos and King’s College London (KCL) which revealed this: “55 per cent of people believe young women today will have a better life than women from their parents’ generation, while only 40 per cent say the same about young men compared with their parents’ generation.”
So, more than half of people believe that young women are set for a better future—and young men... not so much. Are they right?
I mulled over this question during a panel session at KCL for International Women’s Day. On the one hand, gen Z women like me are building on the strongest foundation of rights that women have ever had—and many of us grew up with the encouragement from our parents to pursue whatever careers we liked, from Stem to sports to entrepreneurship.
But now I worry that the economic and political system under which third-wave feminism thrived is crumbling. Jobs are being taken over by AI, stable and affordable housing has become a pipedream and the climate crisis is rapidly spiraling. With so much precarity, across almost every aspect of life, I fear that the fight for gender equality starts to look like a luxury pursuit. People don’t have time to think critically about gender roles when they’re struggling to meet their most basic needs.
And I’m also not sure that the future wellbeing of women can be disentangled from the future of young men so easily. The backlash against feminism and the growing ideological chasm between young men and women could in themselves threaten our future wellbeing.
Never before has there been such a disconnect between men and women of a certain generation. As a result of our upbringing—and cultural environment—young women are more liberal than ever, while gen Z men are more conservative than ever. And when men suffer collectively, when swathes of young men are seduced by the likes of Andrew Tate and defer to the far-right, women suffer too.
Sure, I reckon that young women probably don’t get groped on public transport as often as our predecessors did, and HR departments are ready to come down hard on any man who refers to a female colleague as “love” or “sweet cheeks”. But the pool of eligible bachelors with whom a young woman might build a life is rapidly shrinking, as more and more young men tumble down the red-pill rabbit hole.
I wonder if our generation faces an entirely new and difficult task. Previous generations of women have fought tirelessly for what are basic human rights—and for that I am grateful. Now, my generation has the challenge of successfully renegotiating and redefining “gender roles” within our newfound equality. If women are no longer relegated to the kitchen and men no longer need to bear the burden of sole financial responsibility, then where do we sit in relation to each other?
Until we deradicalise young men (and find them a “place” in this new, equitable society) I cannot agree with the statement that “young women today will have a better life than women from their parents’ generation”. We could have a better life—but that will require an economic model that can support the dreams of both women and men, as well as a planet that can sustain them
