This International Women’s Day, Ipsos and King’s College London released findings from one of the largest studies on gender attitudes in recent memory. The study involved 23,000 people, 29 countries, and six continents. The goal was to map how views on gender equality have changed across generations. What they found, particularly about young men, has shocked everyone. Thirty-one per cent of Gen Z men believe a wife should always obey her husband. Thirty-three per cent think a husband should have the final word on major household decisions. Compare that to Baby Boomer men, the generation routinely mocked for being orthodox and always cracking wife jokes, where those figures sit at just 13 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. As it turns out, Gen Z men are more conservative than the previous generations. 

The generation raised on conversations about consent, pronouns, and gender equality is, in a measurable and significant slice, moving backwards. And the gap is twice as wide as anyone expected.

So what on earth happened?

Why are Gen Z men more conservative?

The men who were supposed to bury these ideas have resurrected them, and the attitudes don’t stop at marriage. Forty-three per cent of Gen Z men agreed that young men should try to be physically tough. There is, however, a glaring contradiction buried in the same data.

While Gen Z men are the most likely to believe women shouldn’t appear too independent, they are also the group most likely, at 41 per cent, versus 27 per cent of Boomers, to say a woman with a successful career is more attractive. They want an equal partner and a hierarchical household simultaneously. This contradiction reveals a generation that hasn’t quite worked out what it believes.

Gen Z men are probably more conservative because they didn’t learn about gender from their parents or teachers alone. They learnt it from YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, and a vast ecosystem of male-oriented content that spent the last decade telling young men that feminism had gone too far and that they were the real victims of a society that no longer valued them. And this reflected in their responses. Fifty-seven per cent of Gen Z men agreed that “we have gone too far in promoting equality, which has led to discrimination against men”. But only 42 per cent of Baby Boomers agreed to this statement.

The rise of the manosphere

The study further contributes to the dialogue around the rise of the manosphere. Figures like Andrew Tate haven’t just popularised it but made being an alpha male the prerequisite of being a man. But the thing is, influencers like Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines didn’t create this sentiment; they just monetised what existed. The audience was already there: young men feeling lost, underperforming in life compared to their female peers, not getting the kind of attention they thought they would from women. So, when someone steps in with a clear, confident, even ridiculous solution to that problem—be dominant, be strong, be the head of your household—it lands hard on an identity that’s still forming. And we saw that in the show Adolescence. 

India has its own watered-down versions of Andrew Tate in the form of Elvish Yadav and Lakshay Chaudhary, and more recently, we saw Nakul Dhull qualify too. And before we dismiss them as just slightly problematic content creators, it’s important to note that the above mentioned study included India. Indian Gen Z men’s attitude was much more misogynistic than that of other countries. Seventy per cent of Indian men said that they have to do too much for equality. On the other hand, only 44 per cent of Americans agreed to that statement.

Gen Z was never monolithic

Here’s the part that gets lost in the headlines: Gen Z was never one thing. The same generation that produces young men sharing clips of Andrew Tate also produces the highest rates of LGBTQ+ identification in history. It contains multitudes which are contradictory, loud, and extreme.

What we’re really seeing is polarisation. Gen Z women and Gen Z men are not just disagreeing; they are increasingly living in separate cultural universes, consuming different content, holding different worldviews, and perhaps struggling to understand each other. The study itself underlines this: Gen Z women are moving in the opposite direction entirely, with just 18 per cent agreeing a wife should obey, compared to 31 per cent of Gen Z men.

It’s also worth noting one limitation of the data: the Ipsos survey was conducted online, meaning it likely skews towards urban, internet-connected populations in each country. In nations like India or Brazil, rural and lower-income perspectives may be underrepresented. The findings are significant, but the real-world picture could be starker still.

The question that’s worth asking

It’s easy to read these statistics and conclude that these young men are simply sexist. Some of them are. But the more useful question is: what does a young man with no strong male role models, poor academic outcomes, limited economic prospects, and an algorithmic diet of hyper-masculine content do with his confusion about identity?

He reaches for the most available answer. And right now, the loudest available answer is a retrograde one. The researchers behind this study put it plainly: Gen Z men are not only placing limiting expectations on women, but they are trapping themselves within restrictive gender norms too. Gender inequality isn’t just a women’s issue; it never was, because equality benefits everyone, and research has shown this over and over again.

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