There is alarm in the feminist movement, and rightly so. The number of women who declare themselves feminists, that is, who advocate for equal rights between the genders, falls. And it does so clearly: from 67% in 2021 to 57% last year. It is the first time that this has happened since 2017, the date on which the Reina Sofía Center of FAD Juventud began to carry out the Youth and Gender Barometer, since since then the number of women who defined themselves as feminists had not stopped growing.
The uprooting of feminism is not only seen in women. According to the 2023 barometer, the trend towards the reduction of feminist sentiment that begins in 2019 is consolidated, when 37% of young people claim to feel feminist, dropping in 2021 to 32%, and in 2023, to 26 %. That is, today only one in four young boys considers themselves a feminist.
The cause? There is a clear consensus among experts that the polarization that society is experiencing partly explains the decline in people who define themselves as feminists and the ideological connotations that this carries with it, they point out.
Although this decline is true, it is also true that when we go beyond the qualification, youth value the concept of feminism positively: almost 60% believe that it should involve both women and men, and 47% assure that That feminism is key to achieving real equality.
Although, as usual, this positive assessment is higher among women: 64% of women compared to 52% of men believe that it should also involve men, and 57% of them compared to 37% of them believe that feminism is necessary to achieve real equality.
And beyond. According to the 2023 Youth and Gender Barometer, there is a great consensus among young people that the fight for equality is essential to achieve a more just society, being aware of the inequalities generated by the patriarchal social and cultural structure.
In fact, almost half of young people (49%) affirm that inequalities between men and women are large or very large in Spain; To which is added that two out of every three young people consider that gender violence is a very serious social problem.
“The feeling of the majority of youth is that equality between men and women is a fundamental value in our society,” they point out from the FAD.
This report, carried out through 1,500 interviews with young people between 15 and 29 years old, warns of a “large” minority with “regressive” ideas regarding the roles of couples and families, according to the FAD. And as these statements show: more than a third of the total respondents consider that women are born better prepared to take care of children (36%); 26%, that women, even if they work, what they really want is to create a home and have children; 22% defend that it is men who should support the family; 18% that women should take care of their family rather than their professional life and 13% that it is not good to teach a child to cook, clean or take care of minors.
The data from this barometer also indicate that the impact of stereotypes associated with the patriarchal family model and traditional romantic love has been reinforced in recent years. It is detected, for example, in the defense of positions such as that the boy must protect “his” girl (from 33.6% in 2021 to 43.8% in 2023) or that jealousy is a proof of love ( 21.2% in 2021 and 27.1% in 2023), in both cases exceeding the degree of agreement of men to that of women by 20 percentage points.
