Alarm in the feminist movement, and rightly so. The number of women who declare themselves feminists, that is to say, who advocate for equal rights between the sexes, is falling. And clearly: from 67% in 2021 to 57% last year. It is the first time this has happened since 2017, when the Queen Sofia Center of FAD Youth began to carry out the Youth and Gender Barometer, since since then the number of women who define themselves as feminists had not stopped growing
The uprooting with feminism is not only seen in women. According to the 2023 Barometer, the trend towards the reduction of the feminist position that began in 2019, when 37% of them affirm that they feel feminist, is consolidating, which drops in 2021 to 32% and in 2023 to 26 %. In other words, today only one in four young men consider themselves a feminist.
The cause? There is a clear consensus among experts that the polarization that society is experiencing partly explains the decline of people who define themselves as feminists and the ideological connotations that this implies, they point out.
Although this decline is real, it is also true that when it goes beyond the qualification, young people value the concept of “feminism” in a positive way: almost 60% believe that it should involve both women and men and 47% say that feminism is key to achieving real equality.
But, as usual, this positive assessment is higher among women: 64% of women compared to 52% of men believe that it should also involve them and 57% of them compared to 37% of they believe that feminism is necessary to achieve real equality.
And, further, 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 fairer society, and they are aware of the inequalities generated by the social structure and patriarchal culture.
In fact, almost half of young people (49%) affirm that the inequalities between men and women are great or very great in Spain; and to this is added the fact that two out of three young people consider that gender violence is a very serious social problem.
“The majority opinion of young people 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 in relation to the roles of partner and family, they point out from the FAD. And as a sample, these statements: more than a third of all 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 the men who must support the family; 18% that women should take care of their family before their professional life, and 13% that it is not good to teach a boy to cook, clean or take care of children.
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 approaches such as that the boy must protect “his” girl (from 33.6% in 2021 to 43.8% in 2023) or that jealousy is a test of love (21.2% in 2021 and 27.1% in 2023), two cases in which the degree of agreement of men exceeds that of women by 20 percentage points.
