Do young left-liberal women favour security over freedom?
Reaction to my piece about the tendency of young women to be more left-liberal (yet remain temperamentally conservative) was positive and, before moving on, I have more to say about this fascinating topic. The World Values Survey (WVS) – a longstanding survey associated with Ron Inglehart and Pippa Norris, the two scholars who have written extensively about women’s values – contains questions which reveal further nuances in the relationship between young women and left-liberal ideologies. WVS collects data from countries across the world, but I will restrict analysis to the seven Western countries in the most recent (2017-22) wave: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Unsurprisingly, WVS shows that young women tend to be more left-wing than young men but, more interestingly, has questions which ask respondents to choose between (i) freedom and equality and ii) freedom and security. The tendency for young (15-29-year-old) women to favour equality over freedom compared to young men is predictable – others have written about this – yet the question which asks about freedom and security produces fascinating results. On this issue, left-liberal ideologies have tended to be unambiguous, favouring freedom over security (notwithstanding certain forms of left-wing authoritarianism). Contrastingly, authoritarian ideologies favour security over freedom. If young left-liberal women have different positions on this question, this may entail changes to left-liberal ideologies.
According to WVS, young left-wing women have greater preference for security over freedom, compared to young left-wing men (see chart below). The difference of 0.13 (on a 1-2 scale) is quite considerable; the difference between all right and left-wingers is less than 0.03. But what does this mean? By necessity, survey questions are brief and respondents interpret them in different ways. And this is a cross-national survey, deepening this ambiguity.
Such preference for security over freedom might appear in attitudes to civil liberties. Historically, this area involves trade-offs between freedom and security. In a question which asks about the importance of civil liberties to democracy, young left-wing women regard civil liberties as important (7.82 out of 10), but assign them less importance than young left-wing men (8.02). WVS has three more specific questions on civil liberties (‘Does the government have the right to… keep people under video surveillance?; monitor emails?; collect information about citizens?). In all three questions, differences between young left-wing women and men are not statistically significant.
Transgender rights is another area in which concerns about safety are salient and different attitudes might become apparent. Among gender-critical activists, women seem to be over-represented and safety (in places such as public bathrooms) is central to the arguments of these women. Yet repeated surveys (unfortunately, WVS has no question) show that, among the general population, women are more supportive of transgender rights than men. This tendency is particularly strong among young left-wing women; they are one of the most supportive groups in the population. In this case, the motivation of care seems to be prominent; female defences of the right of transgender women to use female-only spaces emphasize the vulnerability of this group. Debates about freedom of speech are similar, young left-liberal women tending to be more supportive of restrictions.
Fairly or not, some regard transgender rights and freedom of speech as culture war issues, i.e. distractions which are peripheral to core dimensions of politics. If one is looking for an issue which is politically central and demonstrates the preference of young left-liberal women for security, the Covid restrictions are revealing. WVS has no relevant items, yet the US Nationscape survey contains questions (see chart) which show that, across issues, young liberal women were more supportive of restrictions than male counterparts.
As with the attachment of young left-liberal women to temperamental conservatism (see last post), this is an intriguing area. Young women tend to be more left-liberal than young men yet, despite security being a traditional conservative value, young left-liberal women have a more favourable attitude towards it and this is manifest in several policy domains. Of course, the meaning of security is highly contestable. When a group’s claims for security are regarded as invalid, as can be the case with gender-critical women, young left-liberal women tend to be less supportive. But when a group is perceived as deserving of protection, as with vulnerable groups during the pandemic, young left-liberal women tend to be more sympathetic.
Are such values reshaping the liberal left? On the one hand, this can be exaggerated. Looking at survey evidence, differences in certain values of young left-liberal men and women could be greater; as we have seen, there are no meaningful differences in attitudes towards some civil liberties issues. And as this Substack emphasizes, ideologies are path dependent, i.e. historical developments constrain future changes.
Nonetheless, changes in values can have a cumulative impact. As we emphasize in our book (on preorder soon!), a series of demographic influences have changed Western societies in recent decades, creating demand for ideological change; in this case, the growing prominence of women in public life is relevant. And if women are more supportive of the liberal-left, one would expect ideological changes to be more marked in left-liberal movements.
And this may be what is happening. Though the desire for security is most apparent in social justice ideology (or what some call ‘wokeness’), other progressive ideologies are scarcely immune from such developments. During the pandemic, liberals displayed a pronounced care instinct; probably, this reflected the ideology’s increasingly female base.
Perhaps changes to liberalism are most interesting. After all, freedom is the core liberal idea and emphasis upon security threatens this. Admittedly, some degree of emphasis is compatible with liberalism. As the ideology scholar Michael Freeden argues, ideologies have core, adjacent and peripheral dimensions and there can be greater stress on security without undermining the liberal core.
But of course, there are limits to this. Female support bases will entail gradual changes to left-liberal ideologies and, over a long timescale, such changes may have revolutionary effects.
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Fascinating, Tom. And, as ever, a refreshing change from the usual flattening we see about the feminising of the culture. Tangential, but maybe interesting too, is the suggestion that men who are closely connected with woman tend to adopt their views. I don't know how well this finding has replicated, but it could increase the female influence on left/liberal beliefs.