Sara Pequeño: 31% of Gen Z men say wife should ‘obey her husband.’ Yikes

New data has come out showing that Gen Z men across the world hold some pretty regressive views about women – even more than those of the older adults whose relationships they’re trying to emulate.

In a poll conducted by IPSOS of more than 23,000 people from 29 countries, 31% of Gen Z men believe “a wife should always obey her husband.” By comparison, only 13% of baby boomers responded as such in the International Women’s Day study.

The majority of Gen Z men – 59% – believe that men are “expected to do too much to support equality,” compared with 45% of baby boomers; 57% of Gen Z men believe women’s equality has gone so far that men are now discriminated against, compared with 42% of their boomer counterparts.

Some Gen Z men are so committed to the role of misogynist that they’re already trying to get women to obey them. More than 1 in 3 Gen Z men also believe that “young women should try to be physically attractive,” and that women “should not say ‘I love you’ to their friends.”

The results confirm a lot of what Gen Z women already know, regardless of where we live in the world: Our male peers do not see us as equals. And while there are many reasons men are behaving in this way, it doesn’t change the fact that Gen Z women are having to put up with all of this misogyny.

Of course, this poll features more than just the United States and the Western world, so the numbers probably seem skewed to many of us. I can only speak for what Generation Z born from 1997 to 2012 is experiencing in the United States, and there’s a reason this poll resonated so deeply with American women and our lived experiences.

This polling also reveals how Gen Z men feel about themselves – and it’s honestly just as depressing.

IPSOS found that 43% of Gen Z men believe their fellow young men should aim to be “physically tough.” About a third of Gen Z men believe that men should solve their own problems, as opposed to seeking outside help. A similar percentage believe men should never say “I love you” to their friends.

The idea that men should be physically tough makes sense when you look into what American men are watching on YouTube: from accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate to Clavicular, the “looksmaxxing” content creator so obsessed with his looks that he’s known for hitting himself in the face with a hammer so his bones grow back sharper.

It’s perplexing to me that a generation of heterosexual men seems to care more about how they are perceived by one another than how they are to women, who surely don’t appreciate being spoken about as if they are property.

But what’s more concerning is that these men are upholding the same gender roles that contribute to negative mental health and the epidemic of loneliness among young men. Gen Z reports more mental health challenges as a whole. Young men are only exacerbating the negative feelings they have toward themselves by believing that they need to be physically fit and should never show emotion.

I think that our increasingly lonely, isolated generation of men is upholding gender roles because they’re scared of what happens when you let people in – and I think women can relate to that.

It’s not like young men are the only ones focused on one another instead of the opposite sex: Women have been taking steps to prove that they don’t need men. They’re going “boysober” – a rebranded form of celibacy. They’re admitting that having a boyfriend is embarrassing in the pages of Vogue. They’re labeling their feelings about dating men as “heterofatalism.”

It isn’t the fault of women that men feel this way – nor is it our responsibility to fix misogyny. We’re simply forgetting how to interact with each other in real time, a product of social media and the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think the more that Gen Z men talk to Gen Z women, they will find that we’re more alike than different. They must learn to see us not as prizes to be won or property to be owned, but as real people. The only way they’ll be able to change their views of women is by interacting with us more.

At the root of it, men are scared of women.

A lot of this polling could be chalked up to a youthful desire to be edgy and subvert the norms of our time. It’s entirely possible that young men will lose some of this edge over time.

As an older Gen Zer, I see it as something that these men could possibly grow out of. I’ve seen how teenage boys who make misogynist jokes eventually come to realize that women like them more when they aren’t being cruel. Considering that a huge chunk of the generation is still in their teenage years, it’s possible that many of them are still beholden to the way they think the world works, versus how it actually does.

Despite our generational feelings toward baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, perhaps we can look at their answers to this poll as a glimmer of hope. Boomer men aren’t perfect feminists, but they are less likely to uphold the same belief systems that keep women submissive.

I hope that this is a sign that men my age will grow out of the desire to dominate women. Maybe one day, they’ll even see us as equals.

Follow USA Today columnist Sara Pequeño on Bluesky: @sarapequeno.bsky.social