Are young women more 'woke' than their male peers? In Singapore, it's not so clear-cut

SINGAPORE: Women are “more susceptible to believing in the woke side of things”. That’s what Mr Ng, a 30-year-old Singaporean who only wanted to be known by his surname, believes.

The finance executive identifies as politically conservative. “I guess the left has gone so far left that anyone in the moderate spectrum becomes conservative,” he told CNA.

For a few years now, Mr Ng has regularly got his news from, in his own words, “conspiracy theorists” like Alex Jones, the US far-right media personality and owner of the InfoWars fake news website.

Some of his views are influenced by the preoccupations of US politics. For example, he believes that allowing children to transition to another gender before they reach adulthood is “child abuse”.

He also holds opinions that are outright controversial in Singapore. He thinks the COVID-19 vaccine is dangerous and should not be taken, and that people should have the freedom to say that without being censored.

Mr Ng has noticed that among his friends – most of whom are male – the men are more likely to share his views than the women.

He belongs to a reportedly growing group of young men around the world who align with right-wing, more conservative worldviews. And they are veering away from female peers who are trending in the opposite direction towards left-wing, more liberal worldviews.

This is opening a “dramatic” ideological gap between young men and women – a “new global gender divide”,  according to the Financial Times in January.

And it upends a well-established pattern that “every generation tends to move as one in terms of its politics and general ideology”.

“Gen Z is two generations, not one,” said the British paper, citing data from South Korea, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In Singapore, despite the views held by Mr Ng and some other young people interviewed by CNA, studies of the wider population show that this global gender divide does not seem to be prevalent here.

Instead, the picture is mixed. One researcher even said the trend of young women being more liberal could be the reverse in Singapore.

What the surveys do show, however, are some gender differences in views on issues like racism, marriage and parenthood – which can in turn inform political beliefs.

WHAT THE SURVEYS SAY

Generally, left-wing politics advocate social equality, liberty, progress and reform; while right-wing politics support social hierarchy, order and tradition.

These were the definitions used by researchers from the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) Social Lab at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, in a major survey of political attitudes in Singapore.

The World Values Survey, published in 2021, found that almost half of respondents in Singapore were undecided on their political orientation. About 30 per cent were left-leaning and about 21 per cent were right-leaning.

That survey also did not show significant gender differences in political orientation, and at any age, said Dr Teo Kay Key, a research fellow at IPS Social Lab and co-author of a study on the survey results.

Beyond looking at whether young men and women identify as conservatives or liberals, the global gender ideological gap also encompasses attitudes towards issues like gender equality, racism and xenophobia.

Dr Teo pointed to a 2022 CNA-IPS survey on race relations, which found that women in Singapore aged 21 to 35 were in fact less likely than men their age to take action against racism.

If extrapolated, this data point suggests that the global trend of young women being more liberal than their male peers is not only absent in Singapore, but even reversed here, she said.

In the World Values Survey, women were also found to be more likely to prioritise security over freedom.

That overriding concern might play a part in women considering whether to push for causes such as anti-racism, said Dr Teo.

The political scientist said the general pattern she has seen from studying various surveys in Singapore is that “females are a bit more cautious and conservative”.

Meanwhile, Dr Teo's IPS colleague Kalpana Vignehsa has researched gender differences in aspirations around marriage and parenthood.

An IPS poll published last month found that women aged 21 to 34 were less likely to foresee themselves getting married and less likely to hope to have children in the future, compared with their male peers.

Dr Vignehsa, a sociologist, explained that this could be attributed to young women embracing gender equality; doubting whether men are ready to become equal partners at home; and finding meaning and fulfillment in alternative paths, among other factors perhaps associated with more liberal, left-leaning views.

There is not yet any evidence to show that these gender differences affect marriage rates, but it is possible to extrapolate that they have affected Singapore’s declining total fertility rate, said the IPS senior research fellow.

These divisions may also be linked to transnational relationships. Local men have historically been more likely to marry a foreign spouse than local women, and this trend may continue, said Dr Vignehsa.

“It is also true that some local women find that they are more comfortable with the more egalitarian expectations of foreign men from certain countries,” she added.

Still, the experts concluded that for the most part, the effect of gender on political attitudes in Singapore was not as pronounced as other identity markers like race and socioeconomic status.

WHAT YOUNG SINGAPOREANS SAY

To graduate student Sharvesh Leatchmanan, 26, women are more open-minded.

“We live in a society where it is obviously patriarchal, and I think a lot of times, men are not challenged,” said Mr Leatchmanan, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. 

As a result, it is easier for men to “hold on to what they think is right, whether they might be or not”.

In contrast, women are “constantly challenged on a day-to-day basis”, which might explain why they are more receptive to alternative viewpoints, said Mr Leatchmanan, who runs the Minority Voices Instagram account which discusses racism in Singapore.

Ms Sugidha Nithiananthan, director of advocacy, research and communications at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), pointed to the rise of the “manosphere” – the collective of internet communities centred on conservativism, anti-feminism and “male rights activism” – for allowing pockets of space online where misogynistic and sometimes violent viewpoints flow unchecked, and are even encouraged.

This can manifest in reality. The manosphere was at the root of recent criminal cases including the network of men who raped each other’s wives, and the sharing of non-consensual intimate images online, said Ms Nithiananthan.

Undergraduate Darcel Anastasia Al Anthony, 23, meanwhile, told CNA she has seen the ideological gender gap at school.

One instance was a classroom discussion on artificial intelligence, during which female students emphasised the dangers of the burgeoning technology, such as deepfake porn.

Women are disproportionately targeted by deepfake porn – 96 per cent of all such content online comprises non-consensual fake videos of women, according to cybersecurity firm Deeptrace.

But Ms Anthony said her male classmates “completely overlooked” such risks and found it hard to understand why the women in the room had reservations about AI.

“I just don’t think they can truly empathise,” she said.

Despite such observations, the young Singaporeans CNA spoke to were wary of making generalisations about all men and women. 

Ms Anthony recalled another occasion during a lunch gathering in the university canteen.

When a male engineering student at the table learnt that she was majoring in English literature, he laughed and told her: “Girls nowadays, they have no idea what to do. They shouldn’t even be in university, they should just stay at home.”

She told him off on the spot for being rude, and the atmosphere turned tense.

Yet the other men at the table did not join in his laughter. And Ms Anthony later learnt that the engineering student was eventually pulled aside and told not to make such comments – by a male friend of hers.