Gender Role Attitudes in Europe and Beyond: Trends, Polarisation, and Possible Backlash

The rise of anti-gender movements across Europe and evidence of attitude reversals among younger men raise urgent questions about whether decades of progress towards gender equality now face fundamental challenges. This narrative review addresses these concerns by synthesising evidence from 85 studies (1975–2024) to examine how have gender role attitudes evolved across time and contexts, what explains variation by gender and age, and if and why are we observing recent polarisation and reversals. Analysing attitudes towards the gendered division of labour between work and family spheres, the review integrates findings from major cross-national surveys (ISSP, ESS, WVS) using diverse methodologies, including longitudinal panel studies, cohort analyses, and cross-national comparisons across European and other developed democracies. Three key findings emerge. First, substantial liberalisation from the 1970s through the mid-1990s stalled thereafter, with public sphere attitudes continuing to liberalise while private sphere attitudes stagnated. Second, persistent gender gaps – with women consistently more egalitarian – appear to be widening among younger cohorts, as Generation Z men show more traditional attitudes than older male cohorts in several European countries. Third, several studies find that more than half of Europeans hold multidimensional "egalitarian essentialist" views, combining progressive public sphere attitudes with traditional family beliefs, challenging unidimensional measurement approaches. These findings advance understanding of attitude change by revealing that modernisation operates through domain-specific, non-linear trajectories shaped by the interaction of individual characteristics (particularly education) and institutional contexts (welfare regimes, democratic institutions, cultural heritage). The documented reversals and polarisation suggest that gender equality progress is neither inevitable nor irreversible, with critical implications for understanding contemporary political backlash and designing policies that address multidimensional attitude complexity.