From Gap to Cleavage: Gender Polarization Among Gen Z in the EU

Across the European Union, Generation Z is developing a marked gendered split in political attitudes that aligns closely with contemporary identity-war conflicts. While previous generations showed converging preferences, Gen Z is characterized by a sharp divergence. I argue that this shift is rooted in the interplay between digital fragmentation, feminist mobilization and a reactionary defense of traditional masculine identities. Using pooled microdata from the European Election Study 2024 and the European Social Survey 2023–2024, linked to party-position estimates from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey 2024 (EU27, n = 35,794; CHES 2024: 609 experts placing 279 parties), this paper uses R to map how young women and men diverge in both vote choice and ideological positioning on three dimensions: left–right, support for women’s rights and the postmaterialist–traditional (GAL–TAN) axis. Findings show that the sharpest divergence occurs on the GAL–TAN cultural dimension, reflecting a dual movement: young women become steadily more postmaterialist, while young men reverse the Millennial trajectory and shift toward more traditional, order-centred positions. Distributional evidence at the extremes reinforces this pattern: European Gen Z women are the only gender-generation group with a larger share choosing strongly progressive parties (26.7%) than strongly traditional ones, whereas 30.2% of European Gen Z men align with strongly traditional or authoritarian platforms, also the highest share across all gender and generation groups. Interaction models further indicate that economic hardship amplifies the Gen Z gender gap, while religious attendance and parental foreign origin moderate it. Together, these findings suggest that gender is turning into a crucial political cleavage among Europe’s youngest voters, with direct implications for political rights, social cohesion and the vulnerability of democratic values to authoritarian cultural frames.