It’s perfectly normal for young people to vote a little differently from older generations. It’s also normal for men and women to have somewhat different political views. But never before have the political differences between the sexes been as dramatic as they are today.
Women are now more likely than men to earn a university degree, they often out-earn their male peers (the much-publicized “gender pay gap” in favor of men is largely a myth), and you might expect their political views to align more closely with men’s—or that men would move toward views once associated with the “weaker sex.” Instead, the opposite is happening. As American political commentator Robert Henderson noted in his article Sexual Politics, the more women’s social position resembles that of men, the further apart the sexes drift politically.
Henderson attributes this to women being, on average, more sensitive and empathetic. In his view, this is why they so often side with criminals, drug addicts, drug dealers, and even jihadists. I’m not at all convinced that this is the right explanation.
For one thing, militant liberalism among women shows a kind of hardness and indifference that would once have been considered pathological. No compassion for the victims of migrant violence. No compassion for the poor trapped in decaying neighborhoods. No compassion for children beaten daily in schools run by migrant gangs. No compassion for the victims of liberal repression. No compassion for the working poor crushed by the Green Deal. No compassion even for men falsely accused of rape or sexual harassment. One need only recall Barcelona mayor Ada Colau laughing cheerfully at the funeral of victims of a jihadist attack.
For another, liberal policies consistently fail to help those in need. In fact, after every major program, the very people who were supposed to benefit are left worse off than before. Clearly, compassion is not what’s driving these politics.
A better explanation, I would argue, lies in another trait in which women excel—one that also has deep evolutionary roots: conformity. Women are exceptionally good at reading what is expected of them and adapting to it. As the balance of power shifts, they will be just as fiercely anti-liberal as they are now liberal.
And what about compassion? Of course, women are more compassionate. But evolutionary psychologists have pointed out that traits like compassion or altruism are only advantageous if they are selectively applied—if we can distinguish between those who deserve them and those who do not. And that, precisely, is what we are seeing in women’s politics today.