The gender gap between men and women has been a durable fact of life in American politics — and nowhere is this gap larger than among the youngest cohort of American adults, Gen Z.
But it’s not just politics driving the divide. The latest NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey shows how the political gender gap persists alongside different social beliefs between young men and women.
Gender divides within adults ages 18 to 29 show up in questions ranging from how Americans feel about President Donald Trump to their views on what constitutes success. Young men and women also feel very different about mental health, cultural issues and questions about gender and the workplace.
Among Gen Z overall, 64% disapprove of Trump’s job performance versus 36% who approve. But young men are more evenly split (53% disapprove, 47% approve) than young women (74% disapprove, 26% approve). The 21-point difference in Trump’s approval rating is unchanged from April.
That split continues when it comes to Trump’s handling of issues. On two issues — inflation and the cost of living, and trade and tariffs — young men approve of the president by about 20 points more than young women do. The biggest Gen Z gender split on the issues is on immigration, where 45% of young men approve of the way Trump is handling deportation and immigration, compared to just 21% of young women.
The gap carries into questions in other areas as well. Members of Gen Z are more anxious overall than members of other generations, with about a quarter responding that they “feel anxious or worried about the future” almost all of the time.
This high level of anxiety about the future is largely driven by young women. One-third of young women said they feel anxious “almost all of the time,” and an additional third reported being anxious “most of the time.” In contrast, just under 2 in 10 Gen Z men reported feeling anxious all of the time.
The gender gap is also pronounced when it comes to opinions about gender and work.
Just more than half (51%) of young women say it doesn’t make a difference if you’re a man or a woman when it comes to getting ahead in the workplace, while 44% say men have the advantage in the workplace. Among men, 69% said gender doesn’t make a difference when it comes to getting ahead in the workplace, compared to 27% who said men have an advantage.
Despite those differences, young men and women felt similarly about the traits that help people get ahead in the workplace.
The poll asked respondents to rank three character traits that are valuable at work out of a list of eight. Both men and women, across all generations, said that communication, reliability and adaptability are the most important for getting ahead. And both men and women ranked competitiveness, aggressiveness and decisiveness in the bottom half of the eight listed traits.
Different visions of a successful life
To try to understand more about the gap between young men and women, respondents were also asked to select their top three choices that define success for them from a list of 13 phrases.
Despite their differences, Gen Z men and women both ranked the same three things as the most important to them in defining success: having a fulfilling job, having money to do the things they want to do and achieving financial independence. The results fit with broad concerns about the cost of living: 4 in 10 young adults said inflation and the rising cost of living is the economic matter most important to them.
But there were also important differences. Gen Z women ranked having emotional stability as the fourth-most important thing in their personal definition of success, while men ranked it 10th. Gen Z men ranked making their family or community proud fifth, while Gen Z women ranked it ninth.
Where the cultural differences between Gen Z men and women get particularly stark is when the breakdown includes who they voted for in the 2024 election.
Gen Z men who voted for Trump rate having children as the most important thing in their personal definition of success. Gen Z women who voted for Harris ranked having children as the second-least important thing in their personal definition of success.
Young, female Harris voters also ranked emotional stability as the third-most important thing in their personal definitions of success, something that young men who voted for Trump ranked second to last.
Men and women who voted for Harris are both more likely to include a fulfilling job and using their talents and resources to help others in their definitions of success. Men and women who voted for Trump are more likely to list financial independence, having children and being spiritually grounded on their lists of what defines success.
The NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey surveyed 30,196 adults, including 2,970 adults ages 18-29, online from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1. The full sample of all adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points. The subgroup of adults ages 18-29 (Gen Z) has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.
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