A Growing Gender Divide? Gender-Role Attitudes Among Young Adults Across Nine World Regions Over Four Decades

Recent public discourse suggests a growing polarization between young men and women in gender-role attitudes. This research note evaluates this claim by examining long-term trends in gender-role attitudes among young adults (aged 20–29) across nine world regions over four decades. Drawing on pooled data from the World Values Survey, the International Social Survey Programme, the European Values Study, and the European Social Survey, we track three dimensions of gender egalitarianism covering attitudes towards gender equality in the public sphere, maternal work–family compatibility attitudes and attitudes toward gender roles in the private sphere. The results do not support the notion of a generalized gender polarization, as divergence does not occur across all dimensions. Attitudes regarding women’s and mothers’ paid work have become more egalitarian, and gender differences have narrowed or remained modest across most regions. By contrast, gender gaps persist in attitudes towards men’s labour market primacy and fathers’ suitability for childcare, and in some regions have widened, partly driven by declining egalitarianism among young men. Thus, convergence in views on women’s and mothers’ employment has not been matched by a comparable shift in attitudes toward men’s roles, pointing to an uneven transformation of gender norms with potential demographic implications.