Backlash and Gender Resentment
Resentments and grievances related to economic, social, and cultural change have become a prominent part of explanations for why some voters support populist and radical right parties, including Donald Trump in the United States, and Brexit in the United Kingdom (e.g. Gest,
2016; Gest et al.,
2018; Gidron & Hall,
2017; Norris & Inglehart,
2019). Certain segments of the populace—especially white, older, working class men—feel marginalised and resentful as a result of social, economic, and cultural change that has ‘left them behind’. They form part of a backlash against these changes by voting for radical or populist options at the ballot box. While it is argued that the backlash is largely concentrated amongst (some)
men, and indeed there is a consistently noted gender gap in support for populist radical right parties, the extent to which grievances and resentments are based on gender is rarely explicitly explored, especially outside of the US. In US research, sexism and perceptions of gender favouritism were clearly associated with voting for Trump in 2016 (e.g. Bock et al.,
2017; Goldman,
2018), but the specifics of that election (Donald Trump’s record, behavior and tone, the salience of the gender of the candidates, and the longer-term importance of a gender gap in US elections) make the generalisability of gender-based resentment effects on electoral behaviour challenging.
The ‘backlash’ argument is rooted in the marginalisation of certain social groups related to economic precarity, declining social status, and the diminishing of traditional cultural values; three developments which are overlapping and intertwined. Economic precarity has grown amongst the white working class as a result of declining job security, rising socioeconomic inequality and declining social mobility, and the decline of traditional, ‘respectable’ working class jobs in the manufacturing industry (Gidron & Hall,
2017). As a result, the white working class have been described as holding a sense of ‘nostalgic deprivation’ (Gest,
2016; Gest et al.,
2018), based on the idea that they used to have greater status but their previously high status is now held by other groups. They blame elites for their changing circumstances and so react against the status quo (Gest,
2016; Steenbergen & Siczek,
2017). This resentment is fuelled by political and media discourse, directing a sense of status loss into resentments towards elites, immigrants, and other minorities (Bonikowski,
2017).
Crucially, developments such as those described above are seen as particularly affecting
men in white working-class communities who used to hold the secure, stable, manual jobs which have been declining over past decades. Gidron and Hall (
2017) find that it is particularly men without a college education whose subjective social status has declined over time in post-industrial societies, and who are more anti-elitist, anti-immigrant, and anti-globalisation. Gidron and Hall explain this loss of male status by arguing that working-class men have been particularly negatively affected by technological change, low pay, and low job security, and have been unable to take advantage of changes to the economy which mean higher rewards accrue to those at higher levels of education. Women, on the other hand, have experienced a relative status
increase as they have entered the workforce in growing numbers.
1 As a result, Gidron and Hall (
2017) find that the gap in subjective social status between men and women without a college education has declined over time: women perceived a lower status in the 1980s but as men’s subjective social status declined, the gender gap became non-existent by 2010. This gender difference in the experience of economic change has also been linked to the gender vote gap in support for radical right parties. Women are consistently less likely to vote for radical right parties than men, although the size of the gap varies across countries (Givens,
2004; Spierings & Zaslove,
2015). This has been partly explained by men’s greater representation in blue-collar occupations that are especially vulnerable to low pay and job insecurity as a result of globalisation (Givens,
2004; Immerzeel et al.,
2015). Although women’s position in the workforce is also often precarious in comparison to men’s—through lower on average pay and the greater propensity to part-time work—this is not linked to globalisation and the decline of manufacturing in the same way as men’s precarity. It is also important to note that the male status loss argument relies on a comparison between working class men’s perceived relative social status in the past and present, rather than a direct comparison to women today.
Gidron and Hall (
2017) test the effects of subjective social status decline on support for populist parties, immigration attitudes, and anti-elitism, but they do not examine whether men—whose social status has declined—feel resentful on the basis of their gender. They do argue that cultural frameworks have increasingly emphasised and promoted gender equality, reinforcing the negative effects of economic change that working-class men have experienced. This suggests that the effects of economic precarity and declining social status are compounded by cultural change with respect to gender equality and the decline of traditional values. Others have similarly argued that the salience of the divide between ‘traditionalists’ and those who are accepting and tolerant of ethnic diversity and gender equality has risen, with the traditionalists feeling like ‘strangers in their own land’ (Norris & Inglehart,
2019, p. 123). Norris and Inglehart emphasise that it is older white
men and non-graduates who are most likely to be ‘traditionalists’, because they feel marginalised; both culturally and economically. Similar cultural divides have been identified in Britain, where people in ‘cosmopolitan’ areas are more pro-immigration, pro-EU, and supportive of gender and racial equality, whilst people in towns and rural areas are more anti-immigration, anti-EU, and nostalgic for the past (Jennings & Stoker,
2016,
2017). This ‘bifurcation of British politics’ has become increasingly important, both in the lead up to the 2016 EU referendum and also afterwards.
In summary, the literature on backlash and grievance politics emphasises that economic changes such as globalisation and the decline of manufacturing have had particular negative consequences for working class men, that (some) men have perceived a greater status loss and hold traditional values as a result of sweeping economic, social, and cultural change, and also that gender-traditionalism is a component of these sources of political resentment. At the same time, economic shifts such as rising female labour force participation, and cultural shifts such as rising political, institutional, and public support for gender equality, have fundamentally re-shaped society, even if full gender equality has not been reached. This strongly suggests that gender-based resentment—and specifically male resentment—is part of the backlash. However, the extent to which gender-based resentment is held amongst the ‘left behind’, or the extent to which it can influence political choices, has not been empirically tested.
We focus in this paper on the concept and measure of gender discrimination, specifically on male resentment and grievance. A gender backlash can be measured through perceptions of discrimination, specifically through measuring perceptions of discrimination against men, and/or discrimination in favour of women. Such a measure is different to, for example, attitudes towards traditional gender roles or hostility towards women (‘hostile sexism,’ Glick & Fiske,
1996,
2011)), because it explicitly focuses on attitudes about men’s position in society and enables us to analyse the extent to which men feel discriminated against
as men.
Sources of Perceptions of Discrimination Against Men
Research into perceptions of gender discrimination in the US suggests that men are more likely than women to perceive a bias against men (and women are more likely than men to perceive bias against women) (Kehn & Ruthig,
2013). Men also see bias against men as increasing over time, whilst women do not, and both men and women see bias against women as decreasing over time. That is to say, men see a growing divide between men and women’s status, but the same perception of a divide is not increasing among women. These findings are explained by the argument that men, as the traditionally dominant group, perceive gains in the status of women occurring at the expense of men, i.e., they see gender bias as zero-sum. Women, on the other hand, do not view women’s progress in society as happening at the expense of men. This is, in turn, consistent with the finding that men have higher social dominance orientations, and thus have preferences to maintain the social hierarchies within which they are dominant (Pratto et al.,
1994). Women do not have this preference as a result of their lower status in the hierarchy. This is similar to racial bias findings in the US, where white males see increases in the status of blacks occurring at the expense of the traditionally dominant group, whites, whilst women and black respondents do not see the same zero-sum relationship between declining anti-Black bias and rising anti-white bias (Norton & Sommers,
2011).
The cultural backlash literature (discussed above) suggests that it is not
all men who should be particularly resentful on the grounds of gender; it is specifically economically, socially, and culturally marginalised men who are most likely to hold these views. Men in economically precarious positions should be most likely to perceive discrimination against men and discrimination in favour of women—as they have experienced the most status decline, whilst women’s social status has risen (Gidron & Hall,
2017; Norris & Inglehart,
2019). This should especially be the case if men see traditional manufacturing and industrial employment as ‘male’ jobs, which seems likely to be the case given occupational sex-segregation, especially in manual occupations (Roos & Stevens,
2018). Consistent with this expectation, working class men with lower levels of education are in general more likely to vote for populist radical right parties and hold authoritarian and populist views (Gest et al.,
2018; Gidron & Hall,
2017; Givens,
2004; Norris & Inglehart,
2019), but the presence of resentment—and especially gender-based resentment—amongst this group has not been measured. We thus draw on cultural backlash theories and test directly the extent to which low-income, low-education and working-class men are especially likely to perceive discrimination against men.
We also have some doubts about the extent to which economic position should matter for
gender-based resentment, and specifically for the extent to which men perceive discrimination against men, despite this being the expectation generated from the existing literature. This is because it is also possible—likely even—that men with higher socioeconomic positions, who are not necessarily economically marginalised, are just as likely to perceive discrimination against men in terms of gender equality, and relative to women. In recent years, whilst women’s employment rates have increased fairly slowly, there has nonetheless been an increase in women entering into especially professional and managerial professions (Fitzenberger & Wunderlich,
2004; Kay,
1996). The occupations which have experienced an increase in women’s employment relative to men have tended to be those that require higher levels of education, and women have made inroads into even such occupations which have typically been, and often remain, ‘masculinised’ e.g. in the ‘hard’ sciences. At the same time, skilled or semi-skilled ‘masculine’ occupations have seen an increase in masculinisation and continuing occupational sex-segregation (Roos & Stevens,
2018). Therefore, even with persistent occupational sex-segregation, men in professional and managerial occupations are more likely to experience more women in the labour force than men in the lower skilled jobs that remain masculinised, yet more precarious. Importantly, women in such professional work environments have been found to indeed experience a backlash. Women experience bias in hiring processes and are perceived as less capable and effective than men (Eagly & Karau,
2002; Phelan & Rudman,
2010). This suggests that if women are perceived as less effective but are still hired and promoted, discrimination is thought to take place in favour of women and against men. The backlash faced by women in employment is also especially strong in industries deemed ‘incongruent’ with femininity (Garcia-Retamero & López-Zafra,
2006). This indicates that it is especially in traditionally masculine professions which still have a larger proportion of male employees to female employees, that women should be perceived negatively.
The arguments above suggest that men across all class levels would have reason to perceive men to be discriminated against: those at lower socioeconomic positions because of the loss of status for traditional, working-class, ‘men’s’ jobs, and those at higher socioeconomic positions because of their more direct experience of increasing competition with women entering the labour market and consequent backlash against this development. Thus, despite the implicit expectation in the literature about lower income, lower-educated men being the males who should be most resentful, a competing expectation is that socioeconomic position does not matter for gender-based resentment. Our first set of hypotheses thus specify two competing expectations:
Older generations are especially likely to hold traditional and authoritarian views compared to younger generations (Norris & Inglehart,
2019). Moreover, women’s position in society has changed quickly, especially since the 1970s: the women’s employment rate has grown from below 60% in 1975 to nearing 80% today, with much of the increase driven by increases in women’s full-time employment, which grew from 30% in 1985 to nearly 45% today (Roantree & Vira,
2018). These increases have largely been driven by married women entering the workforce at much higher levels than in the past. Thus, whilst economic activity is the norm for younger generations of women, older generations will recall when the traditional male-breadwinner model was dominant. This is reflected in clear generational differences about gender roles, with older generations being more supportive of traditional configurations for work and family life (Berridge et al.,
2009; Scott,
2008). Older men in particular are the most likely to perceive anti-male bias, and also, as discussed, see this as zero-sum (Kehn & Ruthig,
2013). We therefore expect that older generations, especially older men, will be more likely to perceive discrimination against men, as their expectations and early life experiences have been challenged by changes in the workforce and wider social change.
An extension of this argument is that we should specifically expect older men
in the workforce to be the most likely group to perceive discrimination against men and in favour of women. The growth of women’s economic activity in the workforce, as well as their rising education rates, has been a key change to social life in the UK (Scott,
2008). For younger employed men, women in the workforce has always been a consistent feature of their work life experience. However, older men in the workforce will remember a time when men were much more dominant in the workplace, and have witnessed the growing entry of women. It is not the case that women have just increased their presence in female-dominated workplaces; as described above, they have also entered into higher skilled and professional occupations where they increasingly work alongside men and compete for the same jobs (Fitzenberger & Wunderlich,
2004; Kay,
1996). It is thus the older men in the workforce who can both remember a more male-dominated environment and who have experienced changes in female employment levels, who we expect to perceive the most discrimination against men. This expectation is quite different to that produced by literature emphasising economic and social marginalisation. Instead, our argument suggests that gender-based resentment should be more prevalent amongst those whose current experience is most at odds with their past experience and who therefore feel marginalised and more economically precarious as a result—i.e., those who are in workplaces where women are gaining ground, but were socialised into their workplace life at a time when men were much more dominant and women were excluded. Whilst older men outside the workplace may have more traditional views on gender roles, we expect them to have lower levels of gender resentment than those in the workforce because they are not directly experiencing the rise in the status of women in the same way. We specify our second and third hypotheses as follows:
Gender Resentment and Support for Brexit
The vote to leave the EU was for some voters a ballot expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo (Steenbergen & Siczek,
2017) and in particular an expression of “intense angst about rapid social, economic, and cultural change” (Goodwin & Heath,
2016, p. 331; see also Norris & Inglehart,
2019). Leave voters were concerned about the decline in service provision and financial support during austerity (Becker et al.,
2017; Fetzer,
2019), the consequences of increased globalisation (Colantone & Stanig,
2018), increasing experiences of low-paid and precarious employment (Hobolt,
2016), and the social, economic, and cultural consequences of immigration (Clarke et al.,
2017; Goodwin & Milazzo,
2017; Iakhnis et al.,
2018). The Leave vote was not, therefore, just a policy-based rejection of European membership per se. Voting Leave was a broad rejection of the status quo, motivated by concerns and resentments about a sweeping array of social, cultural and economic change.
This backlash in the EU referendum rested on nostalgia for a previous, more desirable past. Nostalgia in various forms has been linked to voting for populist radical right parties in Europe (Steenvoorden & Harteveld,
2018) and for UKIP and Donald Trump (Gest et al.,
2018). Leave voters were substantially more likely to think that things were better in the past than were Remain voters (Swales,
2016), suggesting that the campaign to Leave successfully mobilised those who wanted to reverse widespread societal change. Richards et al. (
2020) argue that we need to examine the specific content of nostalgia in the Leave vote, since existing accounts do not always specify exactly what Leave voters were nostalgic
for. They show that Leave voters are ‘traditional nostalgics’, who think that ethnic diversity, same-sex relationships, and women entering the workforce are aspects of modern life that have made life worse.
Following these findings, we argue that perceptions of gender discrimination, measuring the gender dimension of the ‘backlash’, is a form of resentment about change and nostalgia for the past, and as such should be associated with voting Leave, alongside other predictors. In further support of this perspective, Kehn and Ruthig (
2013) find that perceptions of anti-male bias have increased over time amongst (older) men, suggesting they should be nostalgic for a time when men’s status was more dominant. This could then have contributed to their decision to vote to Leave, which was presented by the campaign as a nostalgic enterprise, taking Britain ‘back’ to a better past. Others have similarly noted that Brexit voting was partly driven by a perception of over-time relative gains amongst out-groups (Green et al.,
2021), a logic which could also apply to gender. It should also be noted that although gender was not explicitly visible within either the Remain or the Leave campaign (Guerrina & Murphy,
2016), the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and especially Nigel Farage (the leader of UKIP and a prominent campaigner for Brexit) portrayed a particularly ‘masculine’ image, with Nigel Farage adopting a ‘blokeish’ and ‘working man’s’ persona, and making a series of derogatory comments about working women in particular (Daddow & Hertner,
2019). Therefore, insofar as men perceiving discrimination and disadvantage by their gender were seeking representation in the UK’s political debate, the foremost champion of leaving the European Union provided some of that representation. At the same time, the EU itself was associated with gender equality guarantees in the minds of some voters (Bromley-Davenport et al.,
2018).
We thus expect the Leave vote to be associated with gender-based resentment, specifically the perception that men are discriminated against. This demonstrates the depth and complexity of the backlash and nostalgia elements of the Brexit vote, going beyond economic decline and anti-immigration sentiment. We also therefore expect that perceiving discrimination against men should matter particularly for the Brexit vote of men. Whilst women might perceive discrimination against men, we should expect such gender-based resentment to matter more for men because they see themselves as the group who are disadvantaged by this discrimination. This discussion leads us to specify the following hypotheses: