As Trump’s victory showed, gender isn’t a women-only issue

Jerker Edström, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies.

The election of Donald Trump is perhaps the clearest recent example of a backlash against greater gender equality playing out in today’s world, with potentially very worrying consequences.

It is a mistake to see gender as being about women only. Yet the way the Democrats narrowed down on – and framed – gender rights as a women’s issue, played a major role in Kamala Harris losing. It also made it far easier for Trump to reach out and speak to young men.  

In reaction to the growing number of U.S. states introducing restrictive abortion laws after the overturning of Roe v Wade, the Democrats seized on the abortion issue and expected women to vote in large numbers for Harris. The Democrat campaign went big on framing abortion as the main issue for American women and girls. If men were mentioned at all, it was often with an appeal that they should do the right thing and vote to support the women and girls in their lives. The implication being that if MEN didn’t vote a certain way, then they may just be misogynist.

The multiple challenges facing young men today, like falling behind in the economy and in education, as well as higher suicide rates, did not appear to factor in with the Democrats’ strategy and thinking. Men’s concerns were hardly spoken about, let alone addressed, and not reflected back to them by the Democrats. 

In contrast, the Republican campaign directed messages targeted at young men. The majority of men voted for Trump, including many Latino men and white men without a college education. Most white women also voted for Trump, as they had done in 2016, and fewer of them voted for Harris this year than had voted for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

Gender can clearly play a big role in elections, but not as politicians often hope or the media predicts. By speaking just about specific women’s rights issues – important as those are – you risk alienating people. This includes many men who don’t see women’s rights as an important issue for them, but also many women who have a far broader range of issues that concern them – issues affecting both women and men.

A zero-sum framing of gender is self-defeating, partly because it feeds into the divisive and emotive politics that Trump used to build support. A focus only on women (or men) is not applying what is sometimes called a gender lense. Rather it’s using a monocle, and you only see half the problem. Gender is relational and embedded in broader social and economic inequities.

By framing it as a zero-sum game of women versus men you legitimise the grievances over real and neglected problems that men face. This, combined with the widespread media narratives of toxic masculinity amongst men, can leave many young men feeling alienated and demonised. This can open the way for an anti-gender rights agenda that conservative organisations, nationalist and right-wing politicians, can step in and weaponize.

This presents a significant challenge for those of us seeking greater gender equality, and to counter the backlash against gender justice and equal rights for all. It does not help that progressive movements are divided and that some women’s movements are being coopted into divisive messaging, focused on women only.

To overcome the backlash, we must build solidarities – alliances among allies - for gender equality. This requires, among other things, building partnerships across diverse groups and movements, including with men. We need intersectional alliances across progressive movements that must go beyond women. That is not as a homogenous block of men but different kinds of men.

Traditional ideals of masculinity often impose high costs on men, and by highlighting the benefits of greater equality to men, as well as women, we can engage men by linking gender to broader social justice. However, this requires careful navigation. While it is crucial to separate the man from the patriarchy, men need to recognise how they are connected to, and benefit from patriarchal systems, to hold themselves and each other to account.

Overall, we must learn from the type of mistakes made in the U.S. election and avoid the trap of presenting gender as only a women’s issue, but rather setting gender justice within the multiple socio-economic issues affecting both women and men.