Men are failing in education and this might explain why they're becoming more right wing
The boys have been failing in schools for decades. It seems like they are not interested in school anymore. The girls have been outperforming boys everywhere and the gender gap in educational performance has been growing by each passing decade.
In 1970, just 12 percent of young women (ages 25 to 34) had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 20 percent of men — a gap of eight percentage points. By 2020, that number had risen to 41 percent for women but only to 32 percent for men — a nine percentage–point gap, now going the other way. That means there are currently 1.6 million more young women with a bachelor’s degree than men. To put it into perspective, that’s just less than the population of West Virginia. 1
Now translate this to 2024 election and you'll see what I am talking about
Over all, college graduates voted for Harris by 13 points more than they did Trump. This year, the gap was especially stark among men. While a nearly equal number of college-educated men voted for each candidate (49 percent of their votes went to Harris and 48 percent to Trump), Trump led Harris by a whopping 24 points among non-college-educated men.
Responses from white voters told a similar story. While Harris was seven percentage points more popular than Trump among white college-educated voters, only 32 percent of white non-college-educated voters voted for Harris and 66 percent voted for Trump. 2
It's very similar when it comes to high schools as well.
Just as young women are more likely than young men to have a bachelor’s degree, girls are more likely than boys to graduate high school across the country. We use these states to gauge the national trend: we estimate that 88.4 percent of girls graduated on time in 2021 compared to 81.9 percent of boys – a gap of 6.5 points. 3
Obviously this is not the only explanation why men are going right wing, but it's very important to highlight that college educated men are still more likely to be liberal than conservative. You also have a lot of social media propaganda on Youtube and X that are contributing to this rise of conservatism. Still, it's a known fact that the majority of Trump supporters are college and high school dropouts.
We need to recognize this fact and figure out why is there such a big gender gap between boys and girls in schools. We need to find the root cause of boy's failure in schools and we need to attract them to get educated again. From my anecdotal experience this is kind of true as well. Virtually all of my male classmates in college were liberal leaning, and I don't know a lot of college educated men that are hardcore conservatives. And this is not just an American problem, but pretty much the whole Western problem.
There's a reason why Republicans are telling you that college is a scam. It's their main demographic for voting and they know that universities are "liberal safe havens". Instead of demonizing and blaming men for everything, we need to narrow this gender gap in education. It's definitely one of the biggest strategies to defeat the rise of conservatism and the far right movements.
1- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/boys-left-behind-education-gender-gaps-across-the-us/
2- https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
3- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/boys-left-behind-education-gender-gaps-across-the-us/