Is it true that adolescent boys and girls and young adults today are increasingly right-wing, and that boys are increasingly sexist? Yes, and no. Yes, if we look at how they are globally portrayed in surveys. And no, if we understand that the social and demographic composition of these age groups, compared to that of fifteen or twenty years ago, is now extremely heterogeneous. Therefore, if it seems that in general back off It's not due to the poor performance of the world we come from, but rather the world we're arriving from. I mean that new social environments and communities that didn't exist before have now been added, and at an accelerated pace. And the evolution that would have been predictable in a more stable society, given school education, the critical role of the media, and all the socializing action of children in human rights and democratic principles, has been altered.
In this sense, any generalization that doesn't differentiate adolescents and young people according to their various social environments favors a view that seems to undermine the positive effects of the good work done to achieve a more egalitarian and just society. And it particularly masks the effectiveness of action against gender violence, which, if not reduced, is due to the emergence of these new adverse environments that until recently were more exceptional. In any case, in the absence of more information, we cannot know to what extent educational policies in favor of equality have worked for those who could have benefited. And the same is true in other areas such as health. My suspicion is that yes, the policies have worked well. But if you suddenly add to the cohort of young people whose parents had already been raised in more egalitarian models individuals who have not shared the same social and family framework, then the results we see are not those of a evolution caused by the failure of social transformation strategies, but rather by a demographic and community change that alters all forecasts and that needs to be studied, understood and addressed in a specific manner.
I understand the difficulty of rigorously measuring the diversity of community environments. First, because it's not just about determining whether or not your national administrative status makes you more right-wing and sexist. Second, because it's not easy to distinguish who has been trained in the new values so tenaciously defended. Nor is it easy to define the multiple cultural environments, whether native or foreign. Nor is it easy to analyze the distribution of spaces of social frustration that provoke reactive mentalities. Fleeing poverty is not the same as fleeing war, or being attracted by a demand for education or skilled labor. Note how the most explicit resistance against the use of Catalan comes from privileged social sectors: the healthcare world, academia, and the expats and, paradoxically, the world of culture.
Two important studies have recently been published on these issues by the Institute of Political and Social Sciences (ICPS). One is the ICPS Opinion Poll 2024, conducted from a survey of 1,200 people aged 18 and over, of Spanish nationality. The other is the search Boys, girls, and a chasm: Opinions on equality and feminism, a qualitative study of 239 15-year-old adolescents from nine secondary schools in the province of Barcelona. In relation to the first study, it would be essential for future analyses to further refine the demographic variables discussed. The fact that 54% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that feminism has gone too far tells us nothing about the specific family and cultural context—from music consumption to social media use—that might explain why the defense of gender equality might make them uncomfortable. And generalizing speculations that unfairly stigmatize all youth are of no use. This is also the case with the excellent research Boys, girls and an abyss. While the territorial socioeconomic index was taken into account when selecting the sample institutes, the published analysis does not include this variable to explain differences in opinion. Adding another variable on family background, social media use, and leisure activities would have been very valuable.
I fully understand the methodological difficulties, and even the political inconveniences and risks, of taking into account the current fragmentation of social and cultural frameworks in Catalonia, which are largely disconnected from one another. If we never became the desired "one people," now we are no longer a single community of values and aspirations with shared opinions. And the social sciences, without fear, should bear this in mind.
