Republicans Really Do Care More About ‘Masculine Energy’

The 2024 election felt like more than just a victory for President Trump. It felt like a victory for a traditional view of gender roles.

Mr. Trump certainly shares that view. During the campaign, he declared that women liked him because he was their “protector.” He called the satellite radio host Howard Stern a “BETA MALE” after Mr. Stern criticized him. In a 2021 interview, Mr. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, disparaged women without children as “childless cat ladies.”

It appeared that what Mark Zuckerberg lauded as “masculine energy” was on the rise — fueled by a “manosphere” of podcasters and a subculture of women, the so-called tradwives, who have embraced homemaking and domesticity.

But in a way, all that was just anecdotes and impressions. Now we have the data to match. Surveys from 2024 show that support for traditional gender roles is increasing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is happening primarily among Republicans. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is happening among Republican women as well as among Republican men.

Put another way, the rise in gender traditionalism derives more from politics than it is does from gender.

It’s important to note just how new this trend is. For decades, gender traditionalism was in decline. In American National Election Studies surveys, the percentage of Americans saying that “women’s place is in the home” decreased steadily — from almost 30 percent in 1972 to 6 percent in 2008. Instead, more people embraced the view that “women should have an equal role with men in running business, industry and government.” This question was actually dropped from these surveys after 2008.