There’s only two options, you’re either a boy or a girl right? No, not really. It seems our attitudes to gender are becoming more open and fluid by the day.
“Fishy, fishy in the brook, father caught it by the hook, mother fried it in the pan, baby ate it like a man”
In our not-too-distant past, gender roles were largely straightforward, as things went. There was a direct link between gender, aspiration and expectation, such that women were generally expected to keep house, and men to bring home, if not the bacon, then the folk tale fishy in the brook.
Fast-forward to today: globally, the number of female students in tertiary education has grown since 1970, according to UNESCO figures; in North America, Western Europe, Latin America and Central Asia, women’s enrolment rates surpass those of men. Men increasingly voice support for the feminist movement, for example via HeForShe, a solidarity campaign for gender equality. Time magazine in 2014 trumpeted that we are at a ‘transgender tipping point’. So the role of fathers is once again coming into the limelight, as the number of stay-at-home dads increases, and millennial parents search for ways to equalise opportunities for men in the home. Today, it seems, gender is up for grabs.
New Generation, New Gender Agenda
It’s perhaps no surprise that socially-progressive millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) are leading the charge against traditionally accepted gender expectations. The legacy of then social change and global feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this generation has fewer attachments to traditional social, political and religious institutions than previous generations did. More than two-thirds (68%) of US millennials support same-sex marriage, reports the Washington DC-based Pew Research Centre; in the UK, millennials are more relaxed than older generations were, at their age, about homosexuality and non-traditional family structures, according to the British Social Attitudes survey.
Protein conducted its own survey in late 2014 on millennials’ attitudes to gender, which confirms prior studies and assumptions about this group. Nearly seven out of 10 people (68%) say that gender is less important to their generation than it was for their parents, while four in five people (79%) say gender roles have blurred. Beyond blurring, in fact, millennials overwhelmingly question traditional gender binaries, with seven in ten people (69%) saying there are more than two types of gender. This state of flux brings with it both excitement and anxiety, as millennial men and women navigate new gender ground.
