US Women Becoming More Liberal, Men Remain More Stable: Gallup Survey

Pro-choice and pro-life activists demonstrate in front of the the United States Supreme Court during the 47th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 24, 2020. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

According to a Gallup survey published on Feb. 7, women are becoming more liberal over time while the views of men have remained about the same.

While women of all age groups have leaned more toward liberal ideologies between 1999 and 2021, those identifying more as liberals are at opposite ends of the age spectrum.

Between 1999 and 2013, Gallup found that a third of women aged 18 to 29 “consistently identified as liberal.”

By 2020, 44 percent of the women in this demographic identified as liberal, dropping to 41 percent in 2022 and 40 percent by 2023. This 11-point increase marked an even greater liberal mindset among women aged 18 to 29, “already the most liberal subgroup of women” since 1999.

On the other end of the age scale, 14 percent of women aged 65 and older viewed themselves as liberals in 1999. By 2013, 21 percent identified as liberal, rising to 25 percent by 2023, marking an identical 11-point increase overall among women 65 and older.

Liberal identification among women between the ages of 30 and 49 grew only six points between 1999 and 2023, rising from 22 percent to 28 percent while declining from a high point of 36 percent in 2018. The seven-point increase matched the rise of liberal identity among those aged 50 to 64 from 1999 to 2023, which rose from 18 percent to 25 percent.

Among men aged 30 to 49, the number of those identifying as liberal rose from 17 percent to 22 percent, an increase of only five points. Among those aged 65 and older, it rose from 12 percent to 18 percent, an increase of just six points. In the meantime, the views of men aged 18 to 29 (up one point) and those aged 50 to 64 (up two points) have remained relatively the same since 1999.

Evidence of the increase in liberal identity among women, while the views among men remained stable, can be seen in the growing support women have for policies and social practices favored more by Democrats.

In Gallup’s data regarding “Abortion Trends by Gender,“ 22 percent of women said they believed abortion should be legal in all circumstances in 1975. In 2023, that number rose to 40 percent in 2023, an increase of 18 points.

Among men, 20 percent said they believed abortion should be legal in all circumstances in 1975. Just 27 percent said the same in 2023, an increase of only seven points.

In 1995, 51 percent of women identified as pro-abortion. The number peaked at 61 percent in 2022 and settled at 55 percent in 2023.

Among men, 50 percent described themselves as pro-abortion in 1995. In 2023, that number fell by three percentage points to 47 percent.

Women and Democrats are also more supportive of allowing transgender people to serve in the military, as opposed to men and Republicans.

More women see climate change as a major threat than men do, a belief supported considerably more by Democrats than Republicans.

Pew Research found that women are more likely to support diversity, equity, and inclusion policies at work than men, programs supported far more by Democrats (78 percent) than Republicans (30 percent).

An April 2023 Economist/YouGov poll found that women are also more likely than men to have attended a drag show (26 percent versus 20 percent), a form of entertainment attended considerably more by Democrats (32 percent) than Republicans (15 percent).

Polling data consistently shows women favoring liberal policies than men, with the gap between the two demographics getting bigger over time.

As Gallup noted in its most recent survey, “a widening of the ideological gaps between men and women over time has been due to women becoming more liberal at a faster rate than men, rather than women and men moving in different ideological directions.”