Experts say young women could prove to be a decisive voting bloc this election but warn major parties are still struggling to connect with the highly progressive group. New data from 'ABC vote compass' shows more than two thirds of Gen z women identify as left-leaning far in front of their male peers or women of other generations.
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00:00It's actually really hard to get data on Generation Z, those under 29, they just haven't been
00:07voting for that long and it's quite hard for pollsters to reach them.
00:11So we have this large sample of over 350,000 young Australians who've done the Vote Compass
00:17quiz and from that we found that 67% of women in that under 29 year old age category considered
00:25themselves to be left-leaning and that compared to about 50% in the male category in that age
00:31group.
00:32So quite a big gender gap there and young women were still far ahead of other women of other
00:37generations, about 52% of older women of all other generations identified as being left-leaning.
00:43So you have young women really way out on the left side of the political spectrum and data
00:49can only tell us so much and we've been talking to experts trying to unpack that and understand
00:53that and this is a worldwide trend, really that's been happening over years and decades.
00:58If we think about in generations gone by, women were actually considered a core part of the
01:04conservative voting bloc and if we think about the lives women used to live a lot of time
01:09in the home, they were often more religious than men, were less exposed to trade unions
01:13and left-wing ideas out of the home and that's why they were this conservative voting bloc but
01:18so much has changed.
01:19Obviously women are a core part of the workforce these days, highly educated, still more
01:23likely to be in care industries and professions like nursing and teaching and still do the
01:29majority of the domestic labour and a lot of households.
01:33They're more likely to care about social and environmental issues and all of those factors
01:37combined.
01:38Experts suggest is why women are moving to the left and becoming more and more progressive.
01:43I was chatting to some young women for this story and asking if they felt like any of the
01:49major parties represented them, spoke to an 18-year-old student, a Sydney student named
01:55Emma Garvey who said, not really, so let's take a listen.
01:59They're trying to appeal to young voters in general through like their use of like TikTok
02:05and stuff and just sort of like jumping on trends randomly but I don't think they're
02:09doing a lot with policy-wise to really connect to them.
02:13I feel like young people are leaning more greens than they are, young women are leaning more
02:19greens than they are Labor or Liberals due to like their really progressive policy.
02:25Our data of this sample suggests that about 50% of young men identify as being left-leaning,
02:31about 33% as right-wing and about 17% in the middle.
02:36So different to what has been seen overseas.
02:40That also sort of mirrors some other findings of other studies and polls.
02:45After the 2022 election, the Australian election study found that both young men and young women,
02:51about 67% had voted for the Greens or Labor and suggested that they were actually more
02:58progressive than any other generations gone by.
03:00So it's a different situation here in Australia.
03:03Difficult to know why exactly but I guess we've got different kinds of leaders, no one who's
03:07really probably rallying that populist message and maybe different values as well.
03:12We've heard from the Australian Electoral Commission who said that Australians are under 45,
03:16so that's Generation Z, but also millennials as well, they now outnumber baby boomers.
03:21So they're a really large part of the electorate, young women obviously a little over half of that.
03:28So if major parties aren't connecting with young women, that's a really big portion of the vote
03:32that they're missing out on and they are a little harder to connect to.
03:36Some politicians may argue they're not watching the traditional news, but they are on new media,
03:42places like YouTube, podcasts. And so we have seen this election, you know, the likes of the Prime
03:47Minister, Anthony Albanese, speaking to young female content creators, trying to tap into their
03:54large online engaged audience, going on podcasts with young female hosts. We've also seen some of
04:01that from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton. But as we heard from Emma Garvey, that student,
04:06a little earlier, you know, maybe young people don't like all of the daggy dancing on social media
04:12platforms or jumping on trends, but they're really looking for policies that speak to them and look
04:17to tackle the disadvantage they feel that they're having, the challenges of being a young person
04:23with those structural issues with the housing market, job market. So they're sort of suggesting
04:27a bit less of the social media stuff and maybe more policies for us.