New research suggests that never-married men without a college degree have recently shown more anti-feminist attitudes than their college-educated peers, a trend that is associated with support for the Republican Party and Donald Trump. The authors argue this reflects a reaction rooted in romantic and economic insecurity, which they call “mate-value backlash,” rather than simply a desire to return to traditional gender roles. The study was published in Political Research Quarterly.
In recent years, political scientists have documented a global rise in right-wing populist movements, which tend to emphasize strong central power and anti-establishment rhetoric. A 2019 book outlined an influential theory that this political shift is largely a cultural backlash, where voters are reacting against progressive changes in social values. Along these lines, a study covered by PsyPost in 2019 indicated that supporters of Donald Trump scored higher on measures of modern sexism after the 2016 election.
At the same time, separate research has looked at the changing demographics of dating and marriage. A 2019 study found that when manufacturing jobs were lost to foreign competition, young men’s earnings fell relative to young women’s, and marriage rates declined. This decline in relationship prospects can have real-world consequences, as a 2021 study in Germany found that men who worried refugees would make it harder to find a female partner were more supportive of hate crimes against refugees.
The research, led by Stan Oklobdzija of the University of California, Riverside, and Christopher Witko of the University of California, Davis, aimed to connect these two lines of inquiry. The authors proposed that the political right is currently benefiting from a specific phenomenon they call “mate-value backlash.”
Mate-value refers to a person’s overall desirability as a romantic partner. According to the researchers, as women have gained economic independence and surpassed men in college attendance, women are less reliant on men for financial security. Men who lack a college degree now face steeper competition in both the job market and the dating pool. This perceived loss of status and romantic insecurity, the authors suggest, generates resentment toward feminism and women’s equality.
To test their hypothesis, the scientists analyzed data from the American National Election Studies, a long-running survey that tracks the political attitudes and behaviors of voters in the United States. They focused specifically on male respondents. The data was split into two timeframes: the period from 1970 to 2012, before Donald Trump entered presidential politics, and the period from 2016 to 2024, during which Trump was the Republican nominee.
The main measure used to gauge anti-feminist attitudes was a “feeling thermometer,” a survey tool where respondents rate their feelings toward a group on a scale from 0 to 100. In this case, respondents were asked to rate their warmth toward feminists. A lower score indicated greater antipathy or coldness, and the statistical models accounted for factors such as the respondent’s age, whether they identified as White, and their political party affiliation.
When looking at the historical data from 1970 to 2012, the researchers found that negative feelings toward feminists consistently predicted voting for Republican presidential candidates. However, during this 42-year stretch, never-married men without a college education did not generally show higher levels of anti-feminist hostility than other men. The only exception was in 1992, often called the “Year of the Woman,” a period marked by prominent debates about women’s place in politics.
In 2016, never-married men without a degree did not differ from their college-educated counterparts. But in the 2020 and 2024 surveys, never-married men without a bachelor’s degree reported substantially higher hostility toward feminists compared to never-married men with a college degree. Specifically, these men rated feminists about 10 points lower on the 100-point scale. The authors see this as consistent with mate-value backlash and suggest that Trump’s emergence may have activated these attitudes.
Additionally, this hostility toward feminists strongly predicted voting for Donald Trump among men overall in 2016, 2020, and 2024, even after controlling for party identification. The authors note that their estimates are likely underestimates, because these attitudes also shape party identity itself. The predictive power of these attitudes was even stronger in 2020 than it was in 2016.
These results are in line with a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, which found that higher endorsement of hostile attitudes toward women was linked to a greater likelihood of voting for Trump, though that previous research focused on a smaller sample of college undergraduates rather than a nationally representative survey. The findings also align with a study covered by PsyPost in 2026, which indicated that sexist attitudes strongly predict support for right-wing candidates.
“The findings from this research replicate a well established link between anti-feminist attitudes and conservative voting behavior,” Rachael Robnett, a professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, told PsyPost. Robnett, who was not involved in the study, noted that the results “extend existing work by demonstrating a rise in anti-feminist attitudes among unmarried men without college degrees, with this rise appearing to coincide with Donald Trump’s presidential terms.”
“The authors speculate that contemporary conservative rhetoric may have activated anti-feminist sentiment among unmarried [men] with lower levels of education,” Robnett added. “This speculation aligns with research that has focused on the manosphere, which is an eclectic group of online communities that often espouse ideals that are inconsistent with gender equality. Some of these communities also express overt antipathy toward women.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. Because the data is correlational, it cannot prove cause and effect. Additionally, the study measures negative feelings toward “feminists,” which is a broad and highly politicized term. Survey respondents might interpret the word differently, meaning the measurement might capture a general cultural grievance rather than specific opposition to gender equality policies.
The wording of the survey question also changed over the decades: it asked about “the women’s liberation movement” until 1986, then alternated between “the women’s movement” and “feminists” before settling on “feminists” in 2000, which matters when comparing modern results to historical data.
“An important caveat to the findings and their interpretation is that this research focuses exclusively on men,” Robnett explained. “It is entirely possible that anti-feminist sentiment has also increased among unmarried women without college degrees, but this competing explanation cannot be examined when the research only focuses on men.”
“The reason this matters is because the authors interpret their findings to mean that unmarried men without a college education are threatened by women’s progress and thus engaging in ‘mate-value backlash.’ This possibility is theoretically tenable, but should be directly tested through a study that includes both women and men before we can draw strong conclusions.”
Looking ahead, future research could explore exactly how political rhetoric might activate these latent insecurities. The authors speculate that Donald Trump’s specific style of politics tapped into existing anxieties among certain men, bringing those frustrations into the voting booth. Exploring the role of online communities and social media in amplifying these feelings could provide a fuller picture of how relationship dynamics shape national politics.
The study, “Backlashes to Gender Equality and Authoritarian Populism in the U.S.,” was authored by Stan Oklobdzija and Christopher Witko.