The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Lindy effect from their Linda problem.
With it being International Women’s Day this week (#IWD), we celebrate by looking at some recent polling – by YouGov and More In Common respectively – about gender equality. How do our attitudes to progress alter how we see this issue?
And, we also bring you an #IWD-themed Charlie’s Attic, including a piece explaining why the idea of the alpha male/dog/wolf is based on a myth.
#IWD
It was International Women’s Day on Wednesday. This is a huge point each year in marking the steps made in the push for gender equality – as well as in reminding ourselves how far there is to go. With this in mind, we were drawn to this Twitter thread, setting out polling findings on gender equality from More In Common research.
The data uses More In Common’s typology, which features seven different political tribes – ranging from ‘Progressive Activists’ at one end to ‘Backbone Conservatives’ at the other. The first chart (above) looks at attitudes to progress so far. It finds very similar agreement across these seven tribes, when it comes to agreement with the statement ‘I am proud of the advancements we have made in equality between women and men’.
Small variations exist, but all the groups are within 15 % points of each other. Interestingly, the tribes agreeing least are not those furthest to the right (the ‘Backbone Conservatives’); rather they are the two groups who are the least engaged in general.
The second chart (above) is more about the state we have now arrived at ‘these days’, in terms of women’s rights. Do men still have advantages over women (red)? Has equality been achieved (grey)? Or do women in fact now have greater advantages (blue)?
Here, there are very dramatic differences between the seven More In Common segments. ‘Backbone Conservatives’ are much more inclined to think goals have been achieved (or even that it has gone the other way). ‘Progressive Activists’, at the other end of the spectrum, overwhelmingly say that men still have a better deal.
Similar polling by YouGov this week shows a whole set of questions about whether ‘equality has been achieved’ when it comes to gender. And one important finding is that men are more likely to believe it has. This complements the More In Common polling, and suggests that the view that progressive goals has been achieved can come with a distinct skew, depending on your social position. Those most likely to proclaim ‘job done’ are, you could argue on the basis of this, also those least likely to need the social progress in question.
Ultimately, you could look at the two charts above optimistically, from the perspective of women’s rights, or you could do so negatively. The first shows a broad coalition, crossing divides of politics and values, who now support the basic principles of gender parity. But the latter suggests deep complacency and indifference in some quarters of society. How you balance these two responses, in a way which sustains urgency whilst acknowledging progress, is interesting from a campaigning perspective – not just for those looking to advance women’s equality further, but for everyone thinking about how you build support for pro-social causes.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the part of the bulletin that takes two steps forward and one back each Friday (or is it the other way around?!):
Ponder, following new polling, whether you’d trust Sunak or Starmer more to assemble flatpack furniture.
Look back over a century of fighting for gender equality.
Watch this video of the crazy individual who added jet engines to a bi-plane in his garden shed.
Find out if you’re a teddy or a shark when it comes to conflict resolution. Then use this piece on the Betari Box Model to break other cycles of conflict.