The Gender Gap Report Issue 6: The rights perception divide - How young men and women see women's rights differently

The Gender Gap Report Part VI: The Rights Perception Divide — How Young Men and Women See Women’s Rights Differently

Across Southeast Europe, young men and women inhabit the same societies but often perceive women’s rights in very different ways. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung’s 2024 Southeast Europe Youth Study finds that 50.6% of young women say women in their countries do not have enough rights, compared to 28.5% of young men—a 22.1-point gender gap, one of the largest divides documented in the study. Yet the gap is not uniform: in Türkiye, 56.6% of women and 45.7% of men recognize rights deficits—a smaller 10.9-point difference—while Bosnia and Herzegovina shows the largest divide, with 57.7% of women versus 23.8% of men seeing insufficient rights.

The disagreement is not only about numbers—it’s about interpretation. Women who experience discrimination are more likely to perceive systemic gaps in rights, while men’s experiences—including gender discrimination—tend to have little effect. Still, many men do acknowledge inequalities where public debate or activism makes them visible, showing that the gender perception gap is not absolute and varies across contexts.

Political orientation and education shape overall views but do not erase the divide. Among left-wing youth, 60.1% of women see rights deficits compared to 38.5% of men; among centrists, 49.6% versus 28.3%; and among right-wing youth, 40.3% versus 22.3%. Even education does not substantially alter the gap: among 19–29-year-olds with low education, 58.9% of women versus 30.2% of men see rights as insufficient, while among highly educated youth, the figures are 54.4% versus 25.9%.

The findings highlight that gender shapes perceptions independently of ideology, education, or geography. This divergence is not about a lack of information: men and women interpret the same realities differently, reflecting distinct experiences, social contexts, and interpretive frameworks.

Above all, these findings suggest that achieving gender equality in Southeast Europe will require not just legal or institutional change, but bridging the fundamental perception divide. Until young men and women can look at their societies and see more similar realities, progress on women’s rights will face persistent headwinds from those who do not recognize the problems that half the population experiences daily.

This sixth installment of the Gender Gap Report, authored by Semir Dzebo, draws on survey data from 8,943 young people aged 14–29 across Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Greece, and Türkiye.