SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The latest season of the podcast Unsettled, from Iowa Public Radio, looks at how gender affects people's everyday lives and how it creates certain divides in U.S. society, like a recent episode about the education achievement gap and why boys in particular are falling behind. Here's a line from the podcast by an educator named Daniel Jean who mentors young men.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
DANIEL JEAN: I think the idea of what a man is is very tainted. Like, for example, when I was growing up, when I said anti-intellectual environments, it wasn't cool to be smart. You would literally tuck your intelligence, tuck your uniqueness. You didn't want to show how smart and creative you were 'cause you would be chastised if you were trying to become more than what you were.
PFEIFFER: This new season is called Unsettled: Mind The Gender Gap, and its host is Charity Nebbe, who's with us today. Hi, Charity.
CHARITY NEBBE, BYLINE: Hello.
PFEIFFER: Maybe the most obvious gender divide that might come to many people's minds is the pay gap between men and women that often exists. But what other places are you finding the gender gap showing up?
NEBBE: The inspiration for this season was really the 2024 election because we saw a real gender gap in how particularly young voters were voting. And so we wanted to explore where that was coming from, what was driving it. But when you want to look at what's driving an obvious gender gap like that, you have to look beyond that and explore those other topics. I mean, you already mentioned education. Education shapes who we become as adults. So we, you know, definitely had to look deep into that.
PFEIFFER: So go back to politics. In what ways are you finding a gender divide between young men and women in politics? And what did you find is driving that?
NEBBE: Well, it was really interesting to look at the gender gap through time and politics because we didn't really see a voting gender gap show up until the 1980s. And since the 1980s, that gap has grown and grown, where we see women tend to vote in a way that supports government spending on social services because women are often more vulnerable and need that social safety net not just for them, but for their children. And that lasts throughout life because women tend to live longer than men and are more dependent on Social Security and Medicare as they age. But it really was the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade that really extended this gap for a lot of young voters.
One of the things that is really driving this gap is also social media. We spend so much of our lives online, and podcasts have gotten very popular. The Republicans really found a way to tap in to a lot of the disenfranchised feelings that young men are experiencing right now. And of course, I think we've all heard the phrase, the manosphere. So these podcasts have become extremely popular with podcasters like Joe Rogan. And Iowa State University political scientist Karen Kedrowski says that these manosphere influencers really resonate for young men right now who may be feeling a lack of purpose.
KAREN KEDROWSKI: Previous generations would have been raised so that they would be the breadwinners in their family, the heads of households. And here are mass media that are filled - you know, chat rooms and so forth - that are filled with people who are feeling the same way that they are, that are giving words to their lived experience and sort of reinforcing that there must be some evil out there that has left them behind. And of course, often that evil is feminism.
PFEIFFER: So Charity, that's politics. Go back to education. We heard that educator mentor talk about some men feeling they have to suppress or hide their smarts, their intelligence. How else did you see gender impacts affecting outcomes, educational outcomes?
NEBBE: Well, it's really interesting to take sort of a longitudinal look at that as well. I'm a Gen Xer, and when I was in school, you know, girls had been left behind in education for generations. So when I was in school, there were all of these programs designed to help girls succeed in school and catch up, and we did catch up, and then we also surpassed boys. Girls have far outpaced them in literacy. Girls have tied them in math.
And even more disturbing, though, when we look not just at the gender gap but we take race into consideration, boys of color are really being left behind. There is a socioeconomic gap there, but there's also a racial gap there that is really disturbing, and it seems to be getting worse in a lot of ways.
PFEIFFER: The final episode of this third season has men sharing what it means to be a man in 2025. Why did you want to end on that?
NEBBE: During this season, you know, we heard in these other episodes a lot about how men and boys are really struggling in important ways that hurt them but also hurt other people in society, and a lot of it has to do with problematic ideas about masculinity. So we wanted to hear from men, and we turned to a truly diverse group of men and gave them the opportunity really to talk about how they feel about masculinity and their role in their families and in society. And I want to share a moment. This is from a conversation with Cody Howell, who is a violence prevention specialist at the University of Iowa, and he has studied men and masculinity. And he has some really interesting ideas on a better idea of what it means to be a man.
CODY HOWELL: It just doesn't need to be one idea. It could be a whole plethora of ideas that you get to pick and choose from that matches what you think is valuable. I just think that there's so many different messages that they're getting right now that we need to be able to say, let's have an idea of what a good authentic manhood could look like, and it doesn't have to fit the narrative that the podcasts are telling you.
NEBBE: I love what he said there because an authentic identity, whatever your gender may be, feels like something that really we could all strive for.
PFEIFFER: That is Charity Nebbe, the host of Iowa Public Radio's podcast Unsettled: Mind The Gender Gap. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Charity, thank you.
NEBBE: Thank you, Sacha.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.