A century ago, the idea of a woman building a career, making her own financial decisions, living on her own, or holding a position of authority over men was, for many, almost unthinkable.

Women had fought for and won the right to vote but equality in the workplace, in the home, and across public life was still a distant reality.

Over the decades that followed, generation after generation pushed those boundaries further.

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Women entered universities and professions in greater numbers, laws changed and attitudes shifted.

The expectation that a woman’s place was in the home was challenged, and it seemed the only path was forward.

But new research from the University of Melbourne is challenging that assumption, revealing a troubling concentration of hostile attitudes towards women among young Australians.

Almost one in three teenage boys surveyed believed efforts to give women equal opportunities have gone too far.

And while the findings have inevitably turned attention towards social media and the growing influence of the so-called “manosphere”, researchers say the problem is far more complicated than that.

The internet may be amplifying these beliefs, but it did not create them.

The algorithm is only part of the story

It would be easy to look at the rise of the so-called “manosphere” and blame the internet.

The term refers to a loose collection of online communities, influencers and forums focused on men’s issues, masculinity and relationships, with some corners promoting anti-feminist and openly misogynistic views.

Young people are spending more time online than ever, with social media platforms serving up a seemingly endless stream of content about relationships, masculinity, feminism and gender.

The University of Melbourne research found a direct relationship between some online content and the likelihood of holding harmful gender attitudes, pointing to the role of online communities and recommendation systems in shaping what young people see.

But Dr Sara Meger, one of the study’s authors, said the internet is better understood as an amplifier than the source of the problem.

“There’s probably a combination of factors but a major one has been that there’s been a massive social shift over the last decade or so,” she said.

Dr Sara Meger, one of the study’s authors, said the internet is better understood as an amplifier than the source of the problem. Credit: AAP

For young boys, that backlash can come with a particularly potent message: that gender equality is coming at their expense.

Meger said the backlash has increasingly been monetised online.

“There’s been political rhetoric around in a number of forums for about a decade but, increasingly, with online content that has monetised this anti-feminism and this idea that boys are losing out, that men are somehow the victims of gender equality,” she said.

“This has been massively amplified through, I guess, algorithmic content recommendation systems because it’s engaged with, it’s inflammatory, and therefore it sells.”

The formula is simple: content that provokes a reaction attracts attention, and attention is rewarded with more visibility.

But that also raises a more uncomfortable question. What happens when these attitudes are appearing before children are even old enough to have developed a significant online presence?

It starts long before the internet

Teachers who took part in the research reported seeing students repeat manosphere language, while some female teachers said boys were refusing to follow their instructions in ways they did not with male teachers.

Some reported seeing this behaviour in children as young as six.

For Meger, that is one of the most concerning findings because it challenges the idea that online content can explain where these attitudes begin.

“The research shows that the online amplification of these attitudes is a very real phenomenon, but it’s also something that exists already in our society.”

That means the conversation cannot simply be about what children are watching on their phones.

A child who is already questioning a female teacher’s authority because she is a woman is reflecting something they have learned somewhere else.

“When we have very young students espousing disrespect for female teachers’ authority, or espousing ideas of a proper gender role where female teachers should not have these positions of authority, what it suggests to me is that we’ve got a wider problem of needing to address this belief across society,” Meger said.

“I don’t think that’s on individual parents to necessarily fix. This is a society wide problem.”

The backlash against progress

That wider problem is also reflected in another finding that complicates the idea this is simply a story about young boys being exposed to misogynistic content.

Teenage girls were also more likely than older women to express some of the hostile attitudes measured in the research.

Teenage girls were also more likely than older women to express some of the hostile attitudes measured in the research. Credit: AAP

For Meger, the findings challenge an assumption many people had come to take for granted, that every generation would be more progressive than the one before it.

“A lot of us Millennials had assumed that progress was linear,” she said.

“And that each generation was going to become more progressive, and that work on gender equality would just continue to get better and better.”

Instead, the data appears to suggest there is a reaction happening alongside that progress, but whether that reaction will endure is something the research cannot tell us.

“Is this a snapshot of a generation that’s going to continue to be more conservative, especially on gender and political beliefs, than their predecessors, or is this an artefact of being a young person in Australia at this moment in time?” she said.

“We can’t answer that question for certain based on this data.”

Despite this, Meger said the findings are still a reason to intervene early, before those attitudes become more deeply entrenched.

That means confronting not just the content young people encounter online but the grievances and beliefs that make those messages resonate in the first place.

When misogyny meets extremism

The stakes become even higher when those attitudes are considered alongside another finding from the research.

Misogynistic attitudes were among the strongest predictors of support for violent extremism.

That is a difficult finding to sit with in a country grappling with a pandemic of violence against women.

In 2025, police recorded more than 16,000 family and domestic violence-related sexual assault victims across Australia, 88 per cent of whom were female.

In 2025, police recorded more than 16,000 family and domestic violence-related sexual assault victims across Australia. Credit: AAP

For Meger, the connection is not as surprising as it might initially seem.

Feminist researchers in terrorism studies have long pointed to the common ground between extremist movements that otherwise have very different political agendas.

“They weirdly converge on gender ideologies,” Meger said.

“There’s a real centrality to the idea that the cause of all these social and political problems is a corrupt gender order.”

In other words, gender can become part of a much broader explanation for why someone believes society is broken.

“What I think it links to is this idea that all social problems fundamentally stem from women’s emancipation from traditional gender roles,” she said.

“Therefore, they seek to roll back any of those rights attained through feminist advances and make sure that we return to some glorified and romanticised, never really fully experienced, idea of a time when women stayed home and just did domestic duties and men fulfilled all public roles.”

It is a worldview that frames women’s emancipation itself as the source of wider social problems, therefore making misogyny central to the broader extremism conversation rather than just being an ugly by-product of it.

So what can be done?

The research points to the need for intervention before hostile attitudes become more deeply entrenched.

For Meger, that intervention cannot simply focus on what young people are consuming online or frame misogyny as a symptom of young men’s loneliness or mental health struggles.

“One of the concerns I have with how the problem is being discussed is that, increasingly, we’ve seen the blame sort of put on men and boys’ mental health, or feelings of loneliness, which, unfortunately, doesn’t really bear out in the data.”

Young people are not simply passive recipients of the messages they encounter, she argues.

“There is some sort of purchase that these ideas have for the cohorts that are adopting these belief systems,” she said.

Understanding those grievances and why increasingly black-and-white ideas about gender, politics and society can appeal is therefore critical.

The research calls for earlier and more effective counter-messaging, respectful relationships education, stronger regulation of online platforms and recognition of misogyny within approaches to countering violent extremism.

The findings come as the federal government pushes ahead with plans to give Australians greater control over what they see online, including the ability to opt out of personalised social media algorithms.

Under the proposed My Feed, My Way reforms, users would be able to choose between an algorithmically curated feed and one showing posts from friends and creators they follow.

The government has also moved to restrict social media access for children younger than 16, arguing the measure will help protect young people from the potential harms of online platforms.

But perhaps its most confronting message is that the problem cannot be neatly contained within the internet, the manosphere or one generation of young people.

Algorithms can amplify misogyny; they can make it louder, more visible, and harder to escape. But the beliefs themselves are far older than the technology.