By Majlinda Bregu/
March 8🌷 +364 days🗓️
March 8th - that romantic day of the year when women get attention, almost as much as February 14th.
Speeches in competition with messages about how ladies women are, how their intelligence and willpower surpass that of men, logos, panels discussing women's empowerment, posts, flowers, applause.
Perfect day.
Now, I'm taking the risk of "striping" the day a little from this sunny architecture of congratulations and inviting you to think about the next day.
Imagine a study that finds that today's young men, raised with the internet, in educational systems that claim to promote equality, hold more conservative views on women than their grandparents.
It's not a metaphor. It's the main finding of a survey conducted by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London, which surveyed 23,000 people in 29 countries.
The most alarming finding is not the numbers themselves, but the direction they point.
A third of Generation Z men born between 1997 and 2012 believe that a woman should obey her husband.
Young men are twice as likely as baby boomers to think that the man should have the final say.
Nearly a quarter think women shouldn’t appear too independent.
21 percent of Gen Z men believed that men who share in childcare are less manly than those who don’t.
Both genders felt that women have more choice in roles within the family and in their wardrobe, while men have more choice in hobbies and work.
This isn’t just stagnation, it’s a step backwards.
And setbacks are much more difficult than slow progress. Setbacks are active movement, harder than inertia.
The King's College researchers offer a clear explanation for this reversal: young men are economically disadvantaged. They can't buy a house. They can't find stable jobs. The traditional markers of "manhood" - providing for the family, protecting it, building a future for their children - are increasingly difficult. This breeds anxiety, and anxiety is fueled by ideology.
Albania is not part of the study. But if it were, there would be no change in the study.
Youth unemployment between 15 and 29 years old stands at 22.5%. The NEET rate, young people who are neither in education, employment nor training, reaches 25.2%, more than double the EU-27 average. For the 25-29 age group, this rate rises to 31.1%. Between 69 and 75% of young people looking for a job have been unemployed for more than six months.
Those who can leave, leave. In 2024, Albania had only 405,000 young people aged 15-29 - 45% fewer than in the 2011 census. The year 2022 saw around 36,000 young people leave the country within twelve months. Those who remain are often those with the fewest opportunities.
It is precisely this new profile, economically frustrated, isolated, without horizons, that digital platforms aim to exploit with surgical precision.
Not by providing solutions to their real problems, but by giving them a culprit: independent women, feminism, "gender equality."
This model is widely consumed in Albania. It's free. It's fun. It's available twenty-four hours a day. And, in a good portion of families, it's the loudest voice of reason. The network!
There was a time when public and private television could play an educational role. Social documentaries, debates, programs that explored identity, family, and gender relations had the power to reach where school and family could not. That moment is gone.
Media owned primarily by political and economic interests mainly offers reality shows, black news, and political bickering.
The result: a vast void. The family is fragmented by emigration. The school is overburdened and misunderstood. And this void is being filled by social media, with algorithms built to keep you there, not to give you solutions.
So why am I "ruining" your Sunday, March 8th?😊
Simply because tomorrow, March 8th will be forgotten. The news will start reporting on the murder of a girl or woman, on the violence of over 49% of women, on the courts applying protective measures for children in only 10% of monitored cases of domestic violence, on the digital violence that is on the rise with deepfakes and online insults that entertain ignorance as the algorithm wants.
Violence does not need to increase significantly to become worse, nor does it disappear with modernity. It simply becomes better organized. It permeates institutions, decision-making, public debate, the media, politics.
It is enough for the culture of impunity to persist. And for the moment, violence is a daily refrain among us.
March 8th, Women's Day, with all its performances, doesn't last more than 24 hours.
Wishes are free. Change requires willpower.
Happy March 8th😊
