Attitudes towards gender equality among young people in the Nordic countries: scoping review
Mapping review
|Published
The purpose of this scoping review is to examine the prevalence of positive and negative attitudes that young people in the Nordic countries have towards gender equality, and whether there have been any changes over the past ten years.
Key message
We conducted a scoping review. It is a type of systematic review that maps and describes the existing research on a particular topic. We had two research questions: 1) What is the prevalence of positive and negative attitudes towards gender equality from 2015 to 2025 among young people in the Nordic countries? 2) Has the prevalence changed during the period from 2015 to 2025? We searched for studies in databases and other sources. We included four cross-sectional studies from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and three studies and one dataset with longitudinal data from Norway and Sweden. There were large variations in the studies' methodological descriptions and the size and representativeness of the samples.
Results for research question 1 (prevalence):
- There was broad agreement among young men and women on traditional gender equality issues, such as the importance of women in the workforce and shared responsibility for finances and household. Yet, there were also gender differences on certain issues, with 10-20% of young men in both Norway and Sweden saying that gender equality had been taken too far.
Results for research question 2 (change over time):
- It seems that the proportion of boys who were sceptical to the continuation of gender equality efforts has increased over the past 10 years, but the trend is not uniform.
- Among youth with an immigrant background, it appears that attitudes towards gender equality are aligning more closely with attitudes among youth without an immigrant background.
We found there are knowledge gaps regarding attitudes towards gender equality among youth in the Nordic countries. More studies are needed to draw firm conclusions about changes in young people's attitudes towards gender equality in the Nordic region.
Summary
Introduction
Gender equality is one of the major social changes in modern times, and in Norway, it has been promoted as a principle and value for several decades, for instance through the Equality Act (later known as the ‘Equality and Anti-discrimination Act’). Internationally, there has been a trend towards a more equal society in recent decades. However, in recent years, there has been increasing concern that gender equality (here understood as equality between men and women) is regressing, both internationally and nationally, particularly among youth. This scoping review, commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth, and Family Affairs, aims to map and highlight research on attitudes towards gender equality among youth, investigate changes over the past ten years, and identify possible knowledge gaps and need for more research. The scoping review can serve as a basis for further work to promote equality and counteract polarization.
The research questions were:
1) What is the prevalence of positive and negative attitudes towards gender equality in the period from 2015 to 2025 among youth in the Nordic countries?
2) Has the prevalence of different attitudes towards gender equality among youth in the Nordic countries changed during the period from 2015 to 2025?
Method
We conducted a scoping review. It is a type of evidence synthesis that maps and describes existing literature or research on a specific topic. Scoping reviews typically do not include assessments of the studies’ risk of bias, analyses of study findings, or assessments of certainty in the evidence, as systematic reviews do.
Given the short timeline for completing this scoping review, we conducted a limited literature search and restricted the inclusion of studies. Our inclusion criteria were: Population: Youth residing in Nordic countries, primarily aged 13-35 years. Outcome: Positive or negative attitudes towards gender equality measured as counts or proportions. Study design: Quantitative designs, including cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, and longitudinal studies. Studies should be published between 2015 and 2025, and be in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, or English. Data must have been collected or have the last measurement point in 2015 or later.
The literature search was executed in October 2025 in PsycInfo, MEDLINE, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science. We also searched other sources, such as DIVA, VIVE, Sikt, the Institute for Social Research, Google, and Google Scholar. Pairs of researchers independently evaluated the titles and abstracts of studies as well as the full texts against the inclusion criteria. For searches in other sources like institutional repositories, one researcher reviewed potentially relevant studies in full text. We summarized information about the studies and their results narratively and presented numeric data as counts and percentages in tables.
Results
We included eight studies (7 studies and 1 dataset). Four studies had cross-sectional data (the CORE survey, Kitterød 2020, Friberg 2024, UN Report 2022), and four studies had longitudinal data (the Norwegian ICCS survey, dataset from the Norwegian school election survey, two studies from Sweden, MUCF 2025, La Roi 2023).
Research question 1 - Prevalence
Attitudes towards gender equality among boys and girls
The CORE survey reported high support for gender equality in general. On several questions about gender equality, there was relatively broad agreement among young men and women, such as the importance of women in the workforce and shared responsibility between men and women for finances and household. Both men and women reported that it is women who are most hindered by children when it comes to work and career. However, several studies reported some differences in attitudes towards gender equality among young men and women. In the ICCS survey, Norwegian boys scored lower than girls on an average of six questions about gender equality, where higher scores represent more positive attitudes towards gender equality. In the MUCF survey from Sweden, researchers found that in 2024, girls reported more positive attitudes than boys on all four gender equality questions. On the question of whether gender equality has been taken too far, about 10-20% of boys in three surveys from Norway and Sweden reported that it had been taken too far, while a very small percentage of girls (0-8%) reported the same.
Youth with and without immigrant backgrounds
Four studies examined attitudes towards gender equality among youth with and without immigrant backgrounds. In the ICCS survey, the researchers found that Norwegian-born youth with immigrant parents scored closer to youth without immigrant backgrounds in gender equality questions than their parents did. Two other studies reported similar results from Sweden, but with relatively large differences between youth with immigrant backgrounds from different countries.
Research Question 2 - Changes during the period 2015 to 2025
The researchers of the ICC survey found a slight decrease in the average score on gender equality questions from 2016 to 2022, with boys accounting for the entire decline. The boys had not turned directly negative but were less unreservedly supportive of gender equality. Regarding the question of whether gender equality had ‘been taken too far’, the MUCF study from Sweden found a decrease in the number of youth who believed this: In 2013, 2018, and 2024, 24%, 8%, and 8% of girls, respectively, believed that gender equality had been taken too far, while for boys, the figures were 38%, 22%, and 23%, respectively. The Norwegian School Election Survey had similar results to the Swedish MUCF study. Consistently, it was young men who to the greatest extent believed that gender equality had been taken too far. For girls, the attitudes were relatively stable over time (less than 4% thought that gender equality had been taken too far). Among boys, there was an increase from 11 % in 2017 to 25% in 2023, before the proportion decreased again to 15% in 2025. The proportion of boys who believed gender equality had 'been taken far enough' was, however, steadily increasing from 2017 to 2023 to 2025, with 29%, 34%, 42%. The study by La Roi 2023, which examined Swedish youth’s attitudes, reported that attitudes towards gender roles among youth with immigrant backgrounds over time approached attitudes among youth without immigrant backgrounds. Yet, there were relatively large differences between youth with parents from different countries.
Strength and weaknesses
We conducted a scoping review with literature from both databases and other sources, and included studies that addressed both research questions. However, the short timeline resulted in some restrictions in the literature search, which may mean that we missed relevant studies. We did not assess the studies’ risk of bias, which introduces uncertainty about the reliability of the results. Furthermore, we note that the phrasing of questions in several studies can be interpreted differently, potentially yielding imprecise answers.
Conclusion
For research question 1, we found that the researchers concluded that for several questions about gender equality, there was considerable agreement among boys and girls, for instance, the importance of women in the workforce and shared responsibility between men and women for finances and household. However, for certain questions about equality there were gender differences, with girls being more positive than boys. A small proportion of boys also believed that gender equality had been taken too far.
For research question 2, it seems that the proportion of boys who were sceptical about continuing gender equality efforts has increased over the past ten years, but the trend is not clear-cut. We found that among youth with immigrant backgrounds, attitudes towards gender equality seem to gradually align with attitudes among youth without immigrant backgrounds. We identified few studies with measurements over time and long-term follow-up of youth aged 15 to 35 years. Such studies are needed to determine whether youths’ attitudes towards gender equality have changed during the last ten years.