The Growing Gap in Sexual Identity Between Young Men and Women

Young women are moving away from identifying as exclusively heterosexual at a much faster rate than young men. Recent data highlights a significant shift in how young people understand their sexual orientations. In 2023, a poll conducted by Gallup found that the number of people identifying as LGBTQ+ had more than doubled since 2012. This increase was especially high among Gen Z women, who were born between 1997 and 2012. Specifically, 28.5% of Gen Z women identified as LGBTQ+. In contrast, only 10.6% of Gen Z men identified as LGBTQ+.

Researchers who study sexuality, gender, and young adulthood have tracked these patterns since 2011. The national trends match the findings of an interdisciplinary team of experts in psychology, social work, and gender studies. Their most recent study examined whether young women and men are changing in similar ways. They looked at three specific measures of sexual orientation. First, they looked at sexual attraction, which is who someone sees as a potential partner. Second, they looked at sexual behavior, which refers to the gender of their actual sexual partners. Third, they looked at self-identification, which is how individuals label their own sexuality. Their findings suggest that women and men are not changing in similar ways. The gender gap is not just about who claims an LGBTQ+ identity. It is also about how the boundaries of heterosexuality are changing for different genders.

Identity is only one part of sexual orientation. People also differ in who they are attracted to and who they have sex with. In a study currently under review, the research team examined 15 years of responses from more than 10,000 public university undergraduates in New York state. This data covered the period from 2011 to 2026. The team also analyzed more than 700 open-ended responses from 2024 and 2025. In these responses, the same student population explained why they chose their particular sexual identities.

The research found that, across 15 years, young women have steadily become less likely to report being exclusively attracted to the opposite sex. In 2011, about 22% of female students reported attraction that was not exclusively to men. By 2026, that number had increased to close to 50%. Similar movement appeared across sexual behavior and identity. The share of women who reported not having exclusively male sexual partners increased from 8% to 35%. Additionally, the share identifying as something other than exclusively heterosexual increased from 18% to 44%. These trends were broadly consistent across racial groups.

In the survey, students rated their sexual attraction on a scale. The scale ranged from exclusively other-sex attraction to exclusively same-sex attraction. For young women, the shift was not mainly a move from exclusive attraction to men to exclusive attraction to women. Instead, women’s responses spread across the scale. Many moved from mostly attracted to men to mostly attracted to women. The largest change was a decline in exclusive attraction to men.

Young men showed no comparable long-term shift. Instead, they remained concentrated in exclusive heterosexuality. Any movement away from that standard was limited and less sustained. The share of male students reporting attraction that was not exclusively to women remained nearly unchanged. It stayed at about 14% in 2011 and 13% in 2026. This lack of movement was also seen in behavior and identity.

Among students who identified as something other than exclusively straight, male students were more likely to report exclusively gay identities. Female students were less likely to report exclusively lesbian identities. This pattern is consistent with gender norms that leave men less room for sexual ambiguity. Society often sorts male desire into either entirely straight or entirely gay categories. This leaves little middle ground for men to explore other forms of attraction.

Researchers and journalists have suggested that Covid-era lockdowns changed conditions for exploring sexuality and gender. Social life moved online, dating was interrupted, and some people had more time for reflection. Others had opportunities for online connection and experimentation away from peer scrutiny. Our research does show a pandemic-era shift. Around 2020, more women reported being attracted to people other than just men. This change leveled off somewhat after 2023.

However, COVID-19 lockdowns did not create the broader trend. Among women, movement away from exclusive heterosexuality was already visible before 2020. The trend has since continued along the same general path. In contrast, there was no steady, long-term movement among men away from exclusive heterosexuality. The changes observed for men were smaller. They were also more concentrated around the pandemic and the years that immediately followed.

To understand why these changes matter, consider what feminist writer Adrienne Rich argued more than four decades ago. She stated that heterosexuality has never simply described who someone desires. As a social expectation, it has helped define women and men as complementary but unequal. It gives men greater authority and social status. It encourages women to organize their attention, care, and futures around men. This arrangement appears normal, natural, and even romantic. As the norm, it also stigmatizes those who do not conform.

Over the past century, feminist movements expanded women’s access to education, paid work, political rights, contraception, and divorce. These changes also included other legal protections. Those changes made adult life outside of heterosexual marriage easier to imagine. For some, it became easier to pursue. Although scholars argue this progress has been uneven and has stalled in some areas, women today encounter a wider range of possible futures. These futures include professional, partnered, child-free, queer, bisexual, activist, caregiver, or combinations of these paths.

At the same time, LGBTQ+ visibility, same-sex marriage, online queer communities, and expanding language for sexuality and gender have challenged old ideas. The #MeToo movement also played a role. Together, these factors have challenged the idea that heterosexual partnership should be the unquestioned center of women’s lives.

Similar efforts to reimagine masculinity have existed for decades. However, they have had less cultural reach. They have not loosened masculinity’s reliance on heterosexuality to the same extent. For many, masculinity is still tied to heterosexual dominance. It is linked to sexual confidence with women and distance from anything seen as gay or feminine. Heterosexuality also still offers men advantages in relationships. These include authority, sexual entitlement, and unequal freedom from domestic labor.

Feminist progress loosened assumptions that men and women naturally complete one another through heterosexual relationships. As gender becomes less tightly bound to heterosexuality, marriage, and family, some people have found room for exploration. Others have responded by trying to restore more traditional views of masculinity, femininity, and heterosexual roles. This may explain why public arguments about what young adults should want often circle back to gender.

Whereas some young adults embrace queer, pansexual, nonbinary, or fluid self-descriptions, others turn to ideals that restore traditional roles. Examples include “trad wife” femininity, which casts homemaking and deference as aspirational. There is also “feminine energy” dating advice that prizes softness, receptivity, and letting one’s partner lead. Male dominance is promoted across certain online communities. Some also claim that men and women are naturally suited to opposite roles. These attempts to restore traditional gender roles offer certainty. They appear as expectations linking gender, sexuality, relationships, and adulthood weaken.

Our findings do not just tell the story of young people becoming less heterosexual. Nor do they simply show young women becoming more queer. Instead, we believe they support the idea that heterosexuality may no longer organize gender in quite the same way for women and men. For young women, the boundaries of heterosexuality appear more permeable. For young men, heterosexuality remains bound to masculinity, status, and social recognition.

Our research examined young adults at a pivotal life stage. This is when they begin figuring out who they are and what they want. But those identities form within a changing social world. This world is shaped by rising LGBTQ+ identification, political backlash over LGBTQ+ rights, and shifting expectations for dating and family life.

The larger question is what happens as these young adults carry different relationships with gender and heterosexuality beyond college. Those relationships will shape, and be shaped by, dating, families, workplaces, politics, and law. They will also face expectations about what women and men should want. These expectations come with all the pressures, backlash, policing, and resistance that accompany them. In our analysis, the gap between women and men may persist. It will likely continue unless masculinity itself becomes less dependent on dominance, control, and compulsory heterosexuality.