Modern Pressures Send Gender Debates Back to Old Certainties

Jul 25 , 2026. By Blen Hailu ( Blen Hailu (blenmahi12@gmail.com) studied marketing, management and law. She works in communications and digital content creation, with a focus on human rights, equity and youth engagement.  )

The revival of a debate on gender roles in a relationship or the household is less a simple return to the past than a response to the present. Rising housing costs and scarce secure jobs in Addis Abeba, alongside social media that sorts young men and women into opposing content worlds, have left many searching for a familiar script. The future may come to look like the past not because the past worked for everyone, but because the present offers no certain alternative. Writes, Blen Hailu (blenmahi12@gmail.com).

A recent exchange on an Addis Abeba dating show captured a debate that is resurfacing far beyond entertainment. A 22-year-old man feels cleaning the house was a woman’s responsibility. Three of the four women opposite him, aged between 20 and 21, retorted. They would date only a millionaire or billionaire.

The conversation took place during a "Blind Dating" segment on Shuf TV, in a format familiar to followers of Western dating channels such as Poppies Studios. The contestants were looking for potential matches, but their answers revealed something broader. Beneath the language and appearance of modern dating sat expectations that were remarkably old.

The young man embraced a traditional division of domestic labour. The women invoked the equally longstanding expectation that men should be providers. Both sides presented their preferences as modern choices, yet neither had entirely broken with inherited ideas about what men and women should contribute to a relationship.

It would be easy to dismiss the exchange as another viral moment involving young adults still deciding what they believe. Views formed at that age may later be revised or abandoned. Yet the public reaction made the episode harder to overlook. Some viewers appeared more troubled by the women’s financial demands than by the man’s belief that domestic work belonged to women.

That imbalance unveiled that traditional expectations imposed on women continue to attract criticism, while those imposed on men remain surprisingly resilient.

The exchange in Addis Abeba is part of a wider return to debates many assumed societies had outgrown. In the United States, discussions about household authority, family structure and women’s political participation have gained visibility online. Campaigns associated with hashtags such as #RepealThe19th, which advocate reversing the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote, continue to circulate in some conservative corners of the internet.

Such movements remain far from the mainstream. Their visibility nonetheless mirrors a broader change in public discourse. Questions about whether women should vote, household responsibilities should be shared equally, and the pursuit of gender equality has gone too far are again being raised with renewed seriousness, including among younger people.

For those who grew up assuming that these debates would eventually be settled, their return can be difficult to watch from a distance. The surprise is not that disagreement persists. It is that positions many considered largely resolved have re-entered everyday discussion through a generation using new platforms to revisit old arguments.

In Ethiopia, this revival carries particular weight. Four in 10 young women are married before turning 18, while more than a third of ever-married women report experiencing physical, emotional or sexual violence from a partner. Female genital mutilation also remains widespread.

Gender equality can hardly be described as a completed project under such conditions. Progress has been made, but many women and girls continue to negotiate for rights, opportunities and safety that others take for granted. Against this backdrop, the renewed appeal of traditional gender roles is especially striking.

These conversations are also no longer confined to communities typically considered conservative. They are increasingly visible among urban youth and in societies associated with progressive values. Rather than remaining in history books, academic journals or fringe forums, they appear in podcasts, dating shows, TikTok videos, YouTube comment sections and ordinary conversations.

One prominent expression is the rise of the “trad wife” phenomenon on social media. Short for “traditional wife,” the term describes women who publicly embrace conventional gender roles, presenting homemaking, child-rearing, cooking and financial dependence on a husband as desirable ideals. Their carefully curated content portrays a life organised around domesticity, femininity and family.

Unlike many housewives of earlier generations, however, today’s trad-wife influencers may earn substantial incomes from promoting this lifestyle. Their content generates advertising revenue, sponsorships, merchandise sales and brand partnerships. Some earn tens of thousands of dollars a year, while the most successful reportedly make hundreds of thousands or even millions.

The contradiction is difficult to miss. Women encouraging others to leave paid employment may themselves be running profitable businesses. They promote dependence while exercising considerable economic independence. The image being sold and the reality behind its production do not always align.

Yet the appeal of this content does not necessarily amount to a rejection of women’s rights. It may also reflect dissatisfaction with the pressures of contemporary life. Rising living costs, demanding careers, unstable relationships and economic uncertainty have left many people searching for an alternative.

Many young adults entered adulthood amid instability and growing anxiety about the future. In Addis Abeba, housing costs continue to rise while secure employment remains beyond the reach of many young people. Questions about who should provide, who should work and what a successful partnership should look like are therefore shaped as much by economic realities as by personal preference.

Social media intensifies these pressures by constantly exposing users to idealised lifestyles. Success appears more visible than ever, but also more difficult to attain. Traditional gender roles offer an apparently obvious answer. They define responsibilities, assign authority and provide a familiar script.

Certainty has its appeal when the future feels unpredictable.

A related divide appears to be widening between some young men and women across several countries. Many young women continue to embrace independence, education and equality. Some young men, meanwhile, have become more receptive to messages centred on traditional masculinity, male leadership and firmly defined gender roles.

Social media can deepen this divide by placing users in different content ecosystems. Each group encounters messages that reinforce contrasting views of work, relationships and identity. Conversations about gender consequently become more polarised, even as the platforms themselves may exaggerate the scale of the disagreement by rewarding conflict and controversy.

The result is a distorted sense of how widespread certain positions may be. Views that attract attention online can appear dominant even when they remain marginal. Still, their appeal cannot be explained by algorithms alone. Questions about work, family, marriage, identity, and economic security have become increasingly difficult to answer, encouraging some people to look to older models for stability.

What is emerging may not be a simple return to the past. It may instead be a response to the uncertainties of the present. The renewed debate over gender roles is not only about domestic labour, financial provision or political rights. It also reflects a deeper struggle over how people should organise their lives when the future no longer appears secure.

The question is whether economic insecurity and digital polarisation are narrowing what young people imagine to be possible. Old gender roles will continue to offer the comfort of a ready-made script. The future may look increasingly like the past, not because the past worked for everyone, but because the present has failed to provide enough certainty about what should replace it.

PUBLISHED ON Jul 25,2026 [ VOL 27 , NO 1369]