See the Results of InStyle's What Women Care About Survey

The narrative in America right now is that we are divided. Polite conversation and compromise have gone the way of the iPod nano and overly-plucked eyebrows. Everything has been cast under a partisan shadow—even things that have nothing to do with politics (see, for example, the Traylor Swelce conspiracy theories). But if you pay attention to American women, a different picture emerges. American women are surprisingly in agreement—on how they’ll spend their money, on the direction this country is headed in (spoiler: It’s the wrong one), on the issues that matter most to them and whether they’ll vote based on that come November. 

Earlier this year, InStyle conducted a survey of more than 2,000 women and nonbinary people across the United States. We’re at a clear inflection point in our culture, with much at stake. InStyle editors wanted to know: Which stakes are the highest? As our respondents told us…pretty much all of them. We asked participants about 17 issues, including economic opportunity, gun violence, immigration policy, school curriculums, and more, and for all but two topics more than three-quarters of respondents said the issue was very or somewhat important to them; 90 percent said that for all but five. Women are concerned about the state of our world.

Far and away the most pressing issue for American women and nonbinary people is housing affordability. Millennials have long been told that their latte habit is precluding them from home ownership, but the problem isn’t coffee, it’s cost: A family making the median income cannot afford a median-priced home. Increasingly, rent is taking up more than half of people’s paychecks. So it’s no wonder that 79 percent of our survey respondents said housing affordability is “very important” and the highest number of people (15 percent) named it the most important issue to them personally (tied only with economic opportunity). No matter how you splice the data—by generation, by political lean, by race—housing affordability ranks in the top three in terms of importance for every group. The same is true for economic opportunity. 

Said one Democratic-leaning Gen-Xer when asked why housing affordability was the most important issue to her: “Living paycheck to paycheck during a time when I make more in wages than I ever have proves that prices outweigh the wages of the average to above average citizen.” Added another who is from the Northeast and Republican-leaning: “Just existing with no fun and adventure is not a good life.” Clearly, American women are worried about the ability to get ahead—and to keep a roof over their heads while they’re at it.

American women agree on a lot of other issues, too. Again, regardless of how we looked at the data, the same five topics came up over and over again—even on issues that have been branded as highly polarizing. In addition to housing affordability and economic opportunity, participants care greatly about gun violence, abortion and reproductive rights, and the cost of education. Seventy percent of respondents said the problem of gun violence in this country is very important to them; more than two-thirds said the same of economic inequality, education affordability, and reproductive rights issues. In fact, 90 percent of American women think that abortion and reproductive rights is a key issue and 67 percent believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, including half of Republican or Republican-leaning women. Politicians try to paint the abortion question as red or blue, but any fifth grader with an understanding of color theory can tell you that’s purple. As multiple respondents simply and succinctly put it when asked why they consider reproductive rights the most important issue: “I am a woman.”

The issues on which women are most concerned are also the ones they feel are not being addressed appropriately. More than half of participants said the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to housing affordability, gun violence, reproductive rights, and the cost of healthcare. There wasn’t any issue for which more than a quarter of respondents said things are going the right way. Education affordability was the closest, at 24 percent. 

Still, women are not a monolith. Members of Gen Z were more likely to name abortion and reproductive rights as most important (second only to housing affordability) than Millennials or Gen X, while Gen-Xers were more likely to be concerned about immigration. Black women are more concerned than any other ethnic group about racial justice, and significantly less concerned about immigration. Women who lean left are more likely to refer to climate change as most important; right leaning women, less so. 

The bottom line: If you want a woman’s vote (or her business—one in three respondents say they shop based on their values often or all the time), there are a wide variety of topics you need to address. Women’s voices are often diminished or dismissed, particularly if they are moms, or women of color, or young. What women deem important, our wants and desires, are often seen as frivolous, not problems for boardrooms or Capitol Hill. But as women have proven (in 2018, and 2020, and again in 2022) is that what matters to us can shape an election—even an economy. At InStyle, we’ve taken note and we’ll be reporting on these issues, and the ways in which we can work to solve them, all year long. 

InStyle surveyed 2,004 women or nonbinary eligible voters ages 18-55 from January 24-31, 2024. The survey was fielded online via a self-administered questionnaire to an opt-in panel of respondents from a market research vendor. Quotas were implemented in sampling using benchmarks from American Community Survey (ACS) from the U.S. Census Bureau for region, age, race/ethnicity, household income, and NORC’s General Social Survey and Pew Research Center for political leaning by generation.