According to a new Gallup poll, one in five Americans wish they could leave the U.S. and permanently relocate to another country.
The demographic driving this record-high desire to emigrate are women and teens ages 15 to 44, 40% of whom say they would move abroad if given the opportunity. Reading the report, one commentor remarked, “The new ‘American Dream’ is to escape from America.”
Inquiries into moving abroad from members of the losing political party always surge after presidential elections. This was especially true in response to the election of Donald Trump. In 2017, Gallup reported Americans who disapproved of Trump’s presidency were 14 points more likely to want to leave the country than those who voted for him. Then, during President Joe Biden’s term in office, the difference between parties shrank to 8 points before surging to 25 points in the recent poll from Trump’s second term.
For years, the percentage of women in the U.S. looking to move abroad fluctuated between 20% and 30%. Typically, these were young, unmarried women with no children. However, in Gallup’s latest poll, 41% of the women desiring to flee America are married and 40% have children living with them.
Gender gap
The new Gallup survey provides more evidence of the widening gender gap around political dissatisfaction in the United States. While 40% of women want to emigrate, only 19% of men in the Gallup survey said they want to permanently leave the country. No other country of the 160 surveyed showed such a divide between the sexes in response to the question of moving abroad.
In the United States, 51% of women believe their rights are at risk from the “rise of the right,” but only 33% of men feel the same.
Nadia Brown
Nadia E Brown, professor of government and chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Georgetown University, says: “It’s not just partisan politics. Women feel caught between expectations from both sides — traditional roles promoted by conservatives and the pressures of progressive working life. Neither path guarantees autonomy or dignity, and that leaves women considering alternatives like moving abroad.”
The number of women who say they would permanently relocate rose as their trust in American institutions plummeted. In 2015, when Gallup conducted its National Institutions Index to measure citizens’ confidence in the national government, military, judicial system and election integrity, women in America rated their confidence above average (57%). Their trust began a 17-point slide, however, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion. After the Dobbs decision, 14 states quickly implemented their own abortion bans and seven others imposed restrictions on abortion access, such as mandatory waiting periods.
For American women, the benefits of the universal health care systems available in other countries offer an appealing option when faced with the Trump administration’s cuts to reproductive care and the increasing cost of health insurance in the United States.
At the start of his second term, Trump revoked Biden’s executive orders protecting access to abortion medication, emergency abortion care and contraception. Trump’s 2026 budget cut the $286 million Title X program, which provides free and low cost birth control and reproductive health care for women at health centers, rural health clinics and Indian Health Service clinics. Without grants from Title X, many health clinics will be forced to close. The closures also coincide with the shuttering of rural hospitals and obstetrics wards, which serve millions of Medicaid patients, further exacerbating the maternal health crisis. Women already pay more out of pocket than men for health care expenses. If Republicans fail to reauthorize the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies, that burden will only grow.
A ’shecession’
In addition to skyrocketing health care costs, 62% of women think the economy and inflation are worsening. As the primary purchasers of groceries and household goods, women are daily witnessing the consequences of Trump’s chaotic tariff policies. On top of the nation’s affordability crisis, the administration also is rolling back protections for female employees. Last January, Trump rescinded Executive Order 11246, which prevented government contractors from discriminating against employees based on race, religion, sex and age.
“As the primary purchasers of groceries and household goods, women are daily witnessing the consequences of Trump’s chaotic tariff policies.”
Nicole Mason, CEO of Future Forward Women, says the country is in a “shecession,” an economic downturn disproportionately affecting women. Those under 44 are the most financially insecure demographic, according to research by The Century Foundation, which is hardly surprising in a country where women still earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Women of color face even greater pay inequality, with African American women making 64 cents on the dollar and Latina women even less at 51 cents. Cuts to jobs in education and health care, the post-COVID return-to-office mandate, along with the DOGE-ing of federal workers, is driving some women out of the workforce entirely. The women in the Gallup poll thought their chance for financial stability might lie outside the U.S.
Where would they move?
When asked by Gallup where they wished to move, participants’ top answers were Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Italy. However, Professor Brown says women hoping to find economic opportunity abroad may be disappointed: “Women in many countries are navigating similar challenges. The U.S. just happens to be one where these pressures are particularly visible and acute.”
Women in Canada earn 81 cents for every dollar earned by Canadian men, and more than a quarter of women there report facing gender-based discrimination. Due to an overburdened health care system and a dearth of available housing, 75% of Canadians support reducing the number of new immigrants to the country.
New Zealand, like many other countries post pandemic, has taken a political right turn and now 55% of women living there feel the country is heading in the wrong direction. The country’s failing health care system and limited job market are forcing many young Kiwi women to emigrate to Australia.
Elsewhere in the Pacific, Japan’s parliament has elected Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister. However, Takaichi sees herself as another Margaret Thatcher, who supports traditional gender roles and opposes same-sex marriage. To appease the far right in Japan, she too plans to limit immigration.
Italy under Prime Minster Giorgia Meloni is even more restrictive than Japan. Her Fratelli d’Italia party, which traces its lineage to Mussolini, endorses traditional family gender roles and refuses to recognize the paternal rights of same-sex couples. At the same time, the country has seen an increase in sexual and gender violence. While abortion is legal in Italy during the first trimester, it is difficult to find a willing provider. This spring, Meloni’s government passed a law allowing anti-abortion groups access to Italy’s abortion clinics. Women looking to escape the restrictive climate in America would find Italy even more so.
Few will actually move
It’s important to note the Gallup poll measures Americans’ desire to emigrate, not intention. Very few of those surveyed will permanently relocate outside of the United States. Moving abroad is a complicated and expensive venture under the best of circumstances. Now, with anti-immigrant and anti-American sentiment surging around the globe, it’s even more difficult.
Furthermore, many women in Gallup’s survey simply cannot leave the country no matter how desperately they want to. Too many people are depending on them. They’re taking care of children or aging parents or both
“If 40% of men felt so oppressed by their circumstances that they wanted to leave the country, the podcast manosphere would be up in arms.”
What’s remarkable in the Gallup poll is not just the large percentage of women who want to move abroad to escape conditions in the U.S, but that Gallup’s reporting has failed to raise any alarm. If 40% of men felt so oppressed by their circumstances that they wanted to leave the country, the podcast manosphere would be up in arms.
Instead, they platform misogynists like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, who radicalize young men and threaten sexual violence toward women on social media. News sites are thick with think pieces on the “crisis of masculinity,” in part because men in crisis may turn violent. With guns so easy to access in America, a man who feels stressed and oppressed too often finds a target for his angst.
Meanwhile women in crisis are not a public threat; they target themselves. The rate of eating disorders soared during and after the pandemic for teens and young women and is now outpacing the rate of breast cancer for middle aged women. The rate of clinical depression in American women is at an all-time high and double the rate diagnosed in men. The same is true for anxiety disorders.
In the past, women might have found support and community in the church, but no longer. Disillusioned by another institution that has failed and demeaned them, more and more women are disgusted with the congregations they have long sustained. And unlike the country, they can and are leaving the church for good, in higher numbers than ever before.
Kristen Thomason is a freelance writer and journalist living outside Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. She has produced educational and promotional media for national and international religious organizations and public television. Kristen also worked with local churches in Metro D.C. and Toronto, Canada. With a master’s degree in communication and undergraduate degrees in media studies and classics, she is interested in the intersection of politics, religion, history and the arts.