The Know Daily - Thursday 21 September 2023

_{Thursday 21 September ∙ Read in 5m 50s ∙ Listening to Lana Del Rey}

After a century-long absence, carnivorous plants are once again thriving on a peat bog in Lancashire. While the reintroduction of insect-eating vegetation may not initially sound like a cause for celebration, its presence is crucial to the site’s biodiversity - and the common lizard and the large heath butterfly are likely to start flourishing there too.

🤔 Shifting social attitudes

Britain is more liberal-minded than it was four decades ago, a new study has found - with public opinion on topics such as abortion and same-sex relationships dramatically shifting over the years.

What’s the story?
Since 1983, the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)’s British Social Attitudes survey has been tracking changes in people’s “social, political and moral attitudes”. As the study marks its 40th year, there has been what one researcher described as a “near revolution” in attitudes.

In 2022, 9% of respondents said same-sex relationships were “always wrong”, compared with 50% of respondents in 1983. Similarly, 76% now support a woman’s right to choose an abortion, compared with just 37% forty years ago.

And what about gender roles?
In the mid-1980s, 48% of respondents agreed with the statement that “a man’s job is to earn money and a woman's to look after the home”, compared with just 9% in the latest survey.

But while over three-quarters of Brits agree that domestic labour should be split, 63% of women said they still do more than their fair share - and 32% of men admitted they do less than they should.

“Social scientists refer to the phenomenon as ‘second shift’,” said the BBC, “with women shouldering most domestic and childcare duties as well as participating in the labour market”.

So what’s behind this shift?
Despite the “explicitly socially conservative policies” of successive Tory governments, this has had “limited effect” on the evolution of public attitudes, said The Guardian. The study suggests that more people going to university, more women going out to work and the decline in marriage and organised religion may be behind the shift.

Attitudes have “undergone a profound, long-term, secular change”, said the survey, “such that Britain now looks and feels like a different country from forty years ago”.

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