The Courage to Connect: How Gen Z Women Can Make History and Rebuild Community
Isabella Ritter /
As we mark the end of another Women’s History Month, it’s worth asking the question: Is the current generation of women better off than previous generations?
In many ways, the answer is yes. Women are certainly better off today. Women are CEOs, politicians, professional athletes. We have the right to vote and the right to defend our country.
By all appearances, women are thriving. But as a Gen Z woman concerned about her generation and the next, I’m not so convinced this rings true.
If women are truly better off today, then why is it that nearly 80% of Gen Z reported feeling lonely in the past year? We have more ways to connect than any generation in history, and yet somewhere along the way, something essential has been lost.
For women especially, this loss of connection runs deep. Historically, women were the designers of community. It was women who organized the community bake sale and the neighborhood dance; the ones who ran the voluntary associations that stitched towns together; who held the extended kinship networks that guided young women toward love, family, and vocation.
But beyond the organizing, women have always brought something harder to name and more essential: an instinct for noticing. Noticing who is on the margins of a room, who has not spoken, who is grieving quietly.
Women have historically been the ones to follow up, to remember, to show up with food, to ask the second question. They create the conditions where people feel safe enough to be known. This is not supplementary to community. It is the foundation of it.
That distinctly feminine genius did not disappear. But the culture that gave it room to prosper largely has. Women are particularly disadvantaged because they have lost one of the primary ways they have historically understood themselves: pillars of community.
The “third spaces” where community once operated—coffee shops, libraries, dance halls, civic squares—still exist, but we move through them like strangers in a waiting room, each of us absorbed in a private world of our own making.
The statistics reflect this: The rate of loneliness among young adults has increased every year between 1976 and 2019, and only 17% under 30 say they feel deeply connected to a community.
This decline has real consequences; loneliness and social isolation increase mortality risk by 26% and 29%, respectively.
What we’ve forgotten is that connection requires friction: Asking someone out, introducing yourself, joining a new social group; these are acts of courage because they make us vulnerable to rejection.
The pandemic made this even harder, stripping away the unremarkable moments that quietly teach young people how to create lasting connection. And the current culture hasn’t helped us recover. Instead, it has reframed distance as wisdom.
“You do you,” “protect your peace,” and other contemporary maxims sell radical individualism as liberation. But look at how we define ourselves through our relationships: “I am a sister,” “I have a great mentor,” “My friend taught me.”
Unfortunately, the practice of building and cultivating those relationships has become a lost art. Hyper-individualism harms women because it cuts against the feminine instinct to tend, to gather, to bind people together. In this culture, that instinct has been belittled and made to feel naive.
And yet, we crave community. We always have. And women, perhaps more than anyone, have historically known how to build it. To find it again, we must move beyond ourselves.
As a Gen Z woman entering the professional world, I look to the most transformative women in history, such as Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, and Mother Teresa, all of whom understood that human dignity flourishes in relationship. They remind us that connection is intentional, cultivated, and courageous.
Reversing the loneliness epidemic, especially among young women, will not come from another app or algorithm. It will come from something simpler and, honestly, far more difficult.
Building connection is not always convenient, and it often requires courage. Introducing yourself. Inviting someone to coffee. Looking someone in the eye and really listening. Asking someone how they are and being curious about the answer.
Humanity is beautiful: There is so much artistry; inspiration; ingenuity; entrepreneurship; passion; and deep, bountiful love to be shared and enjoyed. Let’s get back to that.
I challenge my fellow Gen Z women to lead the way in taking these risks. By next Women’s History Month, I hope to see women truly better off. I hope to see a generation more willing to take these small, courageous steps, to rebuild the habits of connection, to risk discomfort, to embrace vulnerability, and to create genuine communities.
While technology can connect us in ways our grandparents never imagined, it cannot replace the timeless bravery it takes to truly see and be seen by the world around us.
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