For years, researchers have claimed that men’s friendships are shallower and less emotionally supportive than women’s, a pattern called the “gender friendship gap.” But new research challenges how universal that really is. Published in Sex Roles, the study finds that the gap is largely driven by white men specifically, not men as a whole. Much of the work on the gender friendship gap has relied on predominantly white, middle-class samples, which raises an important question: do these patterns actually apply across different racial and socioeconomic groups? Researcher Emily C. Fox revisited this assumption by taking an intersectional approach, examining how gender and ethnoracial identity jointly shape friendship experiences. Drawing on prior research suggesting that social context, marginalization, and cultural norms influence how friendships are formed and maintained, the author questioned whether the “gap” reflects a universal gender difference or whether it is concentrated within specific groups. The study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, a large, nationally representative U.S. sample tracked over time. Fox focused on respondents who, in 2002, …