International Women’s Day is a great opportunity to celebrate the success of elite women, but a proper discussion of gender inequality should also take account of where real disadvantage lies: with young men, says Alys Denby
This Saturday is International Women’s Day and every comms professional in London has duly pitched these pages inspirational examples of ladies in leadership, laments about the scarcity of women on boards and data on the funding gap for female founders.
We should always celebrate the success of elite women and work to remove more barriers, but a proper discussion of gender inequality should also take account of where real disadvantage lies: with young men.
For people aged 16-24 the gender pay gap has now reversed, with women and girls making nearly 10 per cent more on average than their male peers, according to research published last week by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The number of men in this age group who are not in education, employment or training has increased by 40 per cent since the pandemic compared to just seven per cent for women. Concurrently there has been an alarming rise in the number of young people signed off work with mental health problems, up by 26 per cent in the last year. Given that unemployment in early adulthood can place life-long limits on a person’s career and earnings, this expanding cohort is at risk of living lives of dependency and despair.
Women should worry about this because the effects are already being felt across society. There is the obvious harm that rising economic inactivity is doing to our growth prospects and the costs it places on taxpayers. But the narrowing of horizons for young men in contrast to those of women is also changing their social attitudes. Over half (57 per cent) of Gen Z men say we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men, while just a third (36 per cent) of women shared that opinion, according to research published on Wednesday from Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. Similar divides are showing up in voting patterns, with Reform attracting twice the vote share of 16-24-year-old men (12 per cent) at the last general election that it managed with women of the same age (six per cent).
A generation radicalised against feminism
A generation of men radicalised against feminism is a clear threat to the progress women have made. Yet reading the CSJ’s report, I was struck by how many of the causes of this new male malaise are specific to their sex, not side-effects of female emancipation. Though men are more likely to be victims of crime they are also vastly more likely to be criminals – with 96 per cent of the prison population being male. One in five children is growing up in a fatherless household and 76 per cent of children in custody have absent fathers – proving that raising children remains, on the whole, women’s work. But most striking of all, a quarter of men aged 18-29 watch pornography every day compared to just two per cent of women. If violence, feckless fathers and sexual perversion are harming men, then they are problems of their own making.
In particular, pornography is a product created almost solely for consumption by men that enfeebles and warps the perceptions of its users while exploiting women. It has become far too normalised and both genders are suffering.
But women should examine our own consciences too. It’s easy to decry the negative traits most commonly associated with men but valuing the positive ones – the CSJ cites strength, courage and competitiveness – is important too. We should recognise that our liberation from domesticity has not been cost-free – all revolutions leave scars and feminism is no exception. In shaking off the chains of our own traditional gender roles we have deprived men of theirs – and we are now seeing the results. We should ask ourselves if we have overcorrected for centuries of patriarchy by, in some areas, wanting men to recede in order that we should thrive. And we should question too, whether identity politics and movements like ‘Me Too’ have divided us by pigeonholing minorities as victims and everyone else (read men) as perpetrators.
Pornography is a product created almost solely for consumption by men that enfeebles and warps the perceptions of its users while exploiting women
A political culture where the populist right valourises masculinity and wants women to put their aprons back on, while the progressive left ignores that gender inequalities can run both ways, will fail both sides. Equal rights are not a zero-sum game – in a society where we must work together, raise families together and in which we all have a stake, both sexes depend on each other for our freedom, prosperity and happiness. So this International Women’s Day, spare a thought for men.
Alys Denby is Opinion and Features Editor of City AM