Think Report - Blog Posts

Researchers from the University of Essex have published a controversial study suggesting men are the true victims of gender inequality, with women at an overall advantage. The paper, published in 2019, claims to have found that men are, on average, more disadvantaged than women in 91 out of 134 countries, which is about 68% of countries studied and includes Great Britain, Canada, and the US.

Before you crucify me, this isn’t the only place where this controversial idea has been called out. As the World Bank put it in its most recent Global Gender Gap Report, the  current standard for measuring inequality is the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index. “The index rewards countries that reach the point where outcomes for women equal to those for men, but it neither rewards nor penalizes cases in which women are outperforming men". That means it’s effectively a measure of women inequality and ignores male inequality, which is clearly only half the picture.

This stuff is super interesting and very important. If advocates for women equality truly want to achieve it, they need to look at the full picture. In this episode we’re going to look at some of the ways that men are behind in equality.

The purpose of this episode is not to say that men have it worse than women, although some measurements do illustrate that like the Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) focuses on three factors – educational opportunities, healthy life expectancy and overall life satisfaction.

The purpose of this episode is to uncover some of the ways that men aren’t equal and to remind us that if we are going to say that we haven’t reached equality for women, we need to be careful that we aren’t saying that we have reached equality for men, because that is certainly not true. Men make up 50% of the population. If women are going to ask that men buy into the idea of equality, we need to ensure we are looking at the full picture.

Men don’t live as long as women

Men perform poorer in school

Men aren’t completing university

Men have lower life satisfaction

Men are more likely to commit suicide

Men are more likely to be imprisoned

Sources

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2018.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR10-508.pdf

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-men-often-die-earlier-than-women-201602199137

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/what-you-need-know-about-unescos-global-report-boys-disengagement-education

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2022/11/23/why-are-boys-doing-badly-at-school

https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/111041644611110155/pdf/Educational-Underachievement-Among-Boys-and-Men.pdf

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/08/whats-behind-the-growing-gap-between-men-and-women-in-college-completion/

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-625-x/2019001/article/00002-eng.htm

https://www.statista.com/statistics/187478/death-rate-from-suicide-in-the-us-by-gender-since-1950/

https://healthydebate.ca/2017/08/topic/male-suicide/

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190103152911.htm