Don’t blame feminism for men and boys getting left behind

But what about the men, though? I know, I know, it’s an uncouth question to ask, this week of all weeks, as the world prepares to celebrate International Women’s Day.

Women are still getting abused and raped both in war zones and in their own homes, and in many countries their reproductive rights are being curtailed. The ones who happen not to have been born female are being legislated out of existence. It really isn’t a great time to be a woman, which is what we ought to be talking about right now, and probably the rest of the time as well.

Still, the right leaning think tank Centre for Social Justice decided that early March would be the best time to publish their new report on the travails of this generation’s young men, titled Lost Boys. According to them, “boys and young men are in crisis”.

“Something is going wrong in our society when it comes to boys and young men,” former England rugby union captain Lawrence Dallaglio said, commenting on the report. “While we tiptoe around just about every other social group, when we are not taking them for granted we treat them as the lowest of the low.”

His language may seem a tad alarmist – and you could certainly argue that it’s needlessly inflammatory – but some of the data published by the CSJ really is concerning. According to their research, men and boys between the ages of 16 and 24 earn on average 10% less than their female peers, both in blue-collar and white-collar jobs. The number of men in that age bracket who are not in education, employment or training has increased by 40% since the pandemic, compared to just 7% for women of a similar age.

75% of children kicked out of mainstream education are boys. Female students outnumber male ones by three to two in universities. Between the ages of 15 and 19, boys are three and a half times more likely to take their own life than girls are.

At the risk of stating the obvious: the think tank is right. It is a worrying state of affairs. It isn’t really clear, however, that their solutions would actually help.

According to them, a decline in “male-dominated industries such as manufacturing, agriculture and construction” is partly to blame, as is the fact that “traditional male values” have been undermined. As Miriam Cates, a CSJ senior fellow and former Conservative MP told the Sunday Times, “for too long, politicians, policymakers, the media and the arts have turned a blind eye to the needs of boys in the name of ‘equality’. We are now reaping the whirlwind”.

In short: what Cates said openly and the report keeps insinuating is that one gender can only ever lose if the other one is winning, and years of feminism and wokery have meant that men, who were once at the top of the pecking order, have now been left behind. It is a frustrating conclusion to reach, especially as all sides of the political spectrum can surely agree that something does need to be done.

While conservatives clearly believe that the solution lies in returning to the way things were, either fully or partially, progressives need to be making a different case. Feminism worked and is still working for women because it tells them that they can be anything they want, and they mustn’t be constrained by traditional gender roles. They can be engineers or choose to raise their children at home; they can be feminine or free of gendered aesthetic expectations. Being “a woman” should only ever mean what the woman living her life decides it can mean.

Crucially, feminism also fights for men, by telling them that they should be able to show their emotions, and admit to occasional moments of weakness. It tells them that they can get jobs in traditionally female industries, because there’s nothing inherently shameful about them. It argues that a society where gender doesn’t put you in a small, rigid box is a society where everyone thrives.

Of course, reactionaries refuse to hear all this, because it isn’t in their interest to do so. This is why we, feminists and progressives, must keep making our case, as often and loudly as we can.

This International Women’s Day, take a moment to think about the fact that the world we live in isn’t an especially happy one for anyone involved, but it is within our power to build better societies; societies that work for everyone. Gender equality isn’t, and never was a zero-sum game.