The statistics don’t always favour the men

As the annual Movember campaign comes to a close for another year, thousands of men across the country will today be liberating their lips under an ocean of shaving foam.

Movember is a brilliant campaign, wonderful in its simplicity in reminding us that men’s health matters.  Yet to me, raising awareness is not enough – the campaign needs to become a focused lobbying effort.  In a month where men’s health is meant to be on the agenda, there has been no Parliamentary debate and sparse public comment to address the difficulties men face.  Indeed, even on this site, nobody has thought to write a comment on men’s health, despite the regular flow of articles highlighting women’s issues (five in the last two weeks).

Perhaps the lack of political debate on men’s health contributes to the following statistics.  The life expectancy for men in our country is four years less than women.  The rate of cancer diagnoses in men is considerably higher than the rate in women (in every 100,000 men there will be 417 cases diagnosed, compared to 366 cases per 100,000 females).  Four times as many men commit suicide as women (source: uk.movember.com).

These statistics, together with the fact that girls do better than boys at school, and as we speak men are expected to work five years longer than women (something that will rightly end in 2020), show that the statistics do not always work in men’s favour.

Indeed, if the situation were reversed, there would be outcry from the women’s movement – and rightly so.

Furthermore, despite there being similar numbers of deaths per year for prostate and breast cancer, funding for prostate cancer still lags far behind. The most recent data published by the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) shows that prostate cancer research accounted for only 7.9% of the overall spend in the UK, while breast cancer accounted for 18.7%.

Outside the direct scope of Movember, and into wider concerns, there are other problems that never receive public attention.  Coming from a school of thought that finds the idea of a man hitting a woman to be utterly abhorrent, I recognise wholeheartedly the need to punish ‘wifebeaters’ to the full extent of the law and raise our children to understand that such behaviour can never be excused. Whilst 58% of all reported incidences of domestic violence reported in the 2010-11 year saw a woman be the victim, that still leaves 42% of cases where the victims were men.  It’s not a competition, this number is high and is significant.  Given that the Mankind statistics published in October suggested that men were twice as likely to refuse to report the violence they have suffered, this figure may be much higher.

I remember first raising these issues many years ago, whilst serving on the executive of my Student Union.  During that time, the NUS was promoting and developing its campaign to introduce Women’s Officers across the country.  Their aim was to highlight areas where women were at a disadvantage to men and give them a voice.  I had no objection and indeed thoroughly supported their efforts.  But the NUS never replied to my frequent letters asking how they planned to target issues relating to men’s health and behaviour which were, in my view, no less important.  Some Unions went as far as introducing Men’s Officers to specifically to raise awareness of men’s health, and also to address a binge drinking culture that at the time was predominently a male exercise.  Their introduction, however, was later slammed by the then NUS Woman’s Officer Estelle Hart as an attempt to undermine women’s fight for equality.  I supported the idea of highlighting issues of concern to women, but apparently the notion of highlighting issues of specific concern to men was seen as a sexist attack.

So as Movember draws to a close, I say that the fight for fairness and equality should not divide men and women, it should unite us.  As an ever increasing number of men are standing by women in fighting their good fight, we hope from time to time they’ll stand by us too.

The tragic apparent suicide of my boyhood hero Gary Speed is a timely reminder that many problems men face are simply never talked about.  But then, real men don’t talk about their problems – do they?  I hope the lasting effect of Movember is that it meets its goals in improving the health of men, but also that it stretches beyond its original intentions to become something more profound – to ensure men understand it is OK to ask for help, and to ensure meaningful help is available when they ask for it.