International Men's Day

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, in this debate on International Men’s Day. It is a particular pleasure to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing this debate, and for making such an important contribution.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the way in which gender stereotypes are harmful to men and boys. Issues include family breakdown, excluded boys being drawn into antisocial behaviour, drugs and crime, and men’s attitudes towards seeking help not just for mental health but health per se, as well as a legal system that too many men feel militates against them, particularly when it comes to family law. I would argue that gender stereotypes, in all their forms, are harmful to human beings, and my hon. Friend made a very cogent case for the way in which they are harmful to men and boys.

I listened very carefully to my hon. Friend’s policy suggestions. I would suggest that if men and women had equal voices at the policymaking tables, we could ensure that the lives of both men and women could be seen in all the polices that come forward in this Parliament. If we encourage male Ministers to do as much as they can, and particularly to look at their female counterparts and the work they do on how gender affects policy, that could go some way towards addressing some of the issues that he is talking about.

It is not good for men if the health system is designed for men, because men have daughters, partners and mothers. We want all our public services to work for men and for women. If we currently have a system where that is not the case, we need to encourage all Ministers—whatever the Prime Minister might decide on a Minister for men—to think about the gender differences that are at play. It is not only the Minister for Women who thinks about Government policies and how they affect women. Many of my female colleagues who are Ministers do a huge amount to think about how their policies will affect women. Perhaps their male counterparts need to be doing similarly.

In Parliament, we make polices and law for people—few are gender specific. But we know—as my hon. Friend has just said—that men and women experience the world very differently. That is why I really welcome this debate on International Men’s Day. As right hon. and hon. Members might know, I often lead the debate on International Women’s Day. That is an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of women, but also to raise a lot of the issues. This debate is just as important, because it reminds us that we live in a gendered world, and we have to deal with that as politicians. We do not make the best policies unless we recognise that there is a difference.

I am sure you will not be surprised to know, Mr Davies, that I would love a world where gender is no longer an issue that drives the sort of differences that my hon. Friend just talked about, but we deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. He is absolutely right that we need to consider gender when we develop policies. Chromosomal difference, although significant, is not really what he was talking about when he set out the parameters of this debate; those differences are added to by societal norms. We could have an enormous debate about nature versus nurture; I would say that nurture plays a huge part in many of the issues that my hon. Friend clearly articulated.

International Men’s Day is not only about the issues that I will come to in a moment; it is about celebrating the men in our lives and the amazing contribution men make. Men shape our lives, whether we are women or men. My father told me to go to the best university I could, and that my imagination was the only limit to my achievements—crumbs, that is a fantastic role model to have. It is about my brothers, my husband and my sons being there; such are the people who shape our lives. There are far more men in my life than women, although I give a special call-out to my daughter and mother, because they are very special too. Men are there to shape our lives, and I do not think there is anybody in this Chamber who would argue differently.

All the evidence shows—my hon. Friend made this point—that men’s and women’s lives are different. We should be concerned about the pressures that men face, including the pressure to conform to notions of masculinity, which I would argue are very out of date. I hope my sons do not feel that pressure, but I am sure they do. I do not want their childhood to be filled with phrases such as, “Don’t start acting like a girl.” I hope that is in the past, but perhaps it is not. To be branded as the breadwinner in adult life puts huge pressure on men. In reality, one in three women earn more than their partners or husbands, yet society still sees men as the breadwinner. We treat each other differently because of our gender, and the evidence shows that, as a result, we live different lives.

In the UK, we find gender a difficult concept. That came out in the trans debate recently. It also came out in 2013, when many people found it quite difficult that the Government said it was wrong for the state not to allow people of the same gender to marry. I was the Minister at the time, and we changed the law to enable that to happen and for it to be a happy occasion.

That we continue to have a gender pay gap clearly shows that society treats men and women differently, and too many boys are still being told to “man up” during their childhood. We treat men and women differently. I do not think that is right, and the world would be a better place if we outlawed those sorts of gender stereotypes.

[Nick Fletcher]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good speech. She mentioned the gender pay gap, and I keep hearing this all the time. Will she confirm—she has an awful lot of experience of that issue—that it is illegal for anybody to pay a man more than a woman to do the same job?

[Dame Maria Miller]

I think my hon. Friend is probably thinking about something different. The gender pay gap is about looking at groups of people who earn differently for doing the same thing in their workplace. It is not about pay levels—pay rates for the individual. If my hon. Friend looks at the data available now, he will see that the gender pay gap has actually disappeared for groups of men and women in their 20s and 30s, and quite remarkably it reappears vigorously over the age of 40. When companies look at what they pay groups of people who are over the age of 40, they will see that women are paid less. I wonder why that is. The average age of giving birth is now around 30—it is a lot older than when I had my first child. It is women who are finding it very difficult to come back into the jobs market and get jobs that are actually comparable with their qualifications. There is also an issue around productivity there.

This debate, however, is not about women. It is about men and we should focus on International Men’s Day. In this day and age, I think that most men want to see fairness at work and, if they have a female spouse, for them to paid fairly. I do not think that this is necessarily about men wanting to gang up on women. It is societal structures and norms that are causing the problems. We, as politicians, have a great deal to do to reset those societal norms and to ensure that the structures do not create a perpetuation of gender stereotypes, which, as my hon. Friend set out, are so harmful, particularly to men and boys.

I think that Brits are far less comfortable than our continental friends in agreeing that inequality between the genders is serious. There has been some research done to suggest that, in continental Europe, one in three sees gender inequality as a serious concern, whereas in the UK that figure is one in four. Perhaps, as a society, we need to challenge ourselves a bit more on these things.

As both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have said, the way in which our public services are structured, in terms of perpetuating some of these gender stereotypes and inequalities for men, is best seen in our health service when it comes to men’s health. It is quite concerning that men are expected to live almost three years less than women, which is extraordinary. It is even more extraordinary that I do not really see a policy to directly address that. There are some policies there and, of course, the Minister has huge expertise as a Health Minister, so she will turn to matters such as the prostate cancer work being done.

Cancer rates are 20% higher among men, and men are more likely to go to hospital with heart disease, more likely to smoke, more likely to die from alcohol conditions, more likely to use illegal drugs, and more likely to die in a workplace accident. The Government do have policies, but are they really focused on the disproportionate way in which those issues affect men? I think they probably do on heart disease, and obviously they do on prostate cancer—although, again, there are issues for trans people, particularly trans women, in accessing those healthcare systems.

In terms of men’s mental health, there is an increasing gap between men and women. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said, suicide rates among men are a concern. In fact, they are not just a concern; we have seen that women’s suicide rates have halved and men’s suicide rates have fallen just a fraction. Again, I challenge the Minister to ensure that we have a gendered approach to healthcare in our country.

Let us not pretend that there are no differences between men and women—there are. I would like to see a world where men and women are recognised for their separate needs and one where we celebrate our differences, but our aim should be to remove that difference when it is destructive, to enable us all to live in peace and prosperity together. That is the way in which we are going to have the best world possible.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on how he approached this topic and for his powerful speech. Men do face critical challenges because they are men—and young boys too—whether it is about mental health, violence or family breakdown. Too often this debate is seen as if there has to be an equal ledger of suffering before we will acknowledge those challenges. We do everybody a disservice if we ignore those concerns in favour of culture war arguments about whether James Bond could be a woman or whether Andrew Tate is what every man would be if they could get away with it, or if we simply snigger. I agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in so many ways, and I am so pleased to see him here today and able to contribute.

I want to take up the hon. Member for Don Valley’s challenge and talk up a particular group of men for which the term is too often loaded with negative connotations: dads. It is such an important role, but so often the butt of a joke: deadbeat dads; absentee fathers; daddy daycare; dad bods; dad jokes; sugar daddies; baby daddies; “Who is your daddy?” Our images of fatherhood are rarely ones we would wish people to replicate. Think of those famous fathers: Darth Vader; Homer Simpson; Phil Dunphy in “Modern Family”; Kevin in “Motherland”; Don Draper; Uncle Phil in “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air; Jim Royle; “Citizen Khan”; Logan Roy; Tony Soprano; Frank Gallagher—thank God for Bandit in “Bluey”. If they are not trying to take their kids over to the dark side or bullying them into a life of crime, the message is overwhelmingly that the mental load of parenting is something mothers deal with, while dads are hapless, indifferent, sidelined or, at best, cash machines.

However, a wealth of evidence tells us that dads spending time with their children leads to better outcomes. If children spend more time with their fathers at the age of nine months, by the age of three they show more positive emotions. Increasing a father’s role in a kid’s life leads to higher educational attainment and lower behavioural difficulties for both boys and girls in primary school. Indeed, the educational effect is even more profound when it comes to maths—something I know the Prime Minister is concerned about—regardless of gender, ethnicity, age in the school year, or household income. But a recent study in Scotland showed the challenge: a quarter of working dads said that they were “almost never” satisfied with the amount of quality time they got to spend with their kids—a pressure that is particularly profound for fathers of very young children.

We spend so much time in this place telling women how to be good mums. On International Men’s Day, it is time we redress the balance. The secret is that it is the same for both parents: it is about being present for kids, day in, day out, every day and all day. That is really hard in a country that does not talk about it—especially when it comes to dads—let alone value it enough to make it financially possible and socially acceptable for all.

I want to thank all those leading the change and leading the charge for fathers: Elliott Rae and the amazing MusicFootballFatherhood; Street Fathers, led by Colin James, which is helping young men make the transition from boyhood to manhood in my constituency; the Men’s Sheds project, which helps dads and men to connect and talk; the Fatherhood Institute, MANUP? and CALM for the work they are doing to tackle male mental health challenges and the dad stereotypes that the hon. Member for Don Valley set out.

Our men and boys and what they need from their dads are at the heart of so much in our society. They need dads of the involved kind—not the controlling kind, the violent kind, or the absent at work kind. The kind who does not turn around 20 years later to say, “I was away so much when my kids were growing up. I don’t know them at all.” Not the ones who say, “Ask your mum,” rather than asking themselves how they could do something and role-modelling it for their kids.

For that to become the norm, we need a Government and a country that does not think that is woke, but wise. But the last time Parliament debated how to support fathers was in 2019. The word “patriarchy” is on the record more times than “paternity”; it is a word we do not refer to unless we are talking about the Father of the House. Yes, we have a women’s mental health strategy, and that is very welcome, but as the hon. Member for Don Valley pointed out, we do not have a men’s mental health strategy. The Government’s own childcare strategy only talks about how it would benefit mums. The hon. Member for Don Valley is right: we should be asking how it benefits both parents. This year, the Government published a written ministerial statement pledging to make it easier for fathers to take flexible leave and parental leave, but that did not make it into the King’s Speech—unlike pedicabs.

Today is chance for us to collectively to reclaim “dad”; to challenge the idea that men are too stupid, too weak, too absent, too deadbeat; to help the dads working three jobs on poverty pay, never getting to see their kids grow up; and to help them be the dads that our kids, our country, and their mental health need them to be.

I have a very simple start for the Minister: how can we actually make parental leave work for dads? We know that one in 10 women experiences post-partum disorders and depression, but actually one in 10 dads experiences post-partum anxiety, which starts when the baby is born and does not stop. A 2008 study found that lower levels of cognitive development in children were associated with having a depressed dad. We should want to tackle men’s mental health problems in their own right, but also recognise that by doing so and being explicit about it, we will also help many more people around them.

So many dads are not spending the time they want with their kids because they just cannot afford to do so. More than three times more women than men claim parental leave pay. On average, new fathers take just two weeks—the statutory minimum entitlement—which is a pitiful amount of time to be able to bond with their child. That amount of leave increases only among the very wealthy. Only men with a household income of £200k or more take an average of 10 weeks.

[Dame Maria Miller]

It is interesting that the hon. Lady has brought up the amount of time that men take off for parental leave. There is also data that would suggest that even when more paid parental leave is available, it is not taken up because of a fear that both men and women feel: if we take time off around pregnancy, we are in some way letting people down. The hon. Lady, as somebody who has had children, may recognise that. Men feel the same way. It is more than simply having that offer of money; we also need an attitudinal change towards people taking the time off in the first place.

[Stella Creasy]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady, whose remarks prefigure mine. Money does matter. When 43% of men say that financial hardship prevents them from taking additional leave, it matters what they get paid, in the same way that when women do not get proper statutory maternity cover, it affects our decisions. However, we also know that 17% of men cite pressure from their employer. Women’s careers get written off; men’s relationships with their children get written off. Nobody is winning in our current environment.

We need to increase the amount of time men are entitled to, but we also need to change the way we do this. We need to stop it being about men versus women and share the cost. I hope the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) will agree that it is about time we stopped making this issue something that just the mum’s employer has to deal with. If we want shared parental leave, we should share the cost of providing parental leave between both the mum’s employer and the dad’s employer so that everybody has a vested interest in helping to support that family, ensuring that the employers who benefit from it also contribute to it. Let us be honest: the dad’s employer benefits when the mum takes on the load.

Let us end the mum penalty that means women feel their careers pay the price. Let us challenge the idea that men taking care of their children and stepping up to share that responsibility is something shameful that they should do in such a way that nobody notices they are gone.

The hon. Member for Don Valley is also right to say that it is not just about financial cost. Elliott Rae has a fantastic campaign about “parenting out loud”. Women know that when they do that, they get judged; men need to do it to show a different way forward. What does he mean by parenting out loud? Rather than hiding parental responsibilities, men in leadership positions should talk about those responsibilities and role model how to combine them with the work they do, whether that is leaving work to go to a school parents evening or working from home to help to cover doctors’ appointments.

That is why when Ministers attack working from home or flexible working, it is not just mums whose opportunities they are closing down, but dads—as well as the next generation—who miss out on the impact of the extra hours they could spend with their children without having to commute. The good news is that we have empirical research on that. During the pandemic, men doubled the amount of childcare they were doing. The Fatherhood Institute recognised that it would take double that time—an extra eight hours—to get the same benefit of the father-child relationship. Parents can either spend two hours on a train getting to and from work or two hours helping our child to learn to read. I know which I think would be better for economy, better for their mental health and better for our society.

Whenever we take our vision of fatherhood from those value it least, men miss out. We would not frame our debate about financial exclusion based on the antics of Bernie Madoff, so why do we let those men who boast that they have never changed a nappy or that they were in the pub when their kid was born decide how dads rear their children? We should stop lauding men who do anything as if it is a surprise and they should be congratulated. They are the men who want a medal for taking their child to swimming. Instead, we should start asking how men can be the dads they want to be—present and equal in looking after their children, 24 hours a day, day in and day out—because that is what it takes to raise a child who will thrive. When we do that, the evidence is that it is good for men’s families, men’s relationships and our economy. On this International Men’s Day, we should finally let dads be dads.