International Men’s Day

Debate between Paul Beresford and Richard Arkless

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I join in the thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for launching this topic on what is probably an unsuspecting House.

Having recently had a small brush with the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I must declare some interests. One thing I will touch on relates to dentistry, and I still practise a tiny bit of dentistry. Then there is the obvious one: I am a male and a father of three sons, so I have a considerable interest in this particular subject. Even my wife says that I am overly interested in it.

My original thoughts on this topic are derived from a cover story in that highly respected weekly journal, The Economist. Its cover story, at the end of May last year, was entitled “The Weaker Sex”. As many members of the fairer sex, particularly my wife, my sister, my daughter and my daughters-in-law, point out, a superficial first glance would suggest that males’ domination of cultural and political life is secure. More than 90% of Presidents and Prime Ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men appear to dominate finance, technology, films, sports and music. With that said, there is still plenty of cause for concern. Men tend to find themselves either at the very top or at the very bottom of our systems. They are far more likely than women to be jailed; more likely to be estranged from their children; and, as we have heard, very much more likely to commit suicide. Men earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to fail maths, reading and science entirely.

Then we have the little issue of the human papilloma virus. Girls are vaccinated against it—this is to stop cervical cancer. It is unlikely that men will get cervical cancer, but they do get penile cancer. From my point of view as a dentist, roughly 40% of head and neck cancers are caused by the virus. More men get head and neck cancer than women, so why are we not vaccinating boys as well as girls? It is long overdue. The Australians do it; and if the Australians are doing it, we have just got to do it. These trends are particularly apparent in working-class men living in developed countries who have struggled to adapt to a hugely changed world and to the increasing changes to the job market in the past 50 years. The ever increasing power of technology and the ability to import more from abroad has seen a steep decline in the need for traditional muscle-based work in the United Kingdom.

By sharp contrast, women are becoming a majority in key areas such as healthcare and education. They are helped by their superior skills, which they gain because they respond better to education. As education has become more important, boys have fallen behind girls in school. The latest shock is in the theatre. The role of King Lear has been played by many male greats such as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Donald Sinden, whom I knew so well, and many other superior male actors. Now that male role has been taken by our former colleague, or comrade, Glenda Jackson. Christopher Biggins’ Widow Twankey does not quite match that!

The way that males are becoming the weaker sex is seriously worrying. It is even happening in the Antipodes. In 25 years’ time, there is a possibility that the New Zealand women’s rugby team will beat the All Blacks—actually, realistically, that is probably a haka too far.

The article in The Economist that I mentioned says:

“Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.”

The political consensus has been that economics is to blame for this situation. The argument goes that shrinking job opportunities for men are entrenching poverty and destroying families. In America, pay for men with only a high school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications, it rose—only by 3%, but it rose. Around a fifth of working-age American men with only a high school diploma have no job.

Part of the solution lies in a change in cultural attitudes, as the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) mentioned. Over the past generation, middle-class men have learned that they need to help with childcare, and they have changed their behaviour, but, sadly, it appears from the Economist article and others that working-class men need to catch up. Women have learned that they can be doctors, dentists, surgeons, opticians, engineers and physicists without losing their femininity. Men need to understand that traditional manual jobs are not coming back, but that they can be nurses, hairdressers, waiters or—this is vital—primary school teachers. I visited a primary school today which has a totally female staff except for one male teacher. The headmistress spoke about the vital importance of a male role model in the school, which is missing from many other schools.

The most important focus must be reform of the education system, which is essentially still based in a pre-digital era where most male jobs were, as I said, muscle-based. We as politicians need to recognise that boys’ underachievement is a serious problem, and we need to sort it out now. Some sensible policies that are good for everybody are particularly good for boys. Early childhood education provides boys with more structure and a better chance of developing verbal and social skills. Countries with successful vocational systems, such as Germany, have done a better job than we have here in the UK. We need to reinvent vocational education for an age when trainees are more likely to get jobs in hospitals, IT or teaching than in factories.

The growing equality of the sexes is one of the biggest achievements of the post-war era: people have greater opportunities than ever before to achieve their ambitions, regardless of their gender. We have to accept that many men fail to cope in this world. When it comes to health, men really are the weaker sex. They are more likely to get cancer than women and are also more likely to die from it. They are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke and obesity. When it comes to happiness, women again appear to have the upper hand, to judge from the suicide rates. Experts know that men are particularly bad at seeking medical help, even when they need it. Men are still dying younger. In England and Wales, 42% of men die before their 75th birthday. The corresponding figure is 26% for women. I think about this every time I struggle to open a door for a lady.

It is very easy and tempting to blame men for the current position and to be fatalistic about it, but that is not the way forward. To put an absolute number on it, almost 100,000 men—enough to fill all the British Army’s full-time posts—are dying prematurely each year, compared with 66,000 women. Much of this is self-inflicted. As a group, men out-drink and out-smoke women. Men are also more likely to end their life violently in a car accident or, as has been mentioned, by suicide. Interestingly, the rates of suicide attempts do not differ between men and women; men are just better at it.

It is generally accepted that men are very bad at seeking help. Men visit the GP less because the health system is not working for them. It is not male-friendly. Could it be that aspects of our society have turned so far towards women that they are now against men?

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

Despite the obvious sense of many of the contributions, I feel slightly uncomfortable with the subject of this debate. Although I recognise differentials in terms of suicide, the number of primary school teachers and perhaps even fathers’ residence rights, it is not women who caused misogyny, it is not women who caused the pay gap, and it is certainly not women who deprived women of the vote. Should we not be working towards equality, or am I just a man who cannot cry, or a feminist? I am not quite sure.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

rose—