International Men’s Day

Sam Rushworth Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered International Men’s Day, issues affecting boys’ and men’s health and wellbeing and gender equality.

I thank members of the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and the 22 Members across five parties who supported the application. I have a confession to make: being new to this place, I did not know when I applied for the debate that the convention was that I would be the first speaker. However, it is an honour to open this debate marking International Men’s Day, which took place on Tuesday of this week. I hope that I am able to give a voice to some of the men and boys in the area that I represent, who may feel powerless and unheard.

My second confession is that this is the first time I have ever spoken publicly about the health and wellbeing of men and boys specifically. I am unashamedly feminist. My work before coming to this place was in international development, including supporting women’s empowerment projects in northern Ghana and research on gender and education in Rwanda. On a recent International Women’s Day, I was in the Central African Republic to meet and seek international support for women leaders of the interfaith platform, who courageously work together to promote peace. In the UK, I have supported initiatives to break down barriers to girls entering science, technology, engineering and maths, and I am proud to belong to a party that is working to close the gender pay gap and setting a national mission to halve violence against women and girls.

Gender inequality, as we all know, has long been seen through the lens of women’s struggles, and rightly so. Women have fought tirelessly for equality of opportunity and freedom from violence and discrimination, but when I meet and listen to my constituents, there are also undeniable challenges that specifically impact the health, wellbeing and life outcomes of boys and men. These are raised with me by women as well as men, because nobody fights for their sons more than mums.

May I be clear at the outset of this debate that International Men’s Day is not a call to diminish the importance of women’s rights, nor to overshadow the progress made in gender equality for all? Rather, it is about recognising that gender inequality harms everyone—men and boys as well as women and girls. Men are more likely to die prematurely, more likely to develop alcohol addiction, more likely to be homeless, more likely to take their own life, more likely to be sent to prison and more likely to be a victim of violent crime.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate. He is right to highlight the issue of suicide. More young men under the age of 18 commit suicide in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Over the past five years, suicides of young men number almost 5,000. That is worrying and very concerning. I have a quick question for the hon. Member. Men’s sheds across the country are a great help. The one at the Glen community association in Newtownards directly helps young men and teenagers—

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Mr Shannon, interventions must be shorter than that. There will be plenty of opportunity to make a contribution, should you so wish, during the debate.

[Sam Rushworth]

I welcome the hon. Member’s intervention. I will come on to talk about men’s sheds—I met representatives of the Men’s Sheds Association on Tuesday in Speaker’s House.

Men are, indeed, more likely to take their own life. Boys are more likely to be excluded from school, and they are underachieving compared with girls at every level of education. That is because gender inequality is not only structural—by which I mean an unequal division of power and resources as assigned through our rules and institutions—but cultural. It is embedded in social attitudes and expectations around manhood and womanhood. It is here where gender inequality really harms men and boys.

I also recognise, as I attempt to frame this debate, that men, like women, are diverse. There is more than one way of being male. I refer here not only to sexuality, but to binary ideas of how men should behave. If Members were to visit my home on a summer night, they might find Mrs Rushworth in the garden lighting the barbecue and me in the kitchen preparing the salad. If they were to visit in the winter, they might find her bleeding the radiators while I am singing a lullaby to settle one of our children in bed. International Men’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate male diversity and to promote kinder, more emotionally connected and liberated versions of masculinity as positive male role models for boys.

I wish to focus the rest of my remarks on two concerning by-products of gender inequality that are prevalent in my constituency of Bishop Auckland—men’s mental health and the concerning rise of male suicide, particularly among young men, and boys’ underachievement at school—and why we must tackle those issues head-on for the benefit of both sexes.

The crisis in men’s mental health is one of the most significant issues of our time. It negatively impacts not only on the individuals concerned, but on their relationships with family, friends and work colleagues and, tragically, it is increasingly leading to suicide. In the UK, men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women, and it is now the leading cause of death of men under 50. The contributing factors are multiple and include debt, addiction, family breakdown and unfair deprivation of access to children, but what seems to compound all of them is loneliness and a sense of being trapped carrying burdens alone. Too often, the societal expectation that men be stoic, strong and emotionless leads to a suppression of feelings. From a young age, boys are taught to man up, to hide vulnerability and to suppress their emotions. That is a damaging narrative that not only impedes emotional wellbeing, but stifles open conversations about physical and mental health.

I pay tribute to the excellent organisations that are working to provide men and boys with the tools and space to talk openly about their feelings, without fear of judgment or stigma. One of them was mentioned a moment ago: this week, I met Rob Lloyd and John Latchford from Men’s Sheds, which provides spaces for men to come together and work on crafts, while developing friendships and a mutual support network. Another great example, which I am sure all Members will be familiar with in their constituencies, is Andy’s Man Club, which has groups all over the country that are helping to end the stigma around men’s mental health through the power of conversation.

A similar organisation in my constituency in south Durham is ManHealth, which works to raise awareness of and improve men’s physical and mental health. It organises men’s walks and peer support groups, which meet weekly. I attended one recently in my constituency, and found a group of men from all walks of life sat together in a circle. The session started with each man taking it in turns to update the group on their week, beginning by saying how they felt on a scale of one to 10. I sat listening, touched by the openness of those who were sharing, and the non-judgmental kindness of those listening and offering support.

Then the group leader came to me and asked, “Well, Sam, where are you this week?” I froze briefly, contemplating how I should respond. Do I quickly say something positive and move on, or should I be honest and make myself vulnerable? Do I tell the truth, that this week I am a five—not quite rock bottom but feeling little joy in life? Do I admit how anxious and out of place I have felt in my new role, how the online abuse that all MPs receive secretly gets to me, and how I lie awake at night feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge of meeting my voters’ expectations? “Five.” I did it—I shared. And although I had feared that these men might struggle to relate to me, as a Member of this place, I found understanding nods and expressions of appreciation. It also lifted my spirits to be able to visit each of them one by one, and listen to the particular stories that they wanted to share with me. That is the thing about peer support: it is in the giving as well as in the receiving that people feel empowered.

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

On behalf of the whole House, may I say that my hon. Friend is doing an exceptional job? We should acknowledge the importance of men being positive role models for other men. Does he agree that some of the situations he describes leave young men vulnerable to nefarious role models—online role models, and so on—and that all of us older men have a duty to provide opportunities to talk, and positive role models for younger men?

[Sam Rushworth]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Before coming to this place, I used to tutor for the Brilliant Club in several schools in the north-east and would often have conversations with my students. One course that I taught was about the prevention of genocide, and it touched on issues of identity-based violence and discrimination. Very often, the girls would enter a conversation about the sorts of misogynist comments that they received, and their experiences of sexual assault by boys in their class who were influenced by so-called online influencers—to name and shame one, Andrew Tate seems to be having a really pernicious influence on many boys, and seems to promote a version of masculinity that I believe is deeply harmful, both to boys and to the girls whom they then interact with. That was an excellent intervention.

The crisis in men’s mental health and wellbeing has its roots in the crisis in boys’ mental health and wellbeing. In 2020, 122 boys aged 10 to 19 died by suicide. An analysis by Childline found that, despite having more than double the suicide rate, only one boy for every five girls talks about mental health to Childline, and they are even less likely to contact the service when they have suicidal thoughts. Boys as well as men appear to be suffering in silence.

Health and wellbeing are intrinsically linked to the ability to learn. Nationally, girls are outperforming boys at every level of education from primary school through to university. In the north-east, we have the lowest GCSE grades anywhere in the country, particularly among boys. Of course, it did not used to be this way. Back in the ’70s, it was the other way round, and there was alarm at the fact that boys were outperforming girls. Significant studies done at that time explored things such as language and space in the classroom and the way that boys would dominate conversation. When I visit schools today, I see the reverse: boys who are suppressed and do not feel able to speak freely. There is much evidence that that is not a uniform picture, and there are examples of schools where boys are not underperforming, so we know it is avoidable and preventable.

To pick up the point we heard a moment ago, research shows that boys need to have positive role models. That does not just mean fathers and male teachers, although that is important; it could mean older boys in the school being given responsibility to act as peer mentors to younger boys. There is evidence of unconscious bias in teaching staff, which we need to get rid of. We need to raise expectations, because the schools that do well establish a culture of high expectations among boys.

We need to take seriously who and what is influencing boys. When I was growing up in the ’90s, it was more or less taken for granted that we were in an age of progress, where our generation of young men were growing up with more respect for women and with more progressive values. Again, to reference the growing move to the far right and the misogynistic values being spread online, that progress is now in reverse. We need to guard against those behaviours by boys online.

Another significant intervention that I will promote in other parts of my work in Parliament is a much earlier focus on social emotional learning in schools. We need children to grow up learning to recognise, understand and regulate their emotions and to find better or appropriate ways to express them. They need to learn greater self-awareness, social awareness and empathy for others. People are not born with these skills; these are skills they develop and from an early age based on the sorts of role models and interaction that children experience at home and in the classroom. The Welsh Government and the Mayor of Manchester are good examples of those actively rolling out programmes in schools that focus on children’s social emotional learning.

I will leave my remarks there because I have talked for long enough, and I am conscious of leaving time for colleagues to make their important contributions to the debate and add to the points I have raised. I thank everyone for convening to discuss the issues. I hope that as a House we can take these issues seriously and it will not just be a debate but something that leads to meaningful change.

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[Sam Rushworth]

I thank everybody who has participated in the debate. I wish that every day in the Chamber was more like this Thursday afternoon, where we have practised a kinder, more respectful politics—I appreciate that. I do not have time to do justice to everybody’s speeches, but I will probably write to some Members to thank them for the particular comments they made.

I was struck by the number of Members who talked movingly about voluntary work and charities in their communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) mentioned one of them, but I cannot read my writing well enough to know what it was— I will have to check Hansard. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) mentioned work with veterans, and we have some fabulous veterans charities in our area in Durham, not least SSAFA, which I have worked with. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) talked about Youthline.

The hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) talked about StreetVet, the Farming Community Network and LooseHeadz. We have a wonderful organisation in my area called UTASS—the Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services—which does important work, including supporting the mental health of our farming communities. There was also ManKind, CALM, Movember, Men’s Sheds, Andy’s Man Club—I could go on. I mention them because I am always in awe of people who after a long day at work dedicate their time to serving others in their community while asking for nothing in return. That culture of volunteering is one of the things that makes Britain great and for which we can all be proud.

I am also grateful for the tributes paid to John Prescott. His courage talking about eating disorders was rightly mentioned, and I am pleased that other people brought that issue to the debate because it is another emerging challenge for young men today.

I am grateful to the Minister for her response, but let me mention briefly a couple more things for her to take away. Social emotional learning on the curriculum is so important, as is work around positive masculinity in the classroom. The Government are committed to important work on mental health workers, and strengthening and supporting the charity sector is important. I hope that the calls for a mental health Minister will be considered. As the shadow Minister mentioned, security for men at work is so important for tackling men’s mental ill health. I thank everybody for their contributions.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered International Men’s Day, issues affecting boys’ and men’s health and wellbeing and gender equality.