"Cut services for women, increase services for men..".

A new political party has been launched in the UK which plans to stand candidates across the United Kingdom in the next General Election.  

The political party is called Justice for Men and Boys (and the Women who love them)

On a radio debate on the BBC's Call Kaye Programme, broadcast on Monday 18 March 2013, the party's founder, Mike Buchanan, advocated, amongst other things cutting services aimed at women, because men contribute more tax revenue to the UK Exchequer than they do. 

There is merit in highlighting any form of gender inequality where it exists.

I doubt anyone would disagree on this salient point.

On the tax revenue issue, it is important to highlight that the majority of part time workers are women, that women still receive only 75% of the pay of male comparators and that women are still under represented in the boardroom.

No surprise that the majority of tax generated comes from men then, eh?

I believe that the approach taken here, and the policies being espoused by this new political party, are ultimately counter intuitive.

Men deserve more, women less

The key mantra put forward seems to be that men deserve the support more so than women.

By setting each of the sexes against one another like this, the approach, in my view, is counter intuitive for the following reasons;

• The approach taken works against the cause of campaigning for greater awareness of the inequalities which do exist between both men and women in the law, politics and social policy

• It is too simplistic because throwing money at a particular problem, may not necessarily, address that problem and fails to actually examine and address the under lying reason for the inequality in the first place.    

• By demanding resources are taken away from another group, to support your cause, there is a real risk of alienating allies and losing the argument. 

I wish to make clear from the outset that I do not subscribe to, nor support, the key political mantra of Justice for Men and Boys - I do not believe in removing support from women for the sake of it.

Health inequalities

The Following information is taken from the Men's Health Forum; which bases its information on statistics available from the Office of National Statistics.

  
It is important to note that rates of mental ill health between men and women are roughly equal.

Cause for concern

The illustrations given above are shocking.  They should, quite rightly, give any policy maker cause for concern.

However, what has caused, or continues to cause, such statistical inequality?

There is a range of sociological commentary on the subject.

Some of the reasons highlight,

• the level of risk taking behaviour in young men, 
• the rate of engagement with health care professionals by men - spotting a problem too late for instance.  
• that men lack the basic health education to look after themselves properly.    

If you look at these reasons, it is unlikely that taking money away from support services for women and diverting those resources into support services for men will make an automatic difference.

Multi faceted problems

If you set up a men only service, how can you be certain that men will use that service, if you are already aware that there is a problem of engagement?

Similarly, how do you address risk taking behaviours?  Or re-educate men to know that going to their GP regularly is important?

The Equality Act

There is an obligation on the National Health Service to promote equality of opportunity, to eliminate unlawful discrimination and to foster good relations.  This is referred to as the Public Sector Equality Duty.

This important legal obligation is made up of "general duty" described above and a series of "specific duties", designed to give teeth to the general duty.

The general duty applied across Great Britain and there are different specific duties for UK wide public authorities and for Public Authorities exclusively working in Scotland and Wales.

The NHS is also required not to discriminate as a service provider, as an educator or as an employer.

It is clear that there is a legal obligation on the NHS and any other public service provider to tackle health inequalities.

It would be interesting to see, on a health board by health board basis, what is actually being done to address men's health and the particular inequalities highlighted above.

Current work

There are a number of efforts already under way to look at these particular problems.  One such approach, is to encourage men to attend "well men" clinics, changing the culture of engagement and education by encouraging male role models, such as footballers, to take a lead.

Tackle the inequalities

It is important that the health inequalities between men and women are addressed.

However, the view of Justice for Men and Boys, involves taking a sledge hammer to an identified problem and hoping that by smashing it to pieces, it will some how make it right.

Here is what the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) had to say about suicide rates and men:

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