Mens Rights Thread

I can’t remember where I saw it but saw it claimed in recent years, possibly by politicians. One metric cited was because women are more dependent on social welfare payments.

—

Here is a page from the National Women’s Council from 2012:

Increasing evidence is emerging that the recession is having a disproportionate impact on women internationally and in Irish society. Yet, public discussions and policy development and discourse about the recession and its impacts are not informed by any type of gender analysis. The National Women's Council, in association with TASC, has identified the need to highlight the disproportionate impact of the current recession on women and to inform public debate and policy development.

Speakers will include: Pauline Conroy and Ursula Barry, authors of Ireland 2008-2012 Untold Story of the Crisis - Gender, Equality and Inequalities and Thora Thorsdottir, author of Gender (in)equality in recession and recovery: the case of Iceland (forthcoming).

—

“3-Limiting male problems to purely internal issues based on gender roles. Males suffer social pressures to prevent expressing their feelings and they are constrained by their role as providers and protectors, but all they have to do to solve their problems is to change their attitude, learn how to communicate better and ask for help. This approach is present, for example, in the subject of suicide. The discussion of female suicide tends to be focus on external factors: the living conditions of women, the stress they endure, etc. When talking about male suicide, on the other hand, the main focus is on internal factors: men don’t cry, they have to be tough, they can’t ask for help, etc. Why is it not possible to conceive that perhaps men commit suicide at higher rates because they have harsh and stressful living conditions that turn their lives into hell?”

—

“In contrast, traditionally, men don’t demand protection. The woman who demands protection doesn’t lose her femininity, but the man who asks for it does damage his reputation as a man in the eyes of society, who perceive him as less than a man (in the case of traditionalism) or as a privileged person who pretends to be a victim and has no right to complain (in the case of feminism). Men do not demand protection, men protect others and especially themselves. A man who is not able to protect himself is simply regarded as not being man enough.”

—

I think these highlight difficulties in tackling men’s issues. And a reason why building a men’s movement is challenging: many people will want to stay anonymous.

Almost three-quarters of State’s top earners are men, report showsCSO data says males account for 72.4 per cent of earners in top one per cent bracket in 2024

Notice the photo suggesting the data is due to bias. Nothing in the article suggests any other reason.

I went to the CSO release and there is nothing to suggest figures such as the following aren’t at least partly due to different working hours, with men working longer and much, much less likely to be working part-time.

“The figures showed that female PAYE workers, working at least 50 weeks a year, earned on average 30 per cent less than their male counterparts last year, (€49,022 versus €63,520).”

If average pay gap was 30% per hour we would have heard about it.

—

“Even in sectors where women dominate the workforce, like health and education, they are far less likely than men to feature among the highest earners,” he said.”

Yes, because in health, quite a lot of the male workers are in high pay professions like dentistry and medicine while women are spread across lots of different types of jobs.

And in education, I recall hearing in the past that men were much more likely to go for principal positions than women.

But this article and indeed the CSO press release contain none of this nuance. This can lead to discrimination against men or so-called positive discrimination for women.

From:

Liberals must stop adopting lazy, woke stances on complex issues

Political and social liberalism, nationally and internationally, is more vulnerable than ever

Discussion of LGBTQIA+ aspects of this would be off-topic for this thread, but this bit is more relevant (I think there were one or more threads on this but I would likely be criticised for re-starting them as they wouldn’t have recent posts):

”In the podcast, McCrea mentions the modern use of the term “sex worker” as a neutral term for a prostitute. This is a reminder of an Act passed in 2017 which makes payment for sex criminal, but someone now referred to as a “sex worker” is not doing anything illegal by receiving payment.

Imagine a court case concerning a mature woman arrested without warrant under section 13 of the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 – as amended by section 25 of the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 – because a garda reasonably suspected her of having paid an adult male escort for engaging in sexual activity.

You might think that the case absurd. You might think: “How come she is being prosecuted, and he isn’t?” Until 2017, neither of them would have committed a criminal offence.

About one man a week is now prosecuted for paying for sex, but no woman has yet been prosecuted for paying a male escort for sex. Tabloid newspapers tell us that both forms of the sex trade are thriving in Ireland. Online advertising evidence confirms that. Has the 2017 Act reduced exploitative prostitution or merely camouflaged its public profile?”

It would be interesting to know the numbers in terms of men and women buying sex to see to what extent there might be bias.

I recall there was an Irish consultation on the suggestion that only the purchaser of sex would be prosecuted where I argued it was an odd way of doing things, that usually the supplier of illegal products (I don’t think I used that wording) was the one most punished. But I got the impression afterwards it was already a done deal with the people involved (including Ivana Bacik if I recall correctly) already having made their mind up. If I recall correctly (this was many years ago), the report on the consultation appeared to be biased.

They explain some factors that contribute to the difference

”Nevertheless, among sector organisers in general, in a role that often involves travel across the country and unsociable hours, men remain the majority – just as women are the clear majority in our administrative roles,” he said.”

—
”Siptu’s report showed that 71pc of men received vouchers for travel obligations, while just 36pc of women got them. The report said all vouchers awarded were of the same amount.”

—

A total of 83.2pc of men received non-cash benefits in kind, compared with 38.9pc of women. The report said pensions are not technically a benefit in kind, so this category primarily relates to car insurance.It said car insurance is paid for for workers whose roles require considerable amounts of travel.“There is a gender pay gap at Siptu because the gender split within different roles in the union is not identical,” the report said. “More union organisers are men than women. Women predominate in our administration grades.”