When I first entered Parliament, I wasn’t sold on the idea of appointing a Minister for Men and Boys.
As a Conservative, I’m instinctively cautious about dividing society into categories. The Government should serve everyone. Creating new labels and offices is rarely my first instinct.
But after six years of seeing how Government Departments work and watching the evidence grow, I’m moving to a difficult conclusion. We are unbalanced. And that imbalance is now hurting boys and men in ways we can no longer ignore.
For nearly three decades, we have had a Minister for Women and Girls. That decision, taken in 1997 by Tony Blair, reflected real and pressing inequalities. Focused leadership helped drive change. Greater female representation in universities, the workplace and public life did not happen by accident.
That progress should be celebrated.
But while one side of society has rightly received sustained political attention, the other has not. And the data now tells a stark story.
Suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 50. Men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women. Boys consistently underperform girls at GCSE and A-level. Women now outnumber men at university by three to two. Young male unemployment has risen sharply. Ninety-six per cent of our prison population is male. The vast majority of serious youth violence involves boys as both victims and perpetrators.
These are not isolated statistics. They are signals.
And yet when male-specific issues arise, responsibility drifts. Health points to education. Education points to justice. Justice points to culture. No single Minister is tasked with looking across Government and asking the most basic question: why are our boys falling behind?
But this is not only structural. It is cultural.
Over the past 30 years, we have done an excellent job of articulating what strong, independent, successful womanhood looks like. We have championed female role models. We have encouraged ambition. We have celebrated achievement.
At the same time, we have become less clear about what a good man looks like in the modern world.
Ask a classroom of teenage boys who they aspire to be, and too often you will be met with silence. Ask what positive masculinity means, and the answer is blurred. Meanwhile, phrases such as toxic masculinity dominate public discourse. That language can easily become a label rather than a diagnosis, pointing to boys and men as a problem. Concerns around this were raised only this month in the British Medical Journal.
That vacuum leaves space for figures like Andrew Tate. His misogyny deserves condemnation. But if we refuse to ask why so many young men are drawn to him, we miss the deeper problem. Many were not searching for hatred. They were searching for identity, strength and purpose.
When society cannot provide healthy models of masculinity, unhealthy ones will fill the space.
I did not set out wanting a Minister for Men and Boys. But we now face a simple reality. We have had nearly thirty years of focused institutional advocacy for women and girls. In that same period, boys and men have slipped backwards across health, education, employment and criminal justice metrics.
That is not a competition. It is an imbalance. This is about men and women, not men or women. If the Government believes that women’s issues require cross-Departmental coordination at the Ministerial level, it is reasonable to ask whether the growing challenges facing men and boys deserve the same serious attention.
This is not about diminishing one to elevate the other. It is about recognising that social stability depends on both.
When boys are excluded from school at far higher rates, when young men disengage from work, when male suicide remains stubbornly and concerningly high, and when cultural narratives leave them unsure of their place in society, we should not look away because the politics feel uncomfortable.
Supporting men and boys does not undermine support for women and girls. It strengthens it. Healthy men make better partners, fathers, colleagues and citizens.
If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then the Government has a duty to govern the whole solar system, not just one planet.
The question is no longer whether this debate is awkward.
It is whether we are prepared to confront it honestly.
A minister for men does not undermine support for women and girls, it recognises the challenges men and boys face
