Our health system is failing both men and women – but it's gender equity we need, not equality

In the build-up to an election as the media cacophony grows, various parts of the health system can often feel like a couple fighting for attention and funds, a push-pull dynamic of competing needs for various groups of people all wanting to be met simultaneously.

In my world of men’s health, we’ve got a unique situation, where the reductionist cul-de-sac of ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ typically rears its ugly head at this crux time, and infighting ensues, stifling all progress for the very men and boys we are tasked with looking after. That is, if women have a minister for women, minister for women’s health and women’s health ambassador (no one debates the necessity for such appointments) to respond to specific women’s health issues, why don’t men get one?

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This tit-for-tat argument is simplistic and it paints the false reality that men’s health and women’s health face the same issues and require the same policy or set of responses. Certain voices politically weaponise the poor state of men’s health, hand-selecting stats and pitching a ‘crisis of modern masculinity’, masquerading this as an argument for gender equality. Despite its proposed intention, such debate in fact reduces the suffering of men and boys, it avoids the messiness of masculinities experienced each day in their lives, replacing it with an antagonistic ‘with us or against us’ mentality.

If you ask any couples therapist worth their salt what the number one reason for relationships falling apart is, they’ll tell you it’s the idea of ‘the count’. In the name of gender equality, plenty of couples will tell you how they try and do equal amounts of housework – one point for unloading the dishwasher, one point for cooking dinner, and the count goes on. Where ‘the count’ and the ‘we need one too’ argument fails is the need for gender equity, not just pure equality. If one partner enjoys the respite of hanging out the washing (guilty) they should do it and other such roles to support their partner. Any good system should be built on responding to capacity and need.

But what is clear is that our health system is failing both men and women. It is failing men from the family practice to the mental health services to emergency departments. It is failing women with a lack of understanding and management of conditions that only affect them. We need to understand that two truths can exist at once. Men are dying, on average four years earlier than women in this country and make up over 3/4 of suicide deaths, while women are living longer but with far more years of ill health and disability.

This is a perfect example where equality is not what we should be seeking. Men will never present to health services in the same way, nor experience care like women. We should not be aiming to ‘close the gap’ between the genders when it comes to health, that is a simplistic count argument which ends up reinforcing the harmful stereotypes. Instead, we should be seeking equity. For men and women to both be understood by a health system, and to receive the appropriate care when they need it. What this finally opens us up to is an invitation for nuance, a within-men approach that appreciates diversity and difference between guys.

Black men in England are twice as likely to be diagnosed with, and are more likely to die from, prostate cancer than other men. Men from Black Caribbean backgrounds are more likely to have a longstanding condition than men from any other ethnic group. Gay and bisexual men are more likely to have poorer mental health than heterosexual men. For 20 years, Movember has been telling the worlds’ men that moustaches come in all shapes and sizes. Now in our second decade, we are here to make clear the endless differences between men when it comes to their health needs. New research from Movember will show the inequities in men’s health and the true impact of men’s health on others, ready to be delivered to our government to support the development of an approach to men’s health that benefits all.

The health of men, women, and children all directly affect one another. We must move beyond fighting for funding and column inches. If we are to bolster the wellbeing of society, we should look to those most in need and that will include men, women and people of all genders, and start to adapt our systems to be more responsive. The ‘give us one too’ asks bandied around like a political football will do little to shift the realities facing men today. Like any good relationship, we need to move past a one for one attitude when it comes to safeguarding our next generation and work together.

Dr Zac Seidler is the global director of men’s health research at Movember and senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne.

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