Why don’t we have a minister for men? That’s the question Tory MP Ben Bradley asked this week, and he’s found himself the centre of a great deal of social media fury for doing so. I say ‘found himself’, but it’s highly unlikely Bradley really thought anything else was going to happen, not least because he made this call during a backbench debate he had organised with his Conservative colleague Philip Davies, who has a specialism in winding people up.
In that debate, Bradley argued that ‘men are talked about, all too often, as a problem that must be rectified’, and complained that the equalities agenda seemed to exist to exclude them, rather than help with their specific problems such as higher rates of suicide and lower educational attainment. He said:
‘What more can we in this place do? For starters, we can change the discourse here. Can we look again at equalities legislation? If we are to hold departments across Whitehall to account, with people dedicated to ensuring – quite rightly – that women are considered, why not do the same for men? Why have a Minister for Women, but not one for men? Why single out one characteristic for a special mention?’
Bradley covered some very important issues in his speech.
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