(Quite wonderful to see this in a national newspaper, by the way)



The world may have been concentrating on the climate change conference in Paris, the EU renegotiation talks and Star Wars; but future historians may record this week as the moment the earth finally moved in social relations between women and men.

Today, for the first time, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission will be called upon to recognise formally that men and boys can be in positions of systemic disadvantage and inequality in British life - such as education and family life and law.

A tiny fissure will thus be driven into the unyielding concrete crust that has covered gender politics for the last half century. For the entire lifetimes of most people in this country, it has been a central, unquestionable article of faith that where inequalities pervade our society by gender, they must inhere exclusively to females.

Today is the deadline for submissions to the EHRC for proposals to be included in that body’s strategic plan for 2016-2019.

Now Mark Brooks (chair of the ManKind Initiative), Glen Poole (UK coordinator of International Men’s Day), Dan Bell (features editor, insideMan magazine), Martin Daubney (journalist, broadcaster and committee member, Being A Man Festival) and Ally Fogg (writer and journalist) have composed a letter drawing attention to a range of significant troubles for men and boys.

These include:

The authors have also invited a number of organisations, academics and opinion formers to add their support. I am among those additional signatories.

Mark Brooks, coordinator of this initiative, expects the EHRC to report back in Spring 2016 on the submissions it has received. “Our expectation is that there will be recognition of these issues concerning men and boys,“ he says. “The credibility of the organisations and individuals involved and their mature and responsible approach should mean that the EHRC must take notice. Those organisations and individuals will simply not allow these issues to be ignored any longer.”