To the Editor:

Re “How Can We Help Men? By Helping Women” (Sunday Review, Jan. 12):

Stephanie Coontz proposes a number of excellent ideas to make our society friendlier to women and rightly recognizes that addressing these issues would likely benefit men as well. We would do well to seriously consider putting her ideas into practice. But there is no reason this should be to the exclusion of directly addressing issues faced by men.

The Great Recession has left many more men than women out of work, and with men being substantially less likely than women to pursue higher education, this gap is expected to persist for the foreseeable future.

The fact that most Fortune 500 executives and members of Congress are men does not in any way negate the fact that the majority of the unemployed and the homeless are also men, especially when so many of our politicians are more interested in fighting over which party is waging a “war on women” than in creating jobs for their brothers who are in need.

We will not solve these problems by “putting women first” and naïvely expecting that things will work out for men. Instead of ignoring the interests of half the population, we should give adequate attention to the needs of both men and women and work to craft policies that are fair to everyone.