Why young men now need to mind the gender pay gap

For the first time in history, many young women are earning more than their male peers. As boys fall behind in education and employment, Ben Bryant asks what is driving the change

- Ben Bryant

Mark Brooks has a history of being politely ignored. "Ten years ago, there wasn't really any recognition that men and boys had problems," he says. "Now the environment has changed." That change was signalled earlier this month by health secretary Wes Streeting, who declared there is a “crisis in masculinity”.

“Society has been slow to wake up to the fact that a lot of men and boys are really struggling today,” he said. “The truth is it can be quite tough to be a young man in today’s society.”

Streeting was speaking at the launch of The Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB), a new organisation that seeks to produce actionable policies to tackle a decline in men’s health, employability and life expectancy that has crept up on the political class. Brooks – their policy adviser and a lifetime campaigner in the field of men’s health – has overseen the release of the CPRMB’s first report. Missing Men outlines the challenges facing men and boys, and comes hot on the heels of another report by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) – Lost Boys – which paints an equally stark picture of male outcomes.

Over the last year, politicians have grappled with the changing status of men. A group of Labour MPs has formed to brainstorm ways to appeal to boys amid rising support for Reform among Gen Z males. In November, Streeting commissioned the first ever men’s health strategy, observing that the number one killer of men under 50 is suicide – “a fact so shocking that I nearly fell off my chair,” he said (although one that has been true for men aged 20 to 34 since 2001).

Netflix’s fictional drama Adolescence, which pondered whether dispossessed schoolboys can be radicalised to commit femicide, drew the attention of the prime minister, who called for it to be shown in schools. “