Do We Need a Men’s Equality Month?

Oct 28

By Don Hubin, Ph.D.

The International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) is promoting Men’s Equality Month, November, 2024. This raises the question: “Do we need a Men’s Equality Month?”

Yes!

But more needs to be said.

We’re all familiar with the ways in which women and girls have been disadvantaged. Many barriers, both legal and social, conspired to keep women out of important roles in public life. Women have been allowed to vote for just over 100 years now. Until 1964’s Civil Rights Act, it was legal to discriminate against women in hiring, firing, and compensation. It wasn’t until 1974 that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act allowed married women to get credit in their own names. To this day, there are informal barriers and biases, both conscious and unconscious, that confront women seeking to pursue professional or political roles long dominated by men.

The well-justified attention these issues have received might lead one to think that there are no significant ways in which men are disadvantaged based on their sex. Some acknowledge that men can be disadvantaged, but only because they are members of some minority, not simply because they are men.

But this is wrong. There is compelling evidence of discrimination and bias that disadvantages men. To cite just some examples:

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, “females received sentences 29.2 percent shorter than males. Females of all races were 39.6 percent more likely to receive a probation sentence than males. When examining only sentences of incarceration, females received lengths of incarceration 11.3 percent shorter than males.”
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, about 70% of homeless persons are men.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 80% of deaths by suicide are of men, and divorced fathers are ten times as likely to die by suicide as are divorced mothers.
Boys are less likely to graduate from high school and, in 2021, men constituted just 42% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded.

National Parents Organization is focused on promoting equal shared parenting to ensure that parental separation does not result in parental deprivation. NPO’s primary concern with the issues raised by ICMB and other organizations promoting Men’s Equality Month is the manifest bias against fathers that keeps so many men from being fully involved in their children’s lives when living apart from the mother.

Many fathers have experienced this bias as they strived to stay fully engaged parents in their children’s lives. But is there empirical evidence of the bias? And the answer is that there is. But first, let’s start with some evidence of the perception of bias.

In his groundbreaking book, Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths, Dr. Sanford Braver surveyed divorced parents' perceptions of bias in the family court system. While about 75% of fathers thought the system was very (45%) or somewhat slanted (30%) toward moms; none thought the system was slanted at all toward dads. Perhaps more surprisingly, nearly 30% of mothers agreed with the majority of fathers that the system was very or somewhat slanted toward moms; less than 10% of mothers thought the system was somewhat slanted toward dads and no mothers thought it was very slanted toward dads.

Let’s move from perceptions to direct evidence of judicial bias. A study published by Dr. Andrea Miller in 2019 of 372 sitting trial court judges presented the participants with hypothetical child custody cases between heterosexual couples of varying races and income levels. The judges were given identical case facts with changes only to the race and gender of the individuals involved—issues that are legally irrelevant.

What Dr. Miller found was that judges, on average, awarded a child about half a day more time per week when the parent was identified as the mother than as the father—a difference amounting to nearly an extra month of time in a full year. Other studies have shown the presence of implicit bias, including gender bias, in judges’ decisions across a wide variety of matters, including custody decisions, criminal sentencing, and employment discrimination.[1]

We at NPO want everyone to be treated equally based on their relevant individual characteristics regardless of race, gender, religion and other morally irrelevant features. But, for the sake of our children, we are especially concerned about the unequal treatment of fathers and mothers in family law based solely on their gender. This is not only harmful and unfair to fathers; it’s harmful and unfair to their children.

So, yes, there is a need for Men’s Equality Month.

[To receive ICMB’s press releases regarding Men’s Equality Month, go to go to https://menandboys.net and subscribe for updates. Contact them at info@menandboys.net if you'd like to help spread awareness.]

[1] See, for example:

Fabricius, William; Braver, Sanford; Diaz, Priscila; and Velez, Clorinda. (2010). Custody and Parenting Time: Links to Family Relationships and Well-Being After Divorce. in The Role of the Father in Child Development, ed. by Michael E. Lamb. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.
Stamps, Leighton (2002). Maternal Preference in Child Custody Decisions. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 37(1/2), 1-11.
Braver, Sanford; Cookston, Jeffery; and Cohen, Bruce. (2002). Experiences of Family Law Attorneys With Current Issues in Divorce Practice. Family Relations, 51(4), 325-334.
Bontrager, Stephanie, Barrick, Kelle, & Stupi, Elizabeth. (2013). Gender and sentencing: meta-analysis of contemporary research. Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 16(2), 349-372
Starr, Sonja. (2014). Estimating gender disparities in federal criminal cases. American Law and Economics Review, 17(1), 127-159.
Doerner, Jill, Demuth, Stephen. (2014). Gender and sentencing: Are women treated more leniently?. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 25(2), 242-269.