13 May 2025
Foreword from Missing Men: Men and Boys’ Scorecard
What do we really know and understand about what is happening to boys and young men? The answer is not enough. And that isn’t good enough. That is why a new research organisation is needed, to help answer and shape better policy prescriptions for men and boys who are struggling. The Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB) will ground the public conversation on boys and men on hard facts and high-quality research.
The whole notion of a “battle of the sexes” is as stupid as it is outdated. We rise – or fall – together. Zero-sum thinking on gender issues pits men against women, on the utterly false presumption that if one sex rises, the other must fall.
A similar goal animates the work of CPRMB, of which I am a Board member. This report, Missing Men is our first contribution. A broad failure to answer – or sometimes, candidly, even to address – some fundamental questions affecting many men and boys has left a policy and narrative vacuum.
In many aspects of our lives men and boys are struggling. As Missing Men describes, men and boys in the UK have yet to fully recover from the Covid pandemic. There are more unemployed men, more economically inactive men, and an employment rate that has fallen 2.5 percentage points since 2019. Male suicide rates kill three times the number of people who die on Britain’s roads each year. Male teachers make up fewer than one in four of teachers in our schools and classrooms and in our universities there is a 10 percentage point attendance rate gap in favour of women. Even on pay 16-24 year old women are now paid on average more than 16-24 year old men.
Missing Men is the first of what will be many reports from the CPRMB. The new organisation will be working with the best researchers in every field seeking to understand better what is happening to boys and men and finding out what we can do about it.
As the vision for the organisation states this is not about doing less for women and girls – far from it. Society needs to keep up the pressure to deal with the egregious inequities and iniquities women and girls deal with daily. However the CPRMB’s profound conviction is that it is possible for there to be a world where men and boys of all backgrounds can thrive in their families and communities, one where the sexes can rise together by supporting each other.
Richard Reeves
Chair
Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys