Has the Health System Failed Men? The Perceptions of the Men’s Movement on Men’s Health in Australia

Abstract

There is strong evidence that on many health measures men are doing significantly worse than women, including lower life expectancy and increased cardiovascular mortality, rate of injury, depression and suicide. This paper, based on interviews with prominent men in the men’s movement, examines men’s health issues from the men’s movement perspective. It considers men’s health from four different men’s movement viewpoints: Profeminist, Fathers’ Rights, Mythopoetic and Inclusive men’s movement strands. The literature and men’s movement discourses range from arguments that medical practices and research have ignored men’s health needs to those that posit masculinity as the major causation and explanation for men’s poor health status. There is reason to hope that the new, well structured and widely embracing national men’s health policy will address these concerns.