WHO and UN – misandrist?

Bias against men’s issues within the United Nations and the World Health Organisation: A content analysis.

Twenty-twenty has given me some cause for optimism and I think we can see the earliest signs of the pendulum swinging away from the feminists. Laura Bates’ book ‘Men Who Hate Women’ was, in my opinion, a recognition and attempt at suppression (by defamation) of a men’s movement that is growing in size and confidence. There is still a long way to go but all journeys start with small steps.

This scientific paper looking at evidence of gender bias at the United Nations and World Health Organisation appears in the journal Pyschreg Journal of Psychology. The December issue was devoted to issues facing men. The editor, John A Barry, makes a call for a more balanced view of issues facing men and I will be reviewing other papers from this issue in future posts.

The study I will be discussing in this post was conducted by Dr. James Nuzzo who is an exercise scientist who has previously written on the subject of sex differences in sports and exercise. In this paper, however, he looks at bias against men in two major international organisations. Click on the picture below to access the paper which is not hidden behind a paywall.

Although males fare worse across a wide range of health outcomes much more attention is given to women’s issues and the author suggests that this is due to a type of gender bias called gamma-bias that will be discussed in more detail in a future post. Broadly speaking it encompasses several cognitive biases in which male issues and achievements are minimised while female issues and achievements are magnified. Similarly, negative factors associate with men are amplified. For example, being seen as the sole perpetrators of domestic violence even though the situation is in practice nuanced and female perpetrators are not uncommon.

James Nuzzo divided the study into to 6 evidence streams- see below.

1. All of the UN sustainable development goals that relate to gender are directed towards women and girls.
2. Looking at UN International days of observance reveals an even more striking disparity. There are 178 days in total and 10 of those days are gender-specific. All but one of those gender-specific days relates to women (for example international day of the girl child). Even the exception, Nelson Mandela Day, is not really about men in general. There are more days celebrating lentils than days celebrating men’s issues. That tells a story about the priorities and mindset of the UN.
3. Looking at UN Twitter Accounts reveals the same gynocentric mindset. The UN has 69 Twitter accounts dedicated to women’s issues and none dedicated to issues selectively affecting men.
4. Looking at sex and gender-specific words in UN and WHO databases reveals the same gynocentric mindset. At the UN female terms occurred in the title of 12,117 documents and male terms in 769. Things were no better at the WHO where 1716 documents were categorised under women’s health and 19 documents under men’s health.
5. Nuzzo revealed more of the same when he looked at WHO and UN reports on health equity, gender and health. When he searched for gender-specific words female words occurred twice as often as male words and furthermore, male words were often raised in a problematic sense.
6. Finally, Nuzzo looked at gender-specific words in the Bulletin of the WHO – ‘women’s health appeared in the title of 21 papers and men’s health in the title of two papers.

What this reveals is not so much misandry as an excessive focus on women issues compared to those affecting men, you could call that gynocentrism. However, I would like to coin a more extreme word; ‘andranopia’ to signify that men seem to be almost invisible to the UN and WHO.