I just finished watching "The Impact of Trauma and Adversity on Males" talk on The International Conference on Men's Issues by Nicola Graham-Kevan Professor of Criminal Justice Psychology at the University of Central Lancashire (She is internationally recognised as an expert on domestic violence and coercive control and is frequently asked to deliver presentations and training nationally and internationally.)

The talk is great you should definitely watch, in this post i want to highlight the gender bias in the talk.

Domestic violence:

The website of the UNICEF on the impact of domestic violence on children they say "studies from various countries support the finding that rates of abuse are higher amoung husbands were abused as children or who saw their mothers being abused "

When in reality children who witness domestic abuse either by their fathers against their mothers or the other way aroound wether they are boys or girls have higher rate of being abusers, girls are not imune to that. but the UNICEF present only boys and men as abusers and only mothers as victims.

The UN launched an international day on the elimination of violence against women but until now there is no international day on the elimination of violence against men. This bias has very harmful impact. you can reda the BBC article : Male domestic abuse victims 'sleeping in cars and tents'

Female and male prisoners:

The other areas of gender bias is the way the media talk about ex-prisoners, when talking about female prisoners the media focus on their vulnerabilities and urge the government to create social programs for their needs: "more than half of female prisoners have no settles home to go to on release" "self harm increases amoung female prisoners in England during pandemic" etc etc ..

However with the male prisoners the media take different approach, for example the titles "thousandsof high risk offenders in UK freed into homelessness" and "nearly 200 released sex offenders had nowhere to live " .. they want you to feel scared instead of empathy.

The impact ? read the article "Why we need to change the attitude that ‘men are the criminals, women are the victims’"

Recently, Justice Secretary David Gauke MP announced community services supporting vulnerable women have been awarded £1.6 million funding as part of the government’s commitment to reduce the number of women entering the criminal justice system. Further, the government has committed to investing £5 million over two years in community provision for women in the justice system & those at risk of offending and an initial allocation saw £3.3 million awarded to 12 organisations providing a range of specialist support. The funding follows the publication of the government’s Female Offender Strategy in June last year. As it stands, no such strategy exists for male offenders save for the announcement further prisons are to be built.

Because of the media bias we ignore the fact that male prisoners have vulnerabilities too: 66.1% reported childhood sexual abuse, 72.6% reported childhood physical abuse, 80.6% reported childhood neglect, 66.1% reported childhood emotional abuse, 59.7% reported parental antipathy, 43.5% reported parental domestic violence, 54% of the men who were sexually abused were victimized by a woman.

Stereotypes create discriminatory policy and programs:

We need inclusive media reporting, when the media only show women as victims of domestic violence and only female prisoners with childhood trauma the result is sexist discriminatory policy against men who suffer the same circumstances.

The bias not only inlcude the negative reporting but the positive too, for example BBC did a report titeled : "Woman's Hour Power List: The women protecting our planet" but there is no Man's Hour about the men protecting our planet. (when they show a male scientist he is presented as a scientist only his gender is not highlited)

This is not a trivial issue, presenting one gender (men and boys) as the evil monster, and the other (women and girls) as victims and hero has very dengerous and harmlful impact on our communities.