Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says companies need more “masculine energy”; Donald Trump insists “manhood is under attack”; and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth argues the Boy Scouts have drifted from their mission to “cultivate masculine values”, leaving “boy-friendly spaces” threatened.
These are not fringe voices. They are powerful men tapping into a zeitgeist that has gripped men, particularly younger ones, in recent years.
According to a 2025 survey by Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, Gen Z men and women are the most divided generation on the matter of gender equality.
The research found that 60 per cent of Gen Z men believe they are expected to do too much to support equality, while 57 per cent thought society has gone too far in promoting women’s equality so that we are discriminating against men.
Where has all this division arisen from? Well, several hard-to-ignore statistics do indeed suggest a major crisis may be brewing for men.
For example, in the US, men live over five years fewer than women on average – a gap that has been growing in recent years. They are also now three times more likely to die of drug overdoses, and four times more at risk of death by suicide.
Beyond the macabre, there is more evidence that men are facing new struggles, for example, in education.
Studies by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan American think tank, found that in 1995, young men and women were equally likely to hold a bachelor’s degree, with around one in four earning one. However, by 2024, while 47 per cent of US women aged 25 to 34 had degrees, only 37 per cent of men did. Both had increased, but the rate among women had jumped much higher.
Educational gaps are seen in school too. A 2018 study of eighth-grade students across the US found that while there was no attainment gap in maths, girls consistently outperformed boys in English Language Arts.
Even after education, the effects linger. In the 50 years leading up to the COVID pandemic, the share of men in the US labour force fell by around 10 per cent – and dropped even further in the years that followed.
Yet these troubling numbers tell only part of the story. While men experience specific challenges, the available data does not show that the present push for gender equality has overstepped, as some in power suggest. Four widely cited statistics highlight how complex the picture really is.
1. Men report higher happiness levels
Despite the feelings of a male well-being crisis, survey data indicate that men have been happier and more satisfied with life than women in recent years. A 2024 cross-country study found strong evidence that males now have higher levels of both happiness and life satisfaction than females.
Using the General Social Survey for the US, the researchers found that between 1973 and 2021, average happiness between men and women was fairly similar. However, while happiness plummeted for both genders in the pandemic, women’s satisfaction, curiously, fell much more.
Meanwhile, data from European surveys found that across a range of well-being questions – calmness, restless sleep, being cheerful, lonely, anxious and more – men had higher well-being than women.
2. Men earn 20% more than women
When it comes to income, men continue to earn more than women virtually everywhere. Globally, women are paid about 20 per cent less than men on average, according to the UN.
In other words, women earn roughly 80 cents for every $1 men earn worldwide. Even in the US – where the gap has narrowed over time – full-time working women earned only 83 per cent of what their male counterparts earned in 2023.
3. Men take 90% of the most powerful positions
Men are still far better represented in leadership roles, both in government and the corporate world.
Globally, women hold only about 27 per cent of seats in national parliaments – meaning men occupy roughly three-quarters of legislative positions.
Likewise, fewer than 1 in 10 of the world’s countries had a female head of government as of October 2024.
A similar pattern appears in business: despite a record number of women now leading major US companies, only 55 of the Fortune 500 have a female CEO.
4. Men enjoy more leisure time
Another often overlooked advantage is that men typically have more free time than women.
The latest data shows that men in the US spend around three-quarters of an hour more time on leisure activities per day, while women spend 1 hour 20 minutes more on unpaid work like housework, shopping or caring for family members.
This imbalance shows up in almost every country studied, though to varying degrees. In Norway, the gap is tiny – just four minutes a day in 2020 – while in Portugal it widens to nearly an hour and a half (89 minutes).
The real gender story
Taken together, these statistics make one thing clear: the picture is far more complex than the ‘male crisis’ narrative suggests.
There are serious concerns about men’s health, education and economic participation, yes. But men also continue to hold disproportionate power, earn more and enjoy more free time.
No single storyline on either side captures that contradiction.
As Prof Heejung Chung, director of King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, argues, framing this moment as a crisis of masculinity misses the point entirely. The real problem is a crisis of opportunity, especially for younger people.
“We haven’t amply provided boys with the understanding that the current patriarchal system is bad for them too,” she says.
Chung describes the past few decades as a “stalled revolution”. Society has made real progress in “masculinising women” – bringing them into the labour force in greater numbers and encouraging them into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) roles – but has barely touched social expectations around caregiving, breadwinning and domestic labour.
The result is, according to Chung, a half-rewired system that no longer works cleanly for anyone.
“Gender tensions are distracting people away from the real issues, which are much more about structural, broader changes happening in society, and which have to do with a lot of inequalities across income groups,” she adds.
In other words, we’re stuck in an awkward transition between an old model that has lost relevance and a new one that hasn’t yet been built.
That’s why everything feels fraught. Push further, and the gender divide may start to fade, allowing us to – as Chung hopes – finally confront the deeper problems shaping people’s lives.
Read more:
- What's the difference between men and women?
- We finally know why men don’t live as long as women, say scientists
- The Y chromosome is disappearing. Is this the end of men?