You poor things! 1 in 4 men think women have it easier

IT’S long been a man’s world in which women have it tougher than their male counterparts.

That’s the conventional wisdom, borne out by decades of evidence and experience.

However, about a quarter of men aged between 16 and 59 believe quite the opposite.

The finding comes in research from King’s College London and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. It looked at attitudes of the public to masculinity and women’s equality.

Overall, just under half (48 per cent) of the public said they think it is harder to be a woman than a man today – while 14 per cent said the opposite.

When it came to feminism, 43 per cent of people said it has done more good to society than harm, with 12 per cent thinking the opposite. Among boys and young men (aged 16-29), more than a third (36 per cent) think feminism has done more good to society than harm. Forty-six per cent of women feel this way.

Among this age group, 16 per cent of males feel feminism has done more harm than good, compared with 9 per cent of women who feel this way.

Respondents were also asked about the term ‘toxic masculinity’, with 67 per cent saying they had heard of it. Just over half (55 per cent) also said they had heard a great deal or fair amount about Andrew Tate – the influencer who has previously been banned from various prominent social media platforms for expressing misogynistic views and hate speech.

Among those who had heard of him, the vast majority (76 per cent) had an unfavourable view. However, a fifth (21 per cent) of men aged 16 to 29 who had heard of Tate – who is being held in Romania on sex- trafficking charges – said they had a favourable view of him.

Professor Bobby Duffy at KCL, said: ‘It has to be said that larger proportions of young men still think it’s harder to be a woman today, that feminism has done more good than harm, and have an unfavourable view of Tate.

‘But there is a consistent minority of between one-fifth and onethird who hold the opposite view.’