The Equality and Human Rights Commission recently opened a public consultation, now closed, seeking views on what they should focus on in their strategic plan for 2022 to 2025 and how the organisation might achieve this.
The EHRC ‘s remit is as follows:
“The Equality and Human Rights Commission is Great Britain’s national equality body… Our job is to help make Britain fairer. We do this by safeguarding and enforcing the laws that protect people’s rights to fairness, dignity and respect.
“As a statutory non-departmental public body established by the Equality Act 2006, the Commission operates independently. We aim to be an expert and authoritative organisation that is a centre of excellence for evidence, analysis and equality and human rights law. We also aspire to be an essential point of contact for policy makers, public bodies and business.
“We use our unique powers to challenge discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and protect human rights. We work with other organisations and individuals to achieve our aims, but are ready to take tough action against those who abuse the rights of others.”
There are a wide range of grave and urgent wellbeing issues that disproportionately affect men and boys and that continue to receive little or no action from Government or policy makers. In order to achieve the stated aim of upholding an effective framework protecting equality and human rights, it is crucial that policy focus is applied to these issues of gendered inequality and disadvantage affecting men and boys.
This is of course does not mean that the focus on areas of female disadvantage should not continue, so this should be seen as adding an additional focus, which is currently not there.
The full Men and Boys Coalition submission to the consultation is available here: