When Peter Dutton reckoned that men — especially men with a stay-at-home partner looking after three children — were being discriminated against in the workplace and “fed up”, he produced no evidence for this shocking claim.
Luckily there’s some data we can use to check whether men are indeed “fed up” with being overlooked at work in favour of women and minorities. Every year, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) publishes statistics about the complaints it receives under the various anti-discrimination acts it administers.
In 2021-22, the last year of the Coalition government, the AHRC received 137 complaints from men about discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act, the vast majority about employment, forming 23% of all sex discrimination complaints.
With men becoming fed up about discrimination under the new woke regime of political correctness being enforced by the Albanese government, things would presumably have deteriorated since then. Except, only 123 men complained in 2023-24, making up 21% of all sex discrimination complaints. As far as sexual discrimination goes, men are complaining less than under the Coalition.
But what about racial discrimination complaints? Are white men being overlooked in favour of minorities? The AHRC doesn’t break racial discrimination complaints down by gender or race, and employment only makes up one of several major areas of complaint under the Racial Discrimination Act, but there were 464 complaints in 2021-22 covering 1,413 grounds of complaint. In 2023-24, there were only 388 complaints covering 1,203 grounds. The proportion of employment-related complaints in 2021-22 was 24%, the proportion in 2023-24 was… 24.8%. Doesn’t seem like anyone’s getting too fed up.
Still, who are you gonna believe, hard data or Peter Dutton’s MAGA Down Under act?
The opposition leader, however, does have a point about one area where men are sadly kept out of work by women in one of the most blatant cases of discrimination in the entire labour force: informal caring.
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, Australia’s informal caring workforce — those engaged in unpaid caring for relatives with a disability, illness or old age — is dominated by women: two-thirds of primary carers are women. The difference is particularly stark in middle age. There are more than four times as many female primary carers as male primary carers in the 35-44 age bracket, three times as many in the 45-54 bracket and more than twice as many in the 55-64 bracket.
There’s no innate reason for such a disparity. Men can be just as good carers as women, and yet women unfairly dominate this sector. If you’re a male who requires informal caring because of your age, illness or disability, chances are your carer is a woman.
Perhaps, in their dotage, all these fed-up men can tell their female carers how angry they were at being discriminated against. Of course, that’s separate from the estimated $38 billion in unpaid childcare work that women do a year, compared to $17 billion by men — another shameless case of discrimination against blokes.
If Peter Dutton wants to address the overlooking of men in an important industry, he could start with informal caring, where men are missing out on vast opportunities to look after kids, seniors, the unwell and people with disabilities. Men are doubtless fed up with missing out on such roles, and the opportunity to shape their lives and careers and relationships around the role of unpaid carer for a loved one. Men are hard done by, and it’s time they got a fair crack.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
