More than 90 coun­tries around the world will cel­e­brate In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Day (IMD) this com­ing Sun­day—No­vem­ber 19. Men, women, girls and boys, gov­ern­ments, and in­ter­na­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions will mark this day, in­au­gu­rat­ed in T&T in 1999 by The UWI lec­tur­er Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh.

Ac­cord­ing to In­dia’s fin­tech com­pa­ny Bank Bazaar’s ad­vo­ca­cy page: “IMD is ob­served to ho­n­our and cel­e­brate the lives, ac­com­plish­ments, and con­tri­bu­tions of boys and men, es­pe­cial­ly those who have made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the fam­i­ly, mar­riage, com­mu­ni­ty, and coun­try…”

Dif­fer­ent coun­tries cel­e­brate IMD in dif­fer­ent ways, main­ly fo­cus­ing on is­sues that have the most rel­e­vance in their na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Aus­tralia, ac­cord­ing to the Aus­tralia Men’s Health Fo­rum, went through var­i­ous lev­els of con­sul­ta­tions to pro­pose their theme: Healthy Men, Healthy World.

The fo­cus is mul­ti-lev­el, as they al­so pro­posed sub-themes to ral­ly dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies, such as: Check in on a mate; Im­prov­ing male health to­geth­er; Healthy male role mod­el, and Take ac­tion, stay healthy!

In In­dia, ac­cord­ing to bankkbazaar.com: “The cel­e­bra­tions were start­ed in 2007 by In­di­an Men’s Ad­vo­cate Uma Chul­la. The idea be­hind that ef­fort, was “to ex­pose the shock­ing abuse that men face in the an­ti-male le­gal sys­tem of (In­dia).”

Oth­er top­ics for dis­cus­sion, says the aware­ness page, in­clude fat­ty changes in liv­er, and bel­ly fat, which re­main ris­ing con­cerns for In­di­an men.

In the Unit­ed King­dom, ac­cord­ing to uk­mens­day.org.uk, the team adopt­ed three key themes for 2023 that can be used sep­a­rate­ly or com­bined as fol­lows:

• Mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence to the well­be­ing and lives of men and boys

• Rais­ing aware­ness and/or funds for char­i­ties sup­port­ing men and boys’ well­be­ing

• Pro­mot­ing a pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tion about men, man­hood and mas­culin­i­ty

As well, male sui­cide is a trend­ing top­ic for dis­cus­sion in the UK on IMD, be­cause it is re­port­ed that men are three times more like­ly to die by sui­cide than women there. Among the sug­gest­ed top­ics, there­fore, this con­cern fea­tures promi­nent­ly un­der the theme “Ze­ro Male Sui­cide.”

As we pre­pare to mark the day, oth­er is­sues that af­fect men and boys should be­come part of our fo­cus for what­ev­er fo­rums we or­gan­ise wher­ev­er we are.

These are some top­ics ex­cerpt­ed from oth­er coun­tries’ sug­ges­tion lists:

• Men’s health (in­clud­ing male can­cers), short­er life ex­pectan­cy, body im­age and work­place deaths—plus the health im­pact of COVID-19

• Male vic­tims of vi­o­lence and crime—for in­stance, bul­ly­ing, sex­u­al vi­o­lence, gang vi­o­lence, and, those co­erced in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty

• The chal­lenges faced by men as par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly new fa­thers and sep­a­rat­ed fa­thers

• Dis­cuss men’s as well as boys’ health—emo­tion­al/men­tal, phys­i­cal, so­cial, and spir­i­tu­al

• Male vic­tims and sur­vivors of sex­u­al abuse, rape, sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion, do­mes­tic abuse

• The neg­a­tive por­tray­al of men, boys and fa­thers

• The chal­lenges faced by boys and men at all stages of ed­u­ca­tion and work in­clud­ing at­tain­ment, re-train­ing, stress, re­dun­dan­cy and un­em­ploy­ment

Among these is­sues, IMD, much like the Movem­ber cam­paign, al­so seeks to raise aware­ness about men’s health in an ef­fort to im­prove both men’s health-seek­ing and help-seek­ing be­hav­iours. Men are re­port­ed in the lit­er­a­ture as in­ef­fec­tive users of health ser­vices. Prin­ci­pal­ly, men are less in­clined to present them­selves in pri­ma­ry care or for dis­ease screen­ing, and use these ser­vices less than women.

Women out­live men by an av­er­age of five years. The world av­er­age age of death, ac­cord­ing to World­Da­ta.in­fo (2023), is 68.9 years for men and 73.9 years for women. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (2021) re­port­ed glob­al life ex­pectan­cy as 70.9 years for men as com­pared to 75.9 years for women. Much of this is at­trib­uted to women be­ing bet­ter health seek­ers. Not much can be found in the lit­er­a­ture about men’s health lit­er­a­cy in T&T but a 2020 study by Wills et al, (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) found that: “Men were con­cerned about, and ac­cept­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their own health but so­cial norms con­cern­ing sick­ness and mas­culin­i­ty were bar­ri­ers to ac­cess­ing health ser­vices.”

The re­searchers re­port­ed that of the 248 men who re­spond­ed to the sur­vey: “Al­most one-third (31.5%) sought ad­vice from a health­care ser­vice when they were last sick be­cause they were prompt­ed to do so by their wife/part­ner or fam­i­ly.”

His­to­ry of ID

Much of the on­line in­for­ma­tion says that in 1999, Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh reini­tialised the IMD project first con­ceived in 1991. Teelucks­ingh chose to ho­n­our his fa­ther, us­ing his birth­date, No­vem­ber 19, for the ob­ser­vances. He al­so used that icon­ic day in T&T’s foot­ball his­to­ry, as the coun­try strived to qual­i­fy for the World Cup, an event which he says unit­ed our peo­ple, more than any oth­er oc­ca­sion.

Teelucks­ingh has pro­mot­ed IMD as “not just a gen­dered day but a day where all is­sues af­fect­ing men and boys can be ad­dressed” as we work to­wards “gen­der equal­i­ty and at­tempt to re­move the neg­a­tive im­ages and the stig­ma as­so­ci­at­ed with men in our so­ci­ety.”

Car­o­line Rav­el­lo is a strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and me­dia pro­fes­sion­al and a pub­lic health prac­ti­tion­er. She holds an MA with mer­it in mass com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter) and is a mas­ter of pub­lic health with dis­tinc­tion (UWI). Write to mind­ful.tt@gmail.com