FYI, I sent the following to Francios Barton, Ministry of Innovation, Business and Employment concerning a news article today:

I sent the following to journalist Natalie Akoorie regarding her NZ Herald article on a construction work safety campaign. The article suggests that the use of the word ‘people’ in referring to workplace deaths and injuries may have come from you. As a representative of community group ‘The Ministry of Men’s Affairs’ I urge you to start being honest about the true gender nature of this issue.

“While your article was commendable for raising awareness of workplace risk, your use of the word ‘people’ in refering to 100 workplace deaths per year served to hide the true gender nature of the statistic. The fact is that most years 100% of those deaths are suffered by men while female deaths seldom reach even a few percent. For any problem that kills or victimizes mainly women the gender of the victims would be emphasized in any journalist’s story. Why is it then that the male gender’s contribution or suffering is routinely hidden by those same journalists? Instead, media constantly support bitter complaints from feminists portraying it as unjust that women earn on average about 12% less than men across the much safer jobs women do.”