Last Thursday was the first International Day of the Girl Child, started by the UN to “recognise girls’ rights and the unique challenges that girls face around the world”. (From this Herald article)

The UN also strongly promotes International Women’s Day. But the UN runs no International Day of the Boy Child or International Men’s Day. A search of its web site shows that its attention to men consists mostly of criticizing them and seeking to repress and change them.

This is the same UN which is currently supporting widespread male genital mutilation in Africa (Helen Clark being complicit in this) on the pretext of health advantages as claimed by one piece of poor, unclear research contradicting a large body of existing research showing no health benefits from this abusive practice. See my previous analysis of this research in Comment #18 here.

The UN’s International Day of the Girl Child in the absence of any similar initiative for boys, and International Women’s Day in the absence of any similar initiative for men, highlights the huge magnitude of institutionalized sexism against the male gender that we face.