Whether you look at education, politics, the arts or families, manhood is in crisis as never before

What’s baffling, though, is why the narrative of systematic female oppression continues in the way it does. The claim that male sexism is responsible for the lack of symmetry between the sexes in top jobs or public life ignores the part played in this by the choices women may make. In fact, society has been systematically feminised to the great disadvantage of men.

They are routinely the butt of female misandry in jokes and contemptuous references. Characteristics associated with men such as courage, gallantry or emotional restraint are scorned or trashed.

Boys are seriously underachieving at school and women are 35 per cent more likely than men to go to university, with that gap widening every year.

In family life, committed fathers have become optional extras. The concept of the male breadwinner is regarded at best as an anachronism and at worst as a thought crime. Yet there is ample evidence that the destruction of this role has had serious consequences.

Unlike women, for whom the facts of biology leave no room for doubt about their sexual role, men’s sense of masculinity is socially constructed around providing for their families. So the destruction of their fatherly and breadwinner role has shattered their fragile sense of what masculinity means.

All this suggests that manhood is in crisis.