I think that women tend to be better at creating and maintaining relationships (I'm not necessarily talking about romantic relationships here). I also think th

I think that women tend to be better at creating and maintaining relationships (I'm not necessarily talking about romantic relationships here). I also think that women tend to get more emotional support from their relationships. Men don't really get this (at least explicitly) from their friends. They do get it from their intimate partners. For a lot of men, their partner is the only person they ever 'open up to'. In general, I think there are strong cultural (and possibly even biological) reasons for the different approach to and amount of emphasis men and women put on socialising. In some circumstances, being a bit of a social recluse can be advantageous (e.g. extreme dedication to particular pursuits such as a career), but in total I think that men as a group suffer for this tendency. They are much more likely to end up alone and lonely in later life (discounting the fact that women live longer). I think this probably plays a large part in the high suicide rates amongst older men. I think that something that could be done to address this issue - and something that would benefit both men and women in a variety of ways - would be to focus on removing cultural and financial barriers that keep men away from their families and in the workplace. For example, we shouldn't talk about maternity or paternity leave, but instead parental leave. The financial security of families should not be seen as a man's responsibility, but a shared responsibility (this goes back to the seemingly intractable issue of the relationship between financial status and attractiveness of men). These are really ingrained cultural attitudes but we can chip away at them. Focussing on some of these sorts of issues would be good for men's mental health and a much more productive means of levelling the earnings gap between men and women than focussing almost exclusively on sexist discrimination in the workplace - a red herring in many (but certainly not all) cases. As most people are aware, a significant part of the earnings gap is down to the responsibilities women take on outside of the workplace, such as caring for children and elderly relatives or supporting the local school. We should be looking at what it is that is holding men back from participating more fully in their community. I think by not doing this, many men are missing out on one of the fundamental aspects of being human.