PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Henry Herrera
Phone: +1-301-801-0608
Email: info@menandboys.net
Russia’s Gender Crisis: Men Are Dying Younger, Educated Less, and Largely Ignored
April 18, 2025 – While global attention remains fixed on empowering women, Russian men are quietly falling behind, revealing that being male in Russia carries social costs no one’s talking about.
Education:
As of 2018, 3.1 million university students in Russia were women, compared to just 2.7 million men (1). This trend persists across employment too, with 39% of working women holding higher education degrees versus only 29.7% of men (2). Among those aged 35 to 39, the gap widens further: 24.7% of women had tertiary degrees compared to 19.5% of men (3).
Health:
A dramatic health gap exists—women live an average of 77.77 years while men average just 67.57 (4). In older age groups, male mortality in 2021 reached 100.1 per 100,000 versus 61.2 for women (5).
Homicide:
Russian men are over three times more likely to be homicide victims than women—12.25 per 100,000 for men, compared to 3.73 for women (6).
Suicide:
The suicide crisis is even starker: men die by suicide nearly five times more often than women—43.60 versus 9.10 (7).
Parenting:
Though Russian law allows for equal parental responsibility, courts routinely grant custody to mothers, especially for children under ten. This leaves many fathers sidelined from their children’s lives (8).
Domestic Violence:
In 2015, 756 of the 1,060 domestic violence deaths were men. In 2019, men again comprised the majority, 472 of 715 deaths (9, 10).
Homelessness:
In 2014, Saint Petersburg recorded 60,000 homeless individuals, over 90% of them men (11). Nationwide, men remain the majority of Russia’s estimated 2 million homeless, a figure that grew due to the pandemic and ongoing war (12).
Workplace Injury:
Of the 20,300 workplace injuries recorded in 2022, 70%—14,210—were suffered by men (13), indicating that the burden of dangerous labor is disproportionately male.
Conclusion:
The International Council for Men and Boys urges Russian leaders and advocates to take action: reform outdated systems, invest in men’s health and education, and restore balance to gender policy.
The International Council for Men and Boys is a non-governmental organization that is working to celebrate the contributions of men to society and to end the 12 sex disparities that affect men and boys around the world. Achieving #GenderEqualityForMen also will benefit women.https://www.menandboys.net/
Links:
2.https://rujec.org/article/94459/
3.https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_educativo_de_Rusia?utm
4.https://www.statista.com/statistics/971100/life-expectancy-at-birth-in-russia-by-gender/
5.https://www.statista.com/statistics/1005564/death-rate-russia-age-and-gender/
7.https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/rus/russia/suicide-rate
9.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_Russia?utm
13. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1291881/occupational-accidents-by-gender-russia/