The spine
One life, in the numbers that exist.
Every dossier here is filed by subject, which is how a researcher looks for things and not how a life is lived. This page runs the same evidence down a single spine, from before school to the end. Nothing on it is new: every figure already carries a primary source in the register, re-ordered by the age it describes.
Eight stages. Seven point the same way. One does not, and it is on the page for that reason. The first is not a grievance either: it is biology, and the spine starts where the difference starts.
Nothing on this page is new evidence. Every figure is one of the sourced claims in the register, re-ordered by the age it describes. The point of the ordering is that the same shape appears at every age, measured by different people, on different instruments, for different reasons.
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01birth to 5
Where the difference starts
39.7 vs 34.9
Boys die before their fifth birthday more often than girls: 39.7 per 1,000 live births against 34.9 worldwide in 2024.
Taking every reporting entity at its own latest year, the boys' rate is higher in 218 of 221, with a median ratio of 1.196. This is the least contested difference on the page and the least political: male infants are more vulnerable to preterm complications, respiratory distress and infection. It is biology, not a grievance, and the spine starts here because it starts before anything social has happened.
Three entities run the other way. Two are territories of a few thousand people where the rate turns on single deaths. The third is India at parity, which is the documented signature of excess female child mortality, and it is named here because leaving it out would hide the one case that most needs explaining.
UN SDG Global Database, series SH_DYN_MORT, all 16,575 records · the full dossier
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022 to 5
Before the alphabet
52 of 60
Girls are ahead of boys on the UN's own early childhood indicator in 52 of the 60 countries that report both sexes.
Indicator 4.2.1, children aged 24 to 59 months developmentally on track. Mean gap 3.6 points. The framework requires this one to be broken down by sex, and it is, which is why we can see it at all.
Sixty countries, mostly low and middle income, reference years 2010 to 2021. Not a world figure and not a rich-country figure.
UN SDG Global Database, series SE_DEV_ONTRK · the full dossier
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0310
Fourth grade
51 of 57
Girls read better than boys in 51 of the 57 countries that ran the international reading study at fourth grade.
PIRLS 2021. Six years after the early childhood indicator, on a different instrument, in a different set of countries, the direction is the same.
A gap in a test score is not a gap in capability, and PIRLS measures reading alone.
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0415
The last measured year of school
24 points
Girls outperformed boys in reading by 24 score points across OECD countries.
PISA 2022, 81 countries and economies. On the same average boys led girls in mathematics by nine points, which is the honest pairing and is why this page carries both.
OECD average, not any single country. The reading gap was not statistically significant everywhere.
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0515 to 29
Out of school, out of work
12.2% vs 10.1%
More young women than young men in the EU are not in employment, education or training.
The simple version of this argument is wrong and this is where it breaks. What differs is composition: the male share is weighted towards being unemployed and wanting work, the female share towards inactivity. In the 15 to 19 band boys are the higher share; at 25 to 29 women are higher by 6.3 points, almost all of it inactivity at the ages when women have children.
This figure runs against the campaign's own argument. It is here for that reason.
EU27 aggregate for 2024. Norway has no gap at these ages at all, at 6.9 per cent of young men against 6.8 of young women, so this is a European figure and not a Norwegian one.
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0625 to 39
The years a life is supposed to be built
4.2 times
At 35 to 39 men in the EU die by suicide 4.2 times as often as women, the widest sex ratio in the series.
16.5 per 100,000 against 3.9. The narrowest ratio is adolescence, at 1.9. The gap widens as people get older rather than closing.
Crude age-specific rates, 2022, not age-standardised. Good for comparing bands within a year, not for trends.
Eurostat, hlth_cd_acdr2, intentional self-harm · the full dossier
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0740 to 64
The rate that keeps climbing
24.1
The male suicide rate rises in every five-year band from adolescence to the sixties, reaching 24.1 per 100,000 at 60 to 64.
It starts at 5.8 at 15 to 19. The female rate over the same span runs from 3.0 to 7.1. Suicide is usually pictured as something that happens to the young, and in this data it is not.
Norway's own bands are too small to read one by one and this page does not.
Eurostat, hlth_cd_acdr2, intentional self-harm · the full dossier
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08the end
Five years
5.2 years
A boy born in the EU in 2024 can expect 78.9 years. A girl born the same year can expect 84.1.
It is the largest single sex difference in any headline health statistic on this site and the least disputed. Norway's gap is 3.2 years, Denmark's 3.7, both well under the European average.
The causes are mixed: biology, occupation, risk behaviour and help-seeking all contribute, and no published decomposition assigns it to one of them.
What the framework requires you to show
Every stage above rests on a number somebody had to be told to publish. These are the five UN indicators that touch this spine, with the disaggregation field quoted from each one's own metadata sheet. The word in the right-hand column is the difference between a boy being visible in the global data and not.
| Indicator | Age | What it measures | Disaggregation required |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.2.1 | 0 to 5 | Under-five mortality | by sex, age and wealth quintile |
| 4.2.1 | 2 to 4 | Developmentally on track | Sex |
| 16.2.1 | 1 to 17 | Physical punishment and psychological aggression | None |
| 8.6.1 | 15 to 24 | Not in employment, education or training | not required, by sex is “desirable” |
| 16.2.3 | by 18 | Sexual violence in childhood | None (the indicator is already sex-specific) |
Checked against the data as well as the wording. The published series for 16.2.1 returns 115 records and not one of them carries a sex dimension, which is what a requirement of None looks like in practice. The series for under-five mortality and for early childhood development both return male and female values. Nothing here says anyone refused to count boys, and the metadata gives no reason for any of these choices, so none is offered. The field is quoted, the indicator is named, and a reader can check all five in about ten minutes.
What the spine is for
Eight stages, seven of them showing the same direction, one of them showing the opposite. That last one is the reason the other seven are worth reading: a page that only carried figures pointing one way would be a brochure. The first stage is not a grievance either: it is biology, and it is here because the spine should start where the difference starts.
None of these numbers is hidden. Every one is published by a statistical agency or by the UN itself, most of them annually, several of them required to be broken down by sex. The gap this campaign asks about is not in the counting. It is that no body anywhere has been given the job of looking down this spine and acting on what is there.
That is a narrower complaint than the one usually made on behalf of men and boys, and it is the one that survives being checked.
A gap this well measured, for this long, with nobody assigned to close it.
— voices so far · one tap, anonymous, no signup
A campaign by Manderådet and MannsForum · unformentoo.org