Some time ago we contacted Cancer Research UK, a highly sexist charity yet one with a great deal of funding and influence. Evidence of their sexism can be seen not just in their Race for Life event but it’s blatantly obvious from their work too. For example in 2010/11 they spent:
- £453 for anyone with prostate cancer.
- £902 for anyone with breast cancer.
- £1,615 for anyone with ovarian cancer.
Amongst other things we pointed out the glaring disparity between their report on “The excess burden of cancer in men in the UK” the fact that their site has a section for “female cancers” but not one for male cancers.
The following is the text of question we posed to Cancer research UK:
“Why do you information pages have a link to women’s cancers but no one for men’s cancers? There are actually more cases of cancers unique to men than to women each year (43050 compared to 19343). This is quite an incredible oversight.”
Paul McManus, Complaints Coordinator for Cancer Research UK dismissed the complaint stating:
“We have names the link you refer to as women s cancers but it in fact represents information about various types of gynaecological cancers. This is simply done to make the page more user-friendly.”
Such a statement was clearly a nonsense as each such cancer had a separate link too and it was clearly yet a case of Cancer Research UK favouring women in all their work. Thanks to continuing pressure from both HEqual and others we can now report that Cancer Research UK have finally have had complete change of heart and have addressed our concern by ceasing this particular method of diminishing male suffered of cancer. The first link below shows the previous discriminatory site as it appeared earlier this year, the second link shows the site today with the added “male cancer” section:
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-help/type/%20?ssSourceSiteId=home
Of course we have numerous other concerns about the activities of Cancer Research UK and the marginalisation of men’s health throughout the health sector, but at least this is a step in the right direction.
hequal 
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Bravo! It would be interesting to know what sortof “pressure” was applied to effect results. I know when I have written similar emails/letters my concerns are dismissed out of hand.