Healthy masculinities: encouraging equality starts before birth

Verma and colleagues discuss the need to encourage healthy forms of masculinity to promote gender equity and wellbeing.1 A prominent feature of masculinity is the suppression of vulnerability. Signs of weakness are shameful to many boys and men, from which follows a reluctance to seek help and contempt for frailty in others, both male and female. Yet, even before birth,2 the male fetus is more fragile.3 …