Manufacturing, men and disability

Sladdin also believes this kind of underemployment is more commonly the issue confronting some of his younger members in Men’s Shed.

It is no wonder that a growing burden of our disability pension is related to mental health, which now comprises a third of all claims, a tripling over two decades according to government figures from 2011. A generation ago they would have been related to bad backs, but they are now troubled minds.

In reality, the growing number of people who come off the books of job search agencies and therefore our participation rate looking for work, are increasingly preferring the label of disabled to underqualified or incapable. Furthermore, it is happening at an earlier age, with psychiatric claims for disability three times more likely to occur in people aged in their thirties or forties.

It is perhaps fitting that the Prime Minister has just opened the headquarters of Disability Care in Geelong adjacent to the Ford plant.

Economic Man is slowly being replaced by a Casualised or Unemployed Depressed Man.

If the male species did not have it bad enough already, as best illustrated by a female writer at The Atlantic in an article triumphantly titled “The End of Men”, consider that disorders like autism and ADHD, both of which have grown exponentially in the past two decades, are often referred to by experts as a kind of extreme maleness, because of difficulty regulating emotions, lack of empathy and a trend towards acting out distress physically. Boys diagnosed with the disorders outnumber girls by a factor of four.

For all the public heat about misogyny and discrimination against women, it seems that the Y chromosome is the one in real crisis and at both ends of the life cycle.