Texas boys and men are in trouble. Why aren’t we doing something?

As the old saying goes, Texas is heaven for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses. That’s a clever line, but the reality is that Texas men and boys are in trouble — and they need help.

Texas political leaders have spent years creating programs specifically targeted at lifting up girls, women and other demographic groups, but they’ve failed to investigate outcomes for males despite persistent disparities in education, health, justice and the workforce.

The problems start in preschool. Boys are four times as likely to be suspended from school as girls in pre-K through second grade. Overall, boys account for 71% of in-school suspensions and 70% of out-of-school suspensions despite comprising roughly half of Texas school enrollment. This isn’t just a reflection of bad behavior. Studies find that boys are suspended through discretionary enforcement and not in response to objectively severe offenses.

By the time boys reach the end of high school, their graduation rates lag behind girls, and they are more likely to drop out altogether.

While you won’t see as many young men at graduation, you will see too many behind bars or on the street. Our state prison population is 92% male, and 78% of Houston’s homeless are men.

Texas men also die earlier, with women having an overall life expectancy more than five years longer than men’s. Texas men have a suicide rate that is roughly four times higher than that of women. Despite this gap, the Texas State Plan for Suicide Prevention includes no gender-specific programs for boys or men.

There’s clearly an issue in Texas, and we aren’t addressing it.

I searched through state and local programs and grants and couldn’t find any gender-specific programming supporting men and boys. This means our state is failing to report whether programs and investments target boys, girls or both. Nor is our state reporting on outcomes for boys despite the known disparities.

Texas has a Governor’s Commission for Women, but there is no male equivalent. In 2021, Houston launched its women’s commission to identity and address inequity, and Harris County followed in 2022 with the Harris County Women’s Commission. But I cannot find one local-level commission for men and boys anywhere in Texas.

To his credit, state Rep. James Frank, a Republican from Wichita Falls, hopes to change that. Earlier this year he proposed a bill — HB 3784 — that would have created the Texas Commission for Boys and Men. This commission would be charged with conducting a systematic study of the conditions and issues affecting boys, male youth and men. It was passed out of committee but never received a floor vote in the House. The Senate never took up the issue.

This failure to move Frank’s bill wasn’t an oversight. It was a political choice.

Yes, men are often viewed as advantaged in life. Look at the ranks of politicians and CEOs, and you’ll mostly see males. So when men fail to reach those heights, when we struggle, it is far too easy for policymakers to treat those challenges as individual failures rather than systemic programs. Democrats write us off because focusing on men doesn’t align with their thoughts on gender equity. Republicans are reluctant to build any sort of social policy infrastructure because it could be considered just another big government program.

But Texans don’t need to wait for our state or federal lawmakers to take action. Much like how Houston and Harris County created commissions to focus on women’s issues, our local governments could start their own initiatives to address outcomes for our boys and men while collecting data to help inform state-level policy.

The patterns are clear: Men and boys in Texas need support. The question is whether our policymakers have the will to take action.