“Manly” behavior would cost Switzerland 9.4 billion

More than 94% of the prison population is made up of men. They represent 92% of convicted perpetrators of serious bodily harm, commit 86% of homicides, 97% of sexual assaults, and cause 84% of road accidents. Faced with these overwhelming statistics, a team of economic researchers from the University of Lausanne studied the cost to society of this imbalance, reports RTS. And it is not negligible. “We took the cost of antisocial behavior among men, estimated at 13.2 billion. That of women is estimated at 3.8 billion,” explains Léane Vota, president of Rethinking Economics Lausanne. The difference between the two, the “cost of virility”, would thus amount to nearly 9.4 billion francs in our country.

This estimate takes into account the charges for the Confederation and the cantons, but not for the municipalities, which could further increase the bill. This is mainly divided between the costs of supervising risky sports matches, road safety, and the operating costs of justice and prisons. But why, ultimately, have you made this calculation? To call for educating boys differently, in a more peaceful and egalitarian way, without promoting violence, the researchers respond. A little more like how we educate girls, summarizes essayist Lucile Peytavin, author of the same exercise for France, for RTS.