Only 12% of women (~1 in 8) will develop invasive breast cancer.
Compare that to men (65+ years): 6 in 10 will develop prostate cancer (60%).
- Prostate cancer is generally only in older men (I was kind of off the end of most charts at the age of 40), whereas breast cancer strikes women at earlier ages on average, often when they still have young families at home.
- Prostate cancer is a slow killer. Most men who have prostate cancer do not die of prostate cancer. That is not so for breast cancer.
- Men do not like talking about having prostate cancer, principally because even the treatment options attack masculinity. There is a high chance that the treatment will leave you impotent or incontinent or both. Since they don't talk about it, they don't engage as much in support groups or awareness movements, compared to women with breast cancer.
- Before the 1980s, people didn't talk a lot about breast cancer, and likely for similar reasons (it's personal, it's dealing with our naughty bits, it makes people feel like less of a man/woman), but there was a women's health movement during the 1980s and '90s that really helped create awareness around breast cancer. No one has done the same for prostate cancer. OP is asking "why is X given more attention to Y," and part of the answer is "because someone went to the effort to create awareness for X, and if someone wanted to, they could do the same for Y." It didn't happen overnight. It was a long campaign that took a lot of time and effort, and we haven't seen many men becoming advocates for prostate cancer in the same way that women were willing to be advocates for breast cancer.
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