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Want Great Women Leaders? Help Men Be Better Fathers

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Why does everyone think that care is something that women do and men don’t? Perhaps because there are zero countries in the world in 2021 with a policy to gender balance unpaid care. The current global result is that women spend three times more time on unpaid care work than do men. And if you are counting on younger generations to change things, think again. Among those aged 5 to 14, girls do even more relative to boys. A rare bright spot of the pandemic is that men and boys both increased the amount of time caring for someone. Seems it takes more than a village. It takes a catastrophe.

If companies are serious about building more gender balanced leadership, they need to get a lot better at empowering men to be good fathers. Women learn about gender balance by taking on new and bigger roles at work. Men learn about gender balance by taking on new and bigger roles at home. How do we retain the Covid crisis’ gains in male care time  - and make it sustainable?

The 2021 State of the World’s Fathers Report, from Promundo and MenCare, outlines exactly how countries and companies can accelerate this transition. Countries that embrace these policy pushes will further allow future generations to free themselves from obsolete and limiting gender roles. They will also tap into truly balanced talent pools, economies and political systems. Just imagine. The report outlines clear and pragmatic steps on how to make it happen. Here’s my summary of its suggestions:

1.    The 3 R’s of Care: Recognise, reduce, and redistribute care work equally between men and women.

2.    Gender neutralise care: communicate, support and role model men’s involvement as caregivers. Promote an ethic of male care - in schools, media, and key institutions.

3.    Gender neutralise parenting: Provide paid parental leave for all parents. Promote fathers’ involvement starting from the prenatal period through birth and childhood.

4.    Company Cultures: Change workplace conditions, culture, and policies to support all workers’ caregiving (it isn’t just kids).

5.    Leadership Accountability: Hold male leaders accountable for their support of gender balance in both care policies and leadership (both in business and politics).

Gary Barker, CEO and founder of Promundo, underlined at the report’s launch conference how we need a ‘care culture change.’  He says it’s time “for workplaces to be allies in centering care in our lives” and calls for the private sector to become an active partner in rebalancing care across genders. As the Covid crisis has brutally revealed, you can’t just pull in women’s talents and time without enabling men to share some of their own at home. The huge growth in female labour force participation worldwide needs a corresponding shift in when and how men share care.

Few men have done more to make this argument than Gary Barker. He is active on multiple fronts: as the co-founder of MenCare, a global campaign working in 45 countries to promote men’s involvement as caregivers, of MenEngage, a global alliance of more than 700 NGOs, and as the lead of the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), the largest-ever survey of men’s attitudes and behaviours related to violence, fatherhood, and gender equality.

“Workplaces need to take seriously national mandates for parental leave,” he insists. This involves “workplace leaders modelling that all of us are caregivers and workers.” Until the balance between personal and professional roles is a visible, acknowledged and supported part of workplace culture, for men as much as for women, men feel stuck playing the old rules.

The changes and tensions that played out between generations of women a generation ago are now playing out between generations of men. When the first wave of women managed their way into leadership, they were often very hard on the next generation of women who they felt were asking for too much, or not willing to sacrifice as much as they had. In more progressive countries and companies, this has gradually faded over time and successive (and successful) cohorts of women.

But now it’s young millennial men and fathers who are suffering inter-generational incomprehension. The Boomer men who dominate leadership roles today, have managed (sometimes reluctantly) to get their minds around women needing to balance work and family. But extending the same policies, let alone enthusiastic encouragement, to men seems another generation away.

Barker acknowledges that on the political front, women have largely been at the forefront of carrying the political load of pushing for care issues, which of course only confirms and accentuates the idea that care is a women’s issue. Yet when men care, violence goes down, children do better, and men themselves are healthier. “Don’t let men off the hook,” says Barker. “Men need to care about care. Caregiving changes men. And when done by many men, it changes cultures.”

Amen.

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