Male Ally: Funny name…serious topic
A male ally is “any man that is willing to advocate and speak up in support of gender equality”.
Feminism is about “all genders having equal rights and opportunities”.
Based on those 2 definitions, my simple deduction is that a male ally is in support of feminism. I won’t argue on whether this statement makes a male ally a feminist, I don’t really think this would add much value to this article.
Now, let me bring you 3 “painful” data points highlighting how big gender gap still is. And of course, those 3 examples are far from being exhaustive.
Number 1: Gender parity is not recovering, according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022. “It will take another 132 years to close the global gender gap. As crises are compounding, women's workforce outcomes are suffering and the risk of global gender parity backsliding further intensifies.”
Number 2: 33 female CEOs currently lead Fortune 500 companies. That is less than 7%.
Number 3: On average, women earn 22.1% less than men, according to the EPI (Economic Policy Institute - 2021).
On a personal level, this topic particularly resonates to me for various reasons:
I am a father of 2 girls (5 and 8 years old). By the time the gender gap closes in Europe (60 years, still according to the Global Gender Gap Report), they will be both retired or almost retired. Meaning that they will face unequal pay, treatment and recognition during their entire career…pretty sad I must say. If they relocate to another continent (except North America - 59 years), the gap will be even bigger, up to 197 years in South Asia. Generations and generations of women still facing inequality and injustice during their entire lives.
I am a HR professional and a Career and Transition coach. I believe men and women should be treated equally and have equal chances of success and recognition at work and in life in general. During my 15 years of professional experience, I witnessed how cruel and tough sometimes it can be for women who want to make a career in parallel with having a family, just to give one example. It is possible of course but way more difficult than for a man, still in 2022.
I am a human being. And I’m tired of sexist stereotypes (photos below) released regularly on the news or advertised like this was a model we still want to follow and consent for future generations. I’m tired of looking at numbers that never changed - since 1994, the gap between men’s and women’s pay has narrowed hardly at all, 23.2% compare to 22.1% in 2021, still according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Finally, I’m tired of seeing mainly women fighting for the right to gender equality and almost no man standing up for what is the obvious - fairness and equity. Men have a big responsibility here to advocate for a massive change of conscious rather than silence or agreed status quo. It starts with public figures from public and private sectors and civil society leading by example. I haven’t heard many actors, politicians or business men claiming recently: “I’m taking x months of parental leave”. Having role models might help to show that this is actually okay and accepted to do that.
Bic campaign (South Africa - 2015)
CEO Lunch at the Munich Security Conference - 2022
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again-expecting different results”
Focus - How could shared parental leave help close the gender gap?
In Switzerland, country where I lived in for many years, considered as one of the most attractive country to live in the world, the duration of maternity leave is of 14 weeks. Since 2021, “the legal father has a right to two weeks of paid paternity leave”. Before 2021, the leave allowance was 1 day… Despite the progress made given the recent vote, the ratio of the leave between the 2 parents is 7 to 1 “in favor” of the mother. Which means 7 times more opportunities for the mother to stay at home and take care of the baby and 7 times more opportunity for the father to stay at work and be considered a stable and reliable employee (or at least creating this bias) and therefore not being at home sharing responsibilities with the mother. This is far from being enough…
Improving gender equity through parental leave is not only about regulation…although it helps. Lithuania, for example, offers 30 days (6 weeks) of paternity leave paid at a rate of 77.58% of regular earnings. Additional shared parental leave of up to 36 months, taken consecutively or incrementally, is also available. This child-raising benefit provides full pay for the first year and 70% salary for the remaining two years—paid through social security. This country, along with the Nordics, is considered to be one of the best-in-class when it comes to both paternity leave and shared parental leave. The United States, for example, has no paid paternity leave policy and no shared parental leave (only up to 12 weeks unpaid are allowed).
Shared parental leave…great, isn’t it ? Absolutely, if it is indeed equally shared between the 2 parents. Otherwise, are we really closing the gender gap? In Germany, country where I live now and where shared parental leave is already implemented since 2007, a quarter of all mothers with a youngest child under the age of 6 used the shared parental leave in 2019, based on a report from the German Federal Statistical Office. Among the fathers, this applied to only 1.6%… In some countries like Germany or France, shared parental leave exist and most of the time mothers stay at home for longer period of times to take care of their child. Which is absolutely fine, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t help in closing the gender gap if fathers don’t do it as well. So where are the problems and what are the possible solutions in that specific case?
At a policy level
I won’t spend too much time on this one as I’ve shared already some examples of considered “best in class” countries and some of the worst examples as well. I believe that policy makers have to analyze and understand what works well and what does not work so well on what has been done over the past 15 years in “best-in-class” countries. And our politics to have the courage and the long term vision to make this shift happen.
At a company level
I found this relevant and very interesting article from the Guardian published in 2016, approximately 1 year after the implementation of shared parental leave policy in the UK. Johnny Davis, “one of the few men to take up the government’s offer of shared parental leave (SPL)” at that time (and the only man in his company) shares his view and reflects on how it has been to stay at home and take care of his newborn child.
First of all, he “would recommend SPL to anyone. Not only because this is the only way that we can change perceptions of what being a father is, but also because it’s unmissable. As a man, what you’re used to hearing before you have a kid is how much worse off your life is going be, how all the fun is going to stop, and how your social life, Christmas meals and all, will vanish. That’s all true. But what few men fess up to is the overwhelming wave of love that begins the day your baby is born and only gets stronger”. I can not agree more to those words and I share the same experience looking back when I took 3 months of unpaid leave to be home when my second daughter was born.
Changing the perception. In most companies, taking a parental leave for a man is often perceived as “frowned upon or career limiting”. Promoting parental leave is clearly not enough of a priority for most of the companies given the possible “disturbance” this could generate of having someone leaving for several months (replacement, cost, etc)…Another interesting bias by the way. It’s like if companies would almost hope that no one comes forward and ask. The employers have a big responsibility here in promoting shared parental leave and facilitate its process by informing, supporting and facilitating.
At a society level
Another key element highlighted in the article is the willingness from men to get more involved in raising their child. “I think the big unspoken thing is that in their heart of hearts a lot of men don’t want to be very heavily involved in bringing up their children, because it’s too much hard work,” says John O’Connell, a journalist and author.
We made progress in attitude in regards to gender equality: for example, men are more present for their child in comparison to the previous generation. “But these attitudes have yet to translate into realities… a report found that women still take on more than two-thirds of the childcare duties in the UK and do nearly four weeks a year more unpaid work in the home than men”. The author also refers to an “article in Harvard Business Review, based on interviews conducted with nearly 4,000 American male and female executives, suggested that men still regard family issues as primarily a female concern”.
“Gender equality is your issue too”
My family and I made 3 years ago a huge shift as a family: we relocated to another country, we changed job, kids changed schools, etc. Since then, I am the one taking care of the kids during the week and ensuring the logistic at home in addition to working approximately 30 hours a week while my wife works full-time at the office and needs to travel sometimes. It’s not always easy for both of us for different reasons but it’s great ! I love it, I feel we made the right choice, I feel I see my kids growing and enjoy almost every day sometimes thinking that one day they won’t need me so much anymore. And, although it took me some time at the beginning to feel okay with my new rhythm, today I don’t feel I had to “sacrifice” my career by being more present at home. Probably because I feel the decision was shared. Nobody imposed me anything. It should be normal for men in our modern societies to take some time off from work to take care of their child.
“All the evidence shows that paternity leave helps society, too. If fathers take parental leave, their families are more likely to stay together. Even if there is a separation, the father is more likely to remain involved with the children. They tend to achieve higher marks at school, be better adjusted and have greater self-confidence. Meanwhile women are likely to do better at work”
An easy conclusion to all this would be to combine the fact that more paternity leave would help society and that having more women in leadership positions contribute to more profitability for companies (see below image) and claim: what are we waiting for ?
Interested about this article? Feel free to contact me.
