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Introduction

Calling Dads of Daughters to Step Up for Gender Equality

For decades, women have been breaking down barriers, cracking the glass ceiling, and proving and reproving themselves. Women have heeded expert advice to negotiate harder, be more confident, and take greater risks. Most recently, women have embraced Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s call to “lean in” to their careers with ambition and fearlessness. But despite all of this effort and tenacity, our next generation of girls is still growing up in a profoundly unequal world.

Standing on the shoulders of so many women who have leaned in before them, today’s women have made remarkable progress, so it’s easy to believe that gender inequality is a thing of the past. In the US, women have entered the workforce in record numbers and are the sole or primary earners in forty-two percent of families. Women have become CEOs, Supreme Court Justices, political leaders, military commanders, astronauts, sports stars, and entrepreneurs. We even came close to having our first woman president.

But behind the success stories are numbers that reveal the barriers that women still face. At Fortune 1000 companies, women fill less than seven percent of CEO positions and less than twenty-one percent of all board seats. Only a quarter of all colleges and universities are headed by women, although more women hold college degrees than men. Even with the unprecedented success of women candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, women fill just twenty-three percent of all Congressional seats. Only four women have ever sat on the Supreme Court, and women make up only a third of all federal court judges. Women also remain under-represented in STEM education and jobs, particularly in computer science and engineering. To top it off, more than fifty years after the Equal Pay Act became law, women still earn about eighty cents per dollar compared to men in virtually every domain.

As bad as things are for women at the top, it’s even worse for women and girls at the bottom. In the wealthiest country in the world, one in eight women live in poverty, a rate that’s thirty-five percent higher than for men. While women make up nearly half of the American workforce, they account for sixty percent of the nation’s lowest-paid workers. Single mothers, women with disabilities, and elderly women disproportionately fill the ranks of America’s poorest citizens. On every measure of economic and social wellbeing, women and girls of color are even farther behind. Around a quarter of African American and Latina women are poor, and girls of color are more likely to live in poverty than any other children.

The depth of gender inequality from top to bottom became even clearer with the advent of #MeToo revelations. As thousands of brave women and men shared their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse, we realized how much further we still need to travel to achieve gender equality. While the movement appeared to spring from the Hollywood peaks, #MeToo actually started years ago when activist Tarana Burke coined the phrase to support women and girls of color, who face particularly high rates of sexual assault. At the same time that this seismic shift has strengthened women’s voices, it has also raised challenging questions about future strategies for achieving equality. Many of us are asking, “What’s next?”

While there’s obviously no single response, there is an obvious fact that should inform our path forward: men still hold most of the positions of power within businesses, governments, and communities. That means that men still have a high degree of control over the resources that dictate the pace of women’s progress. It took researchers at the World Bank writing a 458-page World Development Report to reach this unsurprising conclusion: achieving women’s equality will ultimately require the commitment of men. “If you’re going to change things,” says Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “you have to be with the people who hold the levers.”

But how do we engage more men in gender equality efforts? And how do men who want to support girls and women get started? In response to these questions, researchers are discovering some heartening news. There is already a group of men who are becoming particularly interested in women’s equality and showing a willingness to join the battle. These men are uniquely positioned to recognize their stake in the ultimate outcome. These men are dads of daughters.

Researchers have found that having a daughter tends to decrease men’s support of traditional gender roles and increase their support for antidiscrimination laws, equal pay policies, and reproductive rights. As a result, dads of daughters are more likely than other male leaders to champion gender diversity in their companies and communities. A recent study of male CEOs, for example, found that the majority were just “bystanders” on gender equality issues—men who didn’t actively support or resist women’s advancement initiatives. The few CEOs who stood out as vocal women’s advocates, however, were more likely to have a daughter who had faced sex discrimination herself.

This research points the way forward to a new stage in the gender revolution. In the wake of the Lean In and #MeToo movements, women have an opportunity to find ready, willing, and able male allies, and dads of daughters have an opportunity to step up and engage fully in the quest for women’s rights. As we all seek greater equality for our daughters, dedicated dads have the power to help make that world a reality.

For many men, having a daughter is a profoundly life-changing event. The father-daughter relationship can make men stronger and more vulnerable at the same time. Having a daughter can make men more compassionate, more protective, and more committed to being good partners, parents, and providers. There is something about the father-daughter bond that can unite men from all backgrounds and all walks of life.

This bond has inspired many dads to become more engaged parents to support their daughters’ dreams. Dads want their daughters to be safe, happy, and successful. They want their daughters to be treated with respect, dignity, and fairness. Increasingly, they’re encouraging their daughters to be outspoken, competitive, and ambitious. In a recent survey, dads rated strength and independence among the top qualities they hoped to instill in their daughters.

The investment that dads are making in their daughters is paying huge dividends. Involved dads raise girls who are more confident, have higher self-esteem, and have better mental health. Girls with supportive dads have stronger cognitive abilities, are more likely to stay in school, and achieve greater financial success. Involved dads also help daughters become more socially adept and enter healthier relationships with other men.

But what happens when a dad raises his daughter to believe she can do anything and then sends her into a world with unequal career opportunities, workplaces built by and for men, a massive gender pay gap, few female mentors in leadership positions, and deeply ingrained gender stereotypes? At a 2018 Women’s Summit, Michelle Obama asked dads of daughters this very question. She asked them to think about their own workplaces, and about “the times you turn your head, you look the other way, the times you’re sitting at a table where there are no people of color, no women.” “If you’re tolerating that,” she said, “that’s the workplace that is going to be waiting for your little girl. You’ve sold her a bill of goods! You told her she could be anything, but you’re not working to make sure that can be actualized.”

Dads who are committed to seeing their daughters achieve their dreams have an opportunity to change the world that their daughters enter. If men want that world to be safe, fair, and welcoming, they can use their voices and influence to make a difference. Even without a conscious revolution, dads of daughters in leadership positions tend to exercise their power in ways that advance women’s equality—often without being aware of it. CEOs who are dads of daughters, for example, have a smaller gender pay gap in their companies than in firms run by other men. Legislators who are dads of daughters are more supportive of laws protecting reproductive rights than are other male lawmakers. And judges who are dads of daughters have a more feminist voting pattern than other male judges in cases involving sex discrimination.

Imagine the impact that dads of daughters could have by actively joining the cause of making the world better for women and girls. Imagine the progress women could make by inviting all dads to participate. This book is a call to action to move beyond just imagining. It’s a call for dads of daughters to come together and fuel the revolution, and it’s a call for women to engage these dedicated men in the fight for women’s rights. At the same time, this book is a celebration—it shows why dads of daughters are key leaders in moving gender equality forward. It’s also a “how-to” by offering concrete ways that more dads of daughters can become dads for daughters, and by revealing what a difference that would make.

As a woman who’s been asked to “lean in”—while juggling a full-time job and raising two daughters—I understand that this is no small request. Men are feeling the stress of work/family conflicts in increasing numbers, rivaling the experiences of women. Finding the time and the resources to become part of a gender equality revolution is easier said than done. While the #MeToo movement has grabbed our attention, it’s also made men more afraid to mentor women out of concerns about possible missteps or misperceptions. Some men think that it’s not their place to get involved, while others want to support women but lack role models for doing it effectively. It’s hard to know where to start or what one individual can achieve when facing such a daunting task.

That’s where Dads for Daughters can help. This book is written to encourage, inspire, and connect men who are ready to step up despite the challenges. The stories, research, and resources in this book provide strategies for supporting men to engage in gender equality efforts both big and small.

In this book, men will find a range of arenas where they can focus their energy and make a difference—from mentoring women to equalizing pay, from sports fields to science labs, from building empathy to combatting gender bias, from boardrooms to ballot boxes. To help men get started—and to help women recruit men to support gender equality efforts—this book shares advice and resources for taking action. In addition, this book shares the stories of dads of daughters who’ve already joined the fight. Their stories provide role models and reveal what even the most unlikely of male activists can achieve.

All of the men highlighted in this book share the common bond of being a dad to at least one daughter, and they’ve all credited their daughters for motivating them to focus on gender equality. A CEO who invested in female entrepreneurs within his company’s supply chain. A lawyer who created part-time positions at his firm that still keep women on partnership track. A head coach who hired the NBA’s first female assistant coach. A governor who broke from his party line to sign a bill expanding rights for sexual assault victims. A conservative Supreme Court Justice who left work early to pick up his daughter’s kids from daycare so she could launch her career and who supported family leave laws as a result. A manager who got girls interested in technology by creating a comic book series featuring a female tech superhero. An engineer who provided computer skills training to support girls who’ve been victims of India’s sex trafficking trade. A teacher, an Army colonel, a pipefitter, a firefighter, and a construction contractor who joined forces to battle for parity in girls’ high school sports. All of these dads, and many others, were inspired to support gender equality because of their daughters.

But these dads can’t do it on their own. They’ve shown what’s possible, but they need other men to share the responsibility. Each dad has a different platform, a unique community to influence, and an individual impact to make. This book offers a path forward for other men who want to flex their empathy muscles on their daughters’ behalf.

Of course, many men are powerful women’s allies without having daughters in their lives, and all men have a stake in a gender-equal world. Gender equality isn’t just good for women; it’s also good for men. According to The World Bank’s World Development Report, gender equality enhances national productivity, promotes the physical health and mental wellbeing of both women and men, and improves policy decision-making. Simply put, “gender equality is smart economics.” John Gerezema, the CEO of a data analytics firm, has found that every type of organization—“from families to business to communities”—functions better when women have equal respect and responsibility. “As human beings, and as fathers of daughters, we believe that gender equality is a moral good in and of itself,” says John.

So this book isn’t intended to lessen the need for all men to understand the importance of gender equality. Nor does it assume that having a daughter is either a necessary or sufficient step toward that end. Not all girls and women have fathers in their lives, and not all men are in positions of power. This means that not every part of this book will speak to everyone. Some chapters are geared toward men seated in uniquely influential roles in their companies and communities. And some of the book’s areas of focus, such as corporate leadership, workplace mentoring, and entrepreneurship, are unlikely to get at the most intractable inequalities for girls and women who live in poverty, who lack access to education and healthcare, and who face multiple sources of inequality including race or disability. But there are parts of this book that should speak to everyone, including chapters on building empathy, combating gender stereotypes, rethinking masculinity, and leveraging political power to advance women’s health and economic security.

The magnitude of the task, however, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t begin somewhere. Dads for Daughters is a starting point. It offers support and guidance for engaging a group of men who are uniquely motivated—and uniquely well-positioned—to pick up the baton and start running. Dads of daughters are strong recruits to support gender equality for several reasons. First, there is significant evidence that the father-daughter relationship is a powerful way for building men’s empathy skills, increasing men’s awareness of gender inequality, and motivating men to act. Many dads of daughters already want to get involved, but they’re not sure what to do. Second, researchers have found that dads of daughters often have more credibility with other men when advocating for gender equality. Because men tend to listen to dads of daughters who talk about the importance of women’s rights, that makes fathers particularly strong recruiters as well.

Inspiring dads of daughters to support women’s equality doesn’t diminish the monumental efforts that so many women have made to advance women’s rights. To the contrary, it reveals a hidden contribution that girls and women can make in their role as daughters, and it charts a promising path forward for women to accelerate progress. In calling dads of daughters to step up and launch a new phase in the gender equality revolution, this book advances the larger goal of getting everyone to see their stake in a world that’s just as committed to the lives of girls and women as it is to boys and men. Women and men are stronger working together. Together, we can support a happier, fairer, more successful future for all of our daughters to thrive.