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.
Despite rumors of its demise, the glass ceiling is alive and well. We’re all familiar with Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, who authored the bestselling book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. And we can all name other impressive women who’ve leaned in all the way to the C-suite. Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a top-twenty company as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Meg Whitman served as the CEO of both Hewlett-Packard and eBay. Marissa Mayer even had a baby while she was the CEO of Yahoo! So how bad could things really be?
The leadership landscape is actually pretty bleak for women in the corporate world. Women make up almost half of the American workforce, but very few are making it into positions of power and influence. At Fortune 1000 companies, women fill fewer than seven percent of CEO positions, fewer than eight percent of COO positions, and fewer than nine percent of CFO positions. So for every Sheryl, Carly, Meg, and Marissa, there are hundreds of men filling the C-suites of America. At the current rate of change, it will take another hundred years to achieve gender equality in the executive echelons. Things aren’t much different in Britain, where there are twice as many CEOs named John than all the women CEOs combined in the top hundred companies on the London Stock Exchange.
Even at the top, women are at the bottom. Higher ranked companies tend to be the least likely to hire women CEOs. In the Fortune 1000, women-led companies have an average ranking that’s 480 places below the average ranking for companies lead by men. None of this can be blamed on lesser education. Although women run only a quarter of all colleges and universities in the US, women hold more college degrees than men and earn sixty percent of all master’s degrees. Yet women’s voices are still not being heard at the top.
This means that dads are sending their daughters into a business world with vastly unequal opportunities in leadership roles. At the same time, dads who are already leaders in the corporate world are far better positioned than women outsiders to change this reality. So as women continue to lean into their careers with skill and ambition, dads of daughters could accelerate progress by becoming inside allies and advocates. It’s far more efficient for male leaders to build pipelines for women into leadership roles than it is for women to keep banging their heads on the glass ceiling until it finally shatters for good.
Dads of daughters have more to gain by advocating for women at their jobs than just increasing opportunities for their daughters, although that’s a nice pay-off by itself. Gender diversity is also good for a company’s bottom line. Having women well-represented in decision-making