Better Daddies has told MPs that they should support dads to help women get equality in the workplace.
The Treasury Select Committee is currently holding an inquiry into what can be done to tackle sexism in the City. Better Daddies has submitted written evidence to it on how gender disparities in the City and the financial services industry, such a sex discrimination, sexual harassment and the gender pay gap can be tackled. This can be read here.
Better Daddies believes that a key aspect of tackling these issues must include the role of fathers in the work-place and in childcare. Further, while women suffer from sexism in financial services, it is also damaging to men and fathers.
Many fathers would like to feel they could work part-time or take more parental leave, but are prevented from doing so either by discrimination or limitations on the support that is available to fathers.
Mothers, including those working in financial services, disproportionately carry out childcare. If childcare was shared more equally between parents, this would provide more scope for women to work full-time or longer hours. Greater paternal involvement in childcare could also help reduce the effect of the “motherhood penalty”, the systematic disadvantages that mothers face in the workplace. This could be helped by the amount of time that fathers and mothers take off for parenthood, or spend carrying out childcare, becoming more equal, and associated social change, that means a more equal apportionment of childcare between mothers and fathers becomes normalised.
While the role of fathers in society has been changing to play a greater role in childcare, more needs to be done to help fathers spend more time caring for their children and sharing household responsibilities fairly. This would not only be good for fathers but for their children and partners too. In particular, children would have more opportunity to build a stronger relationship with their father. Engagement of fathers with children is linked to a plethora of benefits, including health and education outcomes. In addition, “High levels of father involvement are correlated with higher levels of sociability, confidence, and self-control in children”.
Key public policy measures that Better Daddies would like to see the Treasury Select Committee support include:
- Better parental leave for fathers and more support for fathers to take it up
- More support for fathers to work-part time and flexibly
- Better childcare provision
- Making parenthood a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010
- Cultural change so that things like parental leave and flexible working become seen as more normal for men to do
More details of Better Daddies proposals are available in our written evidence to the Treasury Select Committee here.
Better Daddies 