Why don’t we ask about the ideal working hours for fathers? - Women's Agenda

Why don’t we ask about the ideal working hours for fathers?

It is something of an occupational hazard of working on a publication like Women’s Agenda that I am, quite often, drawn into discussions about gender equality in social settings. Sometimes these conversations become a little adversarial. When they do, the point of tension inevitably arises around whether gender inequality is really an issue.

At this point I tend to resort to facts and figures. The gender pay gap. The disproportionate number of women in senior roles in government and in business. The gender gap in workplace participation as demonstrated by the World Economic Forum. Sometimes people are surprised by these figures and sometimes people disregard them. In either case, at this point, I usually try to finish the conversation and move into other terrain.

Nonetheless I always come away from these conversations feeling a bit mystified. Mystified that anyone, let alone anyone who reads this website, really believes that gender equality is a fait accompli. Mystified that anyone thinks discussing gender inequality is a personal bugbear, or political persuasion, of mine or this audience. Mystified that anyone doesn’t think that addressing gender equality is an urgent and necessary economic and social priority.

Engaging in conversation with the unconverted on this topic has, on more than one occasion, dampened my evening. The very belief – often passionately held – that gender equality is an irrelevant battle fought and won long ago stands in the way of genuine progress. The upside, however, to these discussions, albeit frustrating, is that it steels my resolve to keep this conversation going. To try and persuade as many thinking men and women that gender equality is absolutely a challenge we need to meet.

Of course, it is a complex challenge. Were it easy I suspect we’d have achieved it long ago. Achieving gender equality requires significant change; both structural and cultural. One of the more insidious cultural impediments to gender equality is the stereotypes we accept, often blindly. I was reminded of this last week when I saw a tweet from Channel Ten’s Studio 10 program

The tweet included a link to a newspaper with a headline along these lines: “Mums happiest working 24 hours a week.” The headline has since been changed but my first reaction on seeing it and reading the corresponding article, based on new research from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, was this: what about Dads?

What is the ideal number of working hours per week for a father? I suspect the answer is no one has looked into it. The broad expectation that Australians still have and accept is that fathers will work fulltime while mothers will balance childcare with paid work.

Gender equality isn’t about mums being able to have children and work. It’s about parents being able to have children and work. But how many of us still think about the family and work juggle as a challenge for women? I would guess many of us. The expectations we still have about men and women, the stereotypes that still prevail, are ingrained in all of us and they won’t change without each of us stopping and challenging them. This year I urge you to start thinking in terms of parents, rather than mothers. It is a small change but it’s an important distinction to make. It’s particularly important for anyone who is genuinely interested in gender equality.

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