Cameron Phillips argues that taking gender out of the equation reinforces the work/life problem facing fathers and mothers
I have an unhealthy devotion to baseball. I’ve had it since I was a child. I’ve been blessed in my media career to have interviewed some of the game’s greats: Hank Aaron, Harmon Killibrew, Reggie Jackson and many others. Given the literally hundreds of baseball players with whom I’ve spoken in my lifetime, it is ironic that my favourite baseball players to interview are women: the women from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
You’ve likely seen the movie, “A League of their Own.” The movie was based on the wartime baseball league of women founded by chewing gum magnate Charles Wrigley. The women who played in that league are national treasures. Not only were the great ball players, they were pioneers. They didn’t know they were blazing a trail; they just loved to play the game. And play they did. Young women athletes attending college on athletic scholarships, or playing hockey for their country at the Winter Olympics, whether they know it or not, are hugely indebted to these women.
I’ve interviewed these women so many times that I know all the questions that the live audience will pose. “Were you ever called names? Did you really play in skirts? How accurate was the movie? Which one of you was Madonna’s character based on? (a question to which all the alumni players rapidly raise their hands in unison.) But there is a moment I love, and it happens at every interview. The question usually comes from a very earnest looking man or an angry looking woman, but it always comes.
“Do you foresee a time when men and women play alongside each other in the major leagues?”
After a pause, the frank and unexpected answer breaks the silence.
“Hell, no! Why would we want to do that? We just want a league of our own!”
I guess I love that moment so because it mirrors my own beliefs that men and women are at once equal but different. We share the same universal desires for safety, health and freedom, and we all desire to be loved, respected and appreciated. We share an equal potential for competence and incompetence. And if you will excuse the slightly misplaced context of Shylock’s famous words, If you prick us, do we not bleed?” However, we are also very different: our bodies are different, our brains are different, and our body chemistry is different. Our historical paths, though side by side, have been vastly different. And I’m hoping, at least in the short term, we will recognize that our future challenges are different.
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Let me explain.
Since my mother’s generation lead the charge for women into the workplace, most of the feminist movement has been framed around gender. We’ve looked at the gender specific oppression of women, the gender based pressures that have kept women in their traditional roles, and we’ve even tried to highlight and label certain traits as inherently female as a means to accentuate and advance their leadership potential. I think this has all been necessary to a point. To truly understand and overcome the obstacles which can impede a woman’s path to success in the workplace, or to creating a manageable work-life balance, we have needed to fully deconstruct the problems along the way. In the attempt to right many wrongs, we’ve first had to understand them.
Instead of saying “men need to be on board” we need to be asking about and searching for the root causes of why they haven’t been.
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Ironically, during 40 years of gender-specific deconstruction and the creating workplace polices created to alleviate those gender-specific problems for women, men have simply been told to “get on board.” Men are either with the cause, or we are dinosaurs. We support women or we are misogynists.
Current work-family balance lightening rod, Anne-Marie Slaughter said recently, that as we seek to fix work life balance problems, “we need to take gender out of the equation.” I couldn’t disagree more. While I share Ms. Slaughter’s desire to realize that work-life balance is a man’s issue, too, taking gender out of the equation not only misses the mark, it actually reinforces the problem. It is just an extension of the “get on board” mentality, because it assumes a woman’s challenge on the road to creating a fulfilling career and a meaningful home life is the same as a man’s. Ms. Slaughter’s sentiment, though well intentioned, fails to recognize the workplace and sometimes cultural stigma men face when they appear to place family before career. In the eyes of many men, “gender neutral” policy at work isn’t gender neutral at all. It was designed by and for women suffering from “mommy overload.” To take advantage, in the eyes of many men, is to take too great a career risk, and by extension, too great a financial risk for the family.
If we’ve spent the past four decades looking at the gender specific challenges that women have faced on their quest for equality in the workplace, why have we completely glossed over the gender specific challenges men are facing to be the more involved husbands, partners and fathers they long to be?
Instead of saying “men need to be on board” we need to be asking about and searching for the root causes of why they haven’t been.
We need broad based discussions around the stigma men face when they appear to be sacrificing family for career.
We need to understand that we still undervalue men as fathers, and see fatherhood as a whole as inferior to motherhood.
We need to put an end to the gender based stereotyping of men and fathers in pop culture as loving-yet-spectacularly-inept parents.
We need to recognize that we still groom young men to believe their greatest value to the family will be measured by the girth of their wallets.
And we need to acknowledge that men have been striving for power, control and success in the workplace because that is precisely how society has told them they are being good fathers.
Different but equal. Equal but different. Surely, if we can agree that this is an apt, albeit, incredibly simplified description of men and women, we must realize the stark reality that, in our quest to smash the glass ceiling, we’ve only examined half the problem. If we are different but equal, doesn’t it stand to reason that our problems and challenges are different but equal, too?
What we need to realize is that the glass ceiling is double paned. In our attempts to smash the glass ceiling, we’ve been missing something vital: the daddy hammer. It’s not any stronger than the one being wielded by women for the past 40 years, but it is the only one that can get through that other pane that has been too invisible for us to see.
—photo by kodomut/Flickr
Is There a Place For Equal But Different in the Workplace? — The Good Men Project
Tom, I don’t expect employers to accommodate, but they would be wise to look at what they can do to promote workplace flexibility and work life balance. The Council of Economic Advisers estimate there are around $15 billion in savings to be had by companies who strive, wherever possible, to ease the stress load of their employees and improve recruitment, retention and productivity in the process. For companies who have already boarded that train, I would think they would want to know that in many cases, those policies are largely and inadvertently ignoring approximately half of their workforce. You said… Read more »
Men need to stop seeing families as “dependent”….we “rely on”……big difference. Women don’t want to “become like men” to compete in the workplace….especially where the money is made. My experience is the “name calling” when a woman has to behave like a man to make it. Therein is the glass ceiling. Many so called jobs …. nursing, child care, teaching……..all “womens jobs” don’t have the same financial status as a “mans job”. When we reach a place of what both genders are valued as providing……….we will find the answer. We have different qualities….all of which belong “on the table” and… Read more »
Old fashioned, I’ll respond to both of your posts here. The danger in these discussions is that this turns into a man vs. woman debate. If we keep it there, we will all suffer–men, women, families, employers and society. I feel the key to smashing the glass ceiling isn’t in women needing to be “more like a man” at work–I think it is the polar opposite. Men need to be allowed to be “more like women” and not be emasculated for it when they want to take on a greater role for raising their kids. I personally know men who… Read more »
It all sounds really good but the fact remains, an employer expects results. Back in the day where I had several employees working under me (as many as 50) in various positions, my goal was their being productive and giving 100%, accordingly, being successful themselves. Many of the people who worked for me made 6 figures which didn’t include their company cars and expense accounts. As a dad back then, I had a lot of empathy for the moms and dads but that empathy never interfered with my expectations of the staff. The positions these people held required long hours… Read more »
I think your points are all valid. I think sometimes the danger in the work life balance argument is that people think the argument is that everyone should just work 20 hours a week and play with their kids the rest of the time. That’s not what I’m trying to say at all. When people ask me to define “work life balance” (because there are millions of us out there who call for a better one) I say, ‘finding the best possible harmony between work life and family life, given the choices you’ve made.” The key here is, “given the… Read more »
Men are the ones making that distinction…..everyday. Until women are treated appropriately for the role we play at home and in the workforce….until we stop losing our jobs to care for ill or sick children at home…..when we can have the time to recuperate after child-birth on an equal level….then maybe it will change for the men. Men have to change the way women are treated…..then you will have your equality.
Why do you expect an employer to accommodate. The employer is not there to cater to individuals personal needs. The employer has a product and/or service which requires employees to successfully produce. Large employers provide “paid time off” (which used to be vacation and sick time) They provide long and short term disability as well. Those benefits are geared to accommodate employees personal needs. For example, because of my length of service with my current company, I have a total of 5 weeks PTO. Every year, at the end of the year, I’m scrambling to use up my time. Use… Read more »
Beginning to think I’m on a “list” just about everything I write,no matter the article I’m responding to,is placed you know where for approval.
In the last few years I’ve seen both men and women taking excessive time off for non-emergency family time. As the person in the office without kids, I’m often expected to go the extra mile because my personal life isn’t deemed as important. I’m assigned the more time consuming projects, I’m the one asked to travel out of town etc. I don’t really begrudge people taking family time but I feel the greater rewards should flow my way if I’m doing more work. Why should the person doing less work get the same pay, bonuses and promotions as I do?
Hi Sarah, Your point is very important, and illustrates why all voices need to be at the table when discussing the workplace and work life balance issues. This isn’t about working more or working less, it is about finding the most efficient balance which will help to keep employees as happy and productive as possible. The challenge is, however, that the lone voice driving that conversation has largely been working moms. The rest of us need to be a part of that conversation, too. I’m just wanting to be a voice for working dads. I’m glad you are expressing your… Read more »
Great post, Cameron! As a work-life & careers researcher, I’ve spent the past 15 years being conflicted by the undercurrent of “work-life = working moms” talk that constantly drums in the background of these conversations. And you are 100% right that our society treats mothers as magical and fathers as the second, lesser parent—something, in fact, which many mothers reinforce through their own behavior.
That’s an incredibly important distinction, Saitek via Sarah: equity vs equality. It’s got to be earned, and just by being a parent should not entitle nor excuse you from getting the job done. There is, however, a societal value in propogating the species, and ensuring parents are active in their kids’ lives. We’ve established that parents should not be penalized for taking FMLA (weak as it is) yet the stigma of parental excuses endures. How do we make that more equitable, so non-parent employees don’t feel taking advantage of, and parents don’t feel punished?
Make decent middle class job flexible. The higher up jobs that require lots of time will be out of reach of anyone that can’t put in the hours, parent or non-parent. Make the jobs flexible with far better access to childcare, etc and it will drastically help. But there is a point where you can’t take from the non-parents to give to the parents, those that put in the time n energy deserve the biggest rewards and if that happens to be more non-parents then so be it. Career isn’t the end-all be-all of life.
Personally I believe that in the workplace, the greatest success SHOULD go to the person who is the most productive and most focused on WORK. If you are leaving early all the time because of child care issues why should you get a promotion over your co-worker who stays until 7 pm every night? How is that fair to your co-worker? If, as a non-parent, my extra effort won’t be rewarded, why should I work hard?
Agreed, 100%. All I’m arguing is that men are still groomed to believe that they should be that person who is the most productive. So, if we want to change a workplace culture, not where the lazy are rewarded, but simply where we don’t make certain expectations around traditional gender roles, we need to recognize that we are still largely putting men in a box.
I think that perhaps (don’t really want to speak for her) what Sarah was saying was that perhaps society is all about ‘equity’ not ‘equality’, two totally different concepts. There is probably too much emphasis on making it ‘fair’ for everyone and in the end making it fair for no one.
Raising and caring for a family is a heck of a lot harder than any ego fulfilling “job” out there Sarah…..women are the glue of society……….thru cooperation we all prosper……….competition only separates us. Once humanity realizes this………we are all good to go……..Don’t become like the male energy….war, chest-thumping, dominating, ego/money driven maniacal behavior. Creation is based in Cooperation……..that’s the real “war”………..
The first and most important thing is to get the ‘power at be’ to acknowledge that there is a problem. This is going to be the toughest nut to crack because right now there is so much effort being put forward to even deny this reality. I think it becuase most believe (and perhaps it even is) that it is a zero sum game. As well, MENS issues don’t exist in the public eye. If anyone doubts this, have a look at health care spending. Men on average die between 5 – 7 years sooner than women, yet the lions… Read more »
Competitive natured animals do die younger……….too much stress. Fact of Nature………
Hi Cameron- It is great to finally see someone else focus on the vital topic of work-family issues for men. In my work as an academic, consultant, and writer on this topic, I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but I don’t quite understand why you would object to Slaughter (and Harrington’s and my) suggestion that companies need to change their cultures and policies to extend work-family considerations to men as well as women. Wouldn’t this contribute to the slow process of changing the culture so as to address your correct concerns about societal expectations (or… Read more »
Hi Scott,
I should go back an re-read my muddled work, because I am 100% in favour of extending work-family considerations to men. I think we need a very dad/male specific discussion of how we remove the stigma of “gender neutral” polices, and create or at least re-work/re-brand them as truly family friendly. Changing workplace culture is the key–absolutely.
If you could clarify where it looks like I don’t support male specific policy, that would be most helpful. Perhaps I can make an appropriate edit.
Sorry for the confusion.