WOMEN'SDAYSPECIAL

Share with women information that is crucial to your success such as salary; invite them to networking events; mentor them into leadership positions; share household responsibilities; listen; empathise; actively teach your sons a gender-parity mindset with women information that is crucial to your success. This could be sharing your salary information to help women understand their bargaining power, inviting women to networking events and mentoring women into leadership positions. Men must consciously recognise that women’s voices have been suppressed, particularly at leadership levels. And men should be inclusive of a diverse range of opinions. Listening to women requires empathising - finding ways to see things from the points of view of female colleagues, leaders, customers and the community.

At home

Gender norms tend to assert themselves most stringently at home. The 2016 Census showed that women are still doing the lion’s share of household duties, despite being equal earners. On average, an Australian woman spends 5-14 hours a week doing housework, compared with less than five hours a day for a typical man. Being an advocate for gender equality means rethinking who does what around the home to create a more equitable family life. Men who share in equal care of babies and toddlers are shown to have greater relationships with their adult children and their partners. Visible caregiving helps lessen the effects of toxic masculinity from an early age, providing young children, particularly boys, with healthy and respectful behaviour to role model.

Boys will be the boys we teach them to be

Another excuse time is definitely up for is the old “boys will be boys.” Boys, girls and anyone who identifies as anything else will be who we teach them to be through education and role modelling. Gender inequality starts before birth, given the cultural and structural advantages afforded to young boys, who in many cultures are still revered and prized as superior to girl children. As we wrote on IWD a few years back, “We need to go that extra mile with our sons, to teach them to treat their female peers with respect, and as equal and worthy partners at every stage.” Telling or laughing at sexist jokes, memes and stereotypes encourage the trivialisation of harassment and violence against women. Crucial, more so, is instilling the inflexible idea that no matter what you feel, no one is entitled to the attention, reciprocation of feelings or physical dominance over another person’s body. This is equally true of all genders, but most often manifests as a result of the bravado young men acquire through problematic cultural messaging.

In order to make the personal changes needed to truly embrace a future that is equitable for both men and women, it is up to us all to ‘unlearn’ what we think we know about gender roles and how they operate. By clearing well-trodden, often-biased neural pathways, we lay new foundations to create a better future for both ourselves and our world.

We have no excuse not to.

What Men Can Do Today

1 Commit to speaking out against discrimination. Talk to your family and friends about gender equality and call out sexist remarks when you hear them.

2 Remember that rethinking gender norms is a big win for men and boys worldwide. In time, we can weed out the toxic masculinity that causes, for example, family violence, suicide and mental illness that leads to gun violence.

3 Talk to your boys about treating women and girls as equals and stop telling our girls that boys who hit or tease them do it because ‘they like them’. Respectful relationships are equal.