Globally, women make up about half of the workforce, but they’re still spending over twice as much time on childcare and domestic work as men are. At MenCare, we believe that true equality will only be reached when men are taking on 50% of the world’s childcare and domestic work; however, estimates say that at the current pace of progress, gender equality is still at least 100 years away.
To accelerate this progress, we must learn from and build on innovative advocacy efforts for policy and protocol change. To share advocacy-related case studies and lessons learned, MenCare presented the webinar “Innovations in Policy Advocacy to Advance Men’s Caregiving” on June 12, 2018 – in advance of Father’s Day in many countries – featuring Ilze Smit from Rutgers (Netherlands), Suna Hanöz-Penney from AÇEV (Turkey), and Wessel van den Berg from Sonke Gender Justice (South Africa), and moderated by Laxman Belbase and Joni van de Sand from the MenEngage Alliance Global Secretariat.
The webinar discussed how MenCare partners around the world have used evidence, data, and creativity in their advocacy efforts to influence changes in legislation, policies, and protocols in support of the global redistribution of care work. Ilze described innovative tactics to advocate for an expansion of paternity leave, Suna shared experiences in collaborating with the private sector to support them in making workplace reforms and advocacy for involved fatherhood, and Wessel shared how Sonke has tapped into media narratives to apply public pressure for policy change around men’s caregiving.
MenCare partners know that if we want to see true equality in our lifetimes, we need everyone on board. We not only need individuals and communities to believe in and support this reality, we also need governments and institutions to create supportive policies – from parental leave to other flexible leave policies including paid leave for all types of domestic care responsibilities, adequate sick leave, advance scheduling in the case of shift workers, flexible work arrangements, subsidized quality childcare, and more – to truly shift the distribution of caregiving.
Watch the Webinar:
Interested in more webinars from MenCare? Check out “Men and Equality in Unpaid Care” and “Sharing Caregiving and Stopping Corporal Punishment.”