This just in.
The Women and Equalities Committee will today be taking evidence on how to encourage fathers to spend more time raising their children. The Committee is particularly concerned that a lack of viable shared parental leave options continue to widen the gender pay gap between men and women.
The session will take place today in the Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House from 10.30am and will call the following witnesses:
- Adrienne Burgess, Chief Executive and Heard of Research, the Fatherhood Institute
- Sarah Jackson, Chief Executive, Working Families
- Maggie Stilwell, Partner & UKI Talent Leader, EY (formerly Ernst and Young)
We find this session disconcerting for several reasons. Firstly, the idea that we should be encouraging fathers to share care through a financially driven cause, however important gender equality may be, takes us a step away from placing children at the centre of policies like these. A more egalitarian culture which allows fathers to spend time with their children is to be welcomed, however one which uses an inherently female driven financial concern is not. This debate should focus first on giving those fathers who wish to play a more active role the tools with which to do so, like powerful policy proposals which they can get behind. Policy suggestions which hit fathers’ incomes will not achieve this.
Our second concern stems from the fact that every single witness for this session is female. It is both presumptuous and unhelpful to raise a debate which features male issues without having male representation at the table, regardless of whether an organisation itself may be male-focused.
What do you think? Are we being unfair to the cause or is there something to our concerns?
Natasha, you raise exactly the points I thought of as I read through this piece. I don’t think you’re being unfair at all, having an all-female panel will provoke the disdain of many men who already feel disadvantaged by the way things work in this field. Personally, I think a ‘Women and Equalities Commission’ is rather weird. . . why not simply an ‘Equalities Commission’?
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Hi Roger, many thanks for your thoughts. I do think that if we want to remove inequality, we need to collaborate rather than segregate. For me, that includes, gender, race, religion and more. We can’t ever close these gaps without embracing one another, I don’t think.
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Entirely agree. And especially I think that men and women fighting each other in the Family Courts over their children (which the system seems to encourage) benefits no-one at all except solicitors and other hangers-on. I really despair at yet more ‘men’s groups’ and ‘women’s groups’ being founded to protest at how fathers and mothers are treated in these Courts, when we should be uniting against the greater enemy of how the system operates.
I recently wrote to a new men’s group called ‘Suffragents’ (love the name) on this theme, and the reply was as if women are a different species! We will not, ever, fundamentally change the system until we stop fighting each other – for the system thrives on this and therefore encourages it. A united front of mums and dads (and children) would scare the pants off those who profit from all this. Certainly we are all different, and we each have different qualities – I say ‘vive la difference!’ – but we should embrace these, recognise them, and respect them even if we have fundamental disagreements. Although I’m talking about the Family Courts in this context, yes it applies to many other areas too. Though how you reason with a Jihadist, say, I’m not quite sure!
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Reblogged this on World Peace Forum.
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