Fathers: maybe stop mentioning your daughters to earn credibility on women’s issues

If you are a father with daughters and you care about the problems women face in the workplace, chances are good that you’ve said something like “I wouldn’t want my daughter to face that kind of harassment!” or “When my daughters grow up they should be able to get a job anywhere they want.” In fact, some of us say things like this all the time.

I have learned that these kind of messages work differently than we intend them to. What these kinds of statements might sound like to someone else is:

• “I was totally fine with harassment until I had my baby girl”
• “I’m ok with the slow pace of change as long as it gets better by the time my daughter is job hunting”
• “I wouldn’t expect much from men without daughters if I were you”
• “I’m going to think about women exactly the same way I think of my daughter: paternalistically”
• “I’m oblivious to the fact many women’s fathers were terrible chauvinists or abusers, so my having a daughter proves nothing”
• “I don’t want you to call me out on bad behavior because obviously I have good intentions since I have a daughter”
• “I don’t have a child of color or a gay or lesbian child or a differently abled child or a child with a different religion or a transgender child or a child growing up in poverty or a child from another country speaking another language — so I really don’t care about the barriers they might face”
• Or, as Anil Dash put it:

Now lets be generous. That probably isn’t what we mean. I know one of the big reasons we say this kind of thing is to try to establish credibility. E.g. we show up to the diversity hiring meeting and think people might question my motives so… um… “Hey everybody I’ve got a daughter, believe me I care!” I’m pretty sure a lot of us really do care deeply about these issues, way beyond the effects on our daughters, and did so long before our daughters were twinkles in our eyes. Beyond that, surely everyone knows your daughter is really important to you and can’t they see how that would really drive you to make a difference, right?

But you really can’t establish credibility this easily. Because too many men have been dismissers or interrupters or sexist joke tellers or creepers or harassers or assaulters or any number of other things. As a group, we don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, and a one liner about our daughter isn’t going to fix that.

Instead, we have to take our time and earn trust. We have to show up to those women’s meetings — and listen. We have to volunteer to do the busy work it takes to make diversity initiatives run. We’ve got to apologize when we mess up. We have to make our workplaces more hospitable to all kinds of people. We have to hire marginalized people. And we’ve got to read, read, read all we can to make sure we know what we are talking about and never stop because we probably still don’t.

Our daughters are awesome. But at work, lets make things better for everyone.