I mentioned I have an eight-year-old son, but I also have a four-year-old daughter, so this job is a little bit overwhelming sometimes since I have to factor in both perspectives.
We did a research project with Dad Central Ontario called “Give Love, Get Love”. Because fatherhood is such an important access point for talking to men about gender equality and healthy relationships and violence against women, first of all we wanted to understand whether men recognized the changing nature of fatherhood and how that was supporting the goal of achieving gender equality, and whether they could connect those dots. We also wanted to spend some time asking them where they were accessing information, how they were relating to people, and how they were learning about this. We wanted to know where we could find them to share some more of this stuff and help them along that journey, because fatherhood is definitely changing in this country. More men now than ever before are taking parental leave. More men have and live in double-income families in which the hard reality of income inequality hits home when a female partner doesn't make as much as a male partner does. More and more men are taking an active role in caregiving for their children.
We found that a lot of men didn't really understand the connection between being a more involved parent and advocating for gender equality, but it was very natural to them. Very few men wanted the outcomes for their daughters to be different from those for their sons. The equality of opportunity is there. The desire for a life free of violence is there. But as Rosemary was saying earlier, how that happens and what the implications are were not all there for fathers.
We also investigated where they were getting this information and how they were trying to access it. Not surprisingly it wasn't through a lot of formal means, but it was through networks of friends and peers who were also fathers. It gave us a lot of insight on where to reach these guys and how to share with them that so much of what they were doing already was promoting gender equality and working to end violence against women that some of the fears and barriers they experienced didn't need to be there, and that they just have to get out there and keep doing a lot of the good stuff they've been doing.