An Open Letter to the Dude with a Leadership Role in our Company’s Women’s Initiative

Hey Paolo,

Despite working for the same company, you and I don’t know each other. But I got to hear you speak at today’s all-hands meeting, discussing the company’s women’s initiative alongside some of the initiative’s other leaders. Good stuff, that. And good on us for having such an initiative and opening some hard conversations. Don’t think for a minute that I’m not grateful for this.

You had some good things to say, and I was gratified that someone asked you to comment on what it felt like being a man in a leadership role in such a woman-centric initiative. I thought it was a great question. I was wondering that exact thing and was glad you got the chance to comment.

Of course, I’m not able to repeat your response verbatim, but the gist of it was that you have a young daughter and will soon have a son. And that you think it’s ridiculous that your daughter could grow up into a world where she will have fewer options than your son just because she’s female. And that her opportunities might be limited by her gender. You were far more eloquent than my summary here, but I think it reflects the essence of your answer. I hope you agree.

And Paolo, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that answer. In fact, it’s a pure and beautiful answer, reflecting your love for your daughter and the good intensions behind your involvement in this issue.

But as a female worker at the same company, pulling the yoke of our business right beside you (despite the fact that we’ve never met), that answer just wasn’t doing it for me. Don’t get me wrong — your daughter is important; I hope when we officially meet, you’ll show me her picture. I have daughters too. I have some of the same concerns for their future as you do for your daughter’s.

But this isn’t about our daughters.

You could have added that you are equally concerned that your son might have a future where he is denied the opportunity to work alongside potentially great thinkers and leaders and collaborators because they might be held back due to their gender. You could have mentioned that by supporting gender equality, you hope he’ll have the opportunity to take a stronger role in the family and his home because those roles must stop being seen as suitable only for women. Or that he might not have to destroy his future work/life balance by working as many hours as possible because his partner (if she’s female) is not able to earn as much as he can. Quite possibly you do feel those things, but just didn’t have a chance to say them. I have a son too, and these are just some of my concerns for his future.

But this isn’t about our sons.

Paolo, this is about us. In the here and the now. Adults working concurrently for the same company, side by side, steeped in the same corporate culture. I would have loved to have heard an answer that reflected that.

For example, if you wanted to go with the personal angle, I would have loved to hear you connect your answer to you and your wife’s actual experiences rather than to your daughter’s potential experiences. I would have loved to have heard you say that you support and encourage our male employees to find balance in their lives, not just so they can enjoy the outdoors (which is our culture), but also so that they can be available to accomplish an equitable share of housework and child rearing, ensuring that their wives (and by extension, our own female employees) aren’t unfairly burdened by working this traditionally female “second shift.” By the way, do you hold that value? Are you modeling it? I’d love to know.

You could have added that, as a leader, you have noted that women who have taken time away from their careers to raise children are frequently penalized when they re-enter the workforce, often having to start over again from entry level, regardless of the level of career advancement they may have attained prior to making that difficult decision. You are aware of this, right? That it directly impacts many of your own female co-workers (and indirectly impacts some of your male co-workers who have female partners)? Are you afraid this could impact your own family as you and your wife move forward with the sometimes sobering decisions you’ll have to make about raising your children?

You could have mentioned that, while our company likes to talk about its effort to support women in leadership, that the women who work in our company’s non-leadership roles (the majority of us) have been left entirely out of that focus. Have you seen that they need our attention even more? That our frontline employees, both male and female, need the flexibility to provide child and elder care without repercussion, that they can expect the same opportunities for training and development, and, obviously, the same compensation for the same work. Are they getting those things? Because in the all-hands meetings, I haven’t heard it mentioned. In fact in today’s meeting, in a meeting that was largely focused on the women’s initiative, I heard several references to maternity leave. If, as a company, we haven’t even adopted language that reflects that family care is an issue impacting both sexes, how are we to believe that our leadership even understands the issues they are supposedly addressing? Did you notice how completely tone-deaf those references were in the context of this particular meeting? I sure did.

Here’s the main thing, Paolo: I’ve spent a literal lifetime now being impacted by these and other gender-based issues. I’m weary of hearing leaders talk about them as issues that might be experienced by someone’s mother or sister or wife. Or daughter. Someday. These issues have quite literally shaped my life and the lives of every female employee in our workforce. But here’s the kicker: they have also every impacted every man in this company — at least if he’s ever had a female boss, employee, or co-worker — or has a female partner in his personal life. They impact you, personally, as an employee of our company, not just as the father of the young daughter who lights up your life.

So, yeah— that’s a brutal lot to say about what was probably just an off-the-cuff comment in a Q&A. Sorry about that. But you have taken on a role that uniquely positions you to address these issues, so you’ll probably be asked about your role in the women’s initiative again. And I hope that, next time, you’ll have had a chance to reflect on the idea that the most important reason to have a women’s initiative at all is because the issues women face impact literally all of us, right now.

Congratulations on your growing family, Paolo. Enjoy and cherish your children; work hard to build a better future for them. But for now, please help our company leaders remain focused on the immediacy and urgency of workplace gender issues. And the fundamental understanding that they impact each and every one of us, male and female alike.