Engaging men in creating more inclusive workplaces gives businesses the opportunity to tackle entrenched power relations and create long-term, systemic change. (Photo by iStock/filadendron)

In 2018, men held 77.5 percent of Fortune 500 board seats, while women held 22.5 percent. Indeed, women are under-represented at every level of leadership and management in large companies. Meanwhile, no country is on target to meet Sustainable Development Goal 5—gender equality—by 2030, and estimates suggest it will take 257 years to achieve economic gender parity.

While statistics like these paint a bleak picture, the under-representation of women also offers an opportunity to engage men as allies to help advance gender equality. Building on initiatives like the United Nation’s #HeforShe solidarity movement, which has mobilized 2 million men as champions for gender equality across the world, and the MenCare global fatherhood campaign, which aims to accelerate men’s uptake of caring roles, businesses are increasingly integrating efforts to engage men into existing gender-equality goals. Companies offer unique opportunities to shape and influence gender norms, given their often-expansive value chains—the range of activities they undertake from source to consumption to deliver products or services. A company can, for example, reinforce gender equality and women’s leadership in its workplace, consider women consumers in product design, support women farmers who produce raw materials in its supply chain, and tackle outdated gender stereotypes in its advertising.

Yet despite the opportunity, there’s little guidance on how to effectively engage men as allies to advance gender equality across the value chain. For this reason, four organizations—including the brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Business Fights Poverty network, the global humanitarian organization CARE, and Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab—recently came together to examine this emerging area and provide senior leaders with some initial ideas for taking action. Our team collected information and insights from 30 interviews, including interviews with academic experts, nonprofits that specialize in engaging men, and human resources and advertising employees at companies already working to engage men as allies. We also ran workshops in New York and Oxford, as well as an online discussion and survey.

Based on this research, we believe businesses can make the greatest impact when they work to engage men on three different levels: individual, organizational, and societal.

Are you enjoying this article? Read more like this, plus SSIR's full archive of content, when you subscribe.

1. Shifting Individual Attitudes and Behaviors

Of course, many men support gender equality, but some may feel threatened by it or even actively oppose it. Research by the US nonprofit Catalyst, which supports women’s leadership at work, suggests three reasons for why some men may not engage with the issue: 1) “apathy,” or feeling like gender equality isn’t business-critical, 2) “ignorance,” or the perception that gender bias doesn’t exist in the workplace, and 3) “fear,” either of saying the wrong thing or losing out, such as the idea that asking for parental leave will reduce their chances of promotion.

Since there’s no one-size-fits-all way to address these challenges, businesses should consider a combination of different programs. For example, unconscious bias training can reduce apathy by raising awareness about how gender and other inequalities affect the workplace, while reciprocal mentoring programs (such as matching senior leaders with women employees working in different disciplines or geographies) can help employees understand inequalities they might not otherwise see. Bystander training and building cultures that reward inclusive behavior can help build confidence and overcome fear.

Dedicated workshops and employee networks are also helpful, as they create space for open conversations and allow employees to reflect on their own personal reasons for engaging with gender equality. Companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Mercer, Chevron, Volvo, and DeBeers report that workshops focused on exploring men’s privilege and power have effectively increased employees’ understanding and awareness of gender bias, and helped change attitudes. At Chevron, for example, men were twice as likely to speak up when witnessing exclusive behavior—including tokenism, bias, and stereotyping—after a workshop than they were before it, and women were 3.5 times more likely.

Male and female farmers participating in CARE’s Bougainville Cocoa Families Support project are working together to reinvigorate the cocoa industry in Papua New Guinea. (Photo courtesy of CARE/Howard Ralley)

Catalyst’s Men Advocating Real Change (MARC) and Promundo’s Workplace Advisory Services both offer services that can help companies get started. When designing discussions, it’s useful to highlight how much everyone has to gain from fostering equality—including greater productivity, deeper connections with family, and better physical and mental health. This can help participants move through difficult conversations, and further shift individual attitudes and behaviors.

Approaches that focus on the shared benefits of gender equality are helping enhance the productivity and quality of coffee production in parts of Papua New Guinea, where traditionally strict gender norms govern society. CARE’s Family Business Management Training for smallholder coffee farming families, for example, highlights the benefits of men sharing household labor. The program, started in 2014, consists of five half-day trainings. These are contextualized to rural settings, and require that both husband and wife attend. Women are responsible for more than 60 percent of coffee production, but when the program began, they were also spending disproportionate amounts of time on household and caring responsibilities. As a result, they lacked time to learn agricultural techniques that produce higher-quality coffee. CARE worked with both coffee exporters and smallholder families over a five-year period to change this dynamic, leading to an increase in the number of women using new agricultural techniques (from 5 to 44 percent) and improved household relationships.

2. Making Organization-Wide Commitments to More Diverse and Equal Workplaces

For genuine impact, it’s important that companies complement actions that support individual shifts in attitudes with broader, organizational commitments that enable equality and inclusion to thrive. Doing this well requires that leaders clearly articulate how gender equality is core to the organization’s overall strategy and future direction, and actively support efforts on strategic, cultural, and policy levels. Here are some examples of actions leaders can take.

Strategic

  • Make clear, timebound, public commitments to engaging men as allies as part of pursuing an equal and diverse workplace. This enables employees and consumers to hold the organization to account, and creates internal buy-in and momentum for change. Commitments could include joining UN Women’s #HeforShe Corporate Impact Champions; signing the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles; or meeting the global business certification standard for gender equality, EDGE. 
  • Model inclusive behavior “from the top,” demonstrating leadership skills such as curiosity, cultural intelligence, and collaboration, rather than cut-throat competition and excessive risk-taking. Take steps to show commitment to understanding different perspectives. One recent Cambridge University study showed that a reverse mentoring program at the civil engineering company BAM Nuttall Ltd., created with help from KPMG, helped improve senior leaders’ understanding of more junior and minority employee experiences.

Cultural

Policy

  • Ensure that employment policies tackle structural barriers to gender equality by, for example, introducing transparency to hiring, promotion, and pay processes.
  • Develop specific policies that enable staff to undertake care-giving, including paid and non-transferable, gender-neutral parental leave and flexible working arrangements. Then encourage uptake. Before introducing gender-neutral parental leave at the insurance company Aviva, men took an average of two weeks leave. Today, 49 percent of men, 23 percent of whom are in relatively senior roles, take an average 22 weeks.
  • Foster a safe and respectful workplace for all genders. Communicate that the company doesn’t tolerate sexual harassment and mistreatment, address gender beliefs and stereotypes that contribute to harassment, and ensure that reporting systems are in place. Some garment factories across Southeast Asia have adopted programs that support a safer working environment for employees experiencing violence and harassment.

3. Using External Influence to Shape Gender Norms

It’s important to remember that businesses can significantly impact social norms. In one recent study across 28 countries, 64 percent of people felt advertisers needed to do more to eliminate traditional gender roles in their advertisements. As some of the largest advertisers in the world, companies have great potential to redefine gender norms and promote greater equality.

The United Nation’s UNstereotype Alliance initiative, which works with companies and advertising bodies to end harmful gender stereotypes, is building momentum behind this idea, and many companies are already taking action of their own accord. For example, Carling Black Label in South Africa, part of Anheuser-Busch InBev, evolved its approach to advertising and developed a brand campaign in 2017 called No Excuse. The campaign aims to tackle violence against women and grow a national network of male champions for change. So far, it has reached 45 million people via social media and increased brand sentiment by 86 percent.

Companies can also use their influence to shape national and global policies, as well as the behavior of other businesses. For example, the DoveMenCare+ Corporate Taskforce—which launched in 2019, and whose members include Bank of America, Twitter, and Deloitte—is urging other companies to adopt a global standard on paternity leave and increase men’s uptake.  

Finally, companies can use their influence to shape the lives of people working across their supply chains through procurement and sourcing choices. Businesses can also support corporate social responsibility initiatives that challenge gender norms. A partnership between laundry brand Surf and Oxfam, for example, aims in part to reduce the amount of time women spend on providing unpaid care. Following gender training, male participants in Zimbabwe are beginning to take on more unpaid care, and in the Philippines, the partnership is asking local governments to consider addressing unpaid care in their plans and budgets.

Engaging men as allies is by no means a panacea to achieving gender equality. Men must build on women’s efforts and organizations, not replace them; they must find and act on their own motivations for achieving gender equality. But effectively engaging men as part of broader, intersectional approaches to creating more inclusive workplaces gives businesses the opportunity to tackle entrenched power relations and create long-term, systemic change. Men and women working together for gender equality will ultimately bring benefits to all genders, to all business, and to society as a whole.

Support SSIR’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges. 
Help us further the reach of innovative ideas. Donate today.

Read more stories by Alice Allan, Marianne Cooper, Pamela Cornes & Fabio Verani.