gender Archives - Male Feminists Europe

Purpose instead of conformity: Male pioneers in the dance of the genders

Author: Jacomo Fritzsche (www.purposedriven.men)

Our society and the working environment don’t need patriarchal men, who in their mental corset of outdated male roles have strong careers while pushing other people off the podium and, in the process, withering away emotionally. But what we actually look for is more than a man who is merely adapted to feminism.

What is needed is a new male self-image, inspired by and in harmony with basic feminist ideas, which develops independently from men in a co-creative process of self-reflection and introspection.

The basis for this is a holistically conceived understanding of feminism itself. Feminism as a life-affirming interplay of all genders, a transformative dance, a kind of experiential shared learning process at the end of which all parties can evolve into a better version of themselves.

Now, many courageous women have already come forward in recent decades and have firmly shaken a leg on the dance floor of transforming limiting norms. Most men, however, are currently still standing somewhat timidly on the sidelines. It’s a little cramped – a pinch of stubbornness mixed with a portion of ignorance about what step to take next.

But no matter how softly padded the audience benches may be, at the very bottom of a man’s soul slumbers a deep longing to be a living part of this unique transformational process that is happening right now. The magic of an authentic encounter at eye level beats any boys club atmosphere, no matter how elitist. The need for connection, spirituality and meaning may be buried under a mountain of conformity to current beliefs of toxic masculinity, but it still exists and wants to be lived.

So the question that arises is not whether the broad mass of men are fundamentally willing to take the next step in their development, but how men can best be picked up where they are right now. With their past and future, their strengths, weaknesses, prejudices, fears and desires.

What kind of spaces and processes are needed within society and the corporate world in order to not solely force the necessary changes and thus, in some cases, only fan the flame of resistance even more. But rather to find formats in which intrinsic motivation is awakened and the transformation process is experienced as meaningful and therefore worthwhile.

The essential guiding principle for such formats is: As well as. It’s about encouraging men to come fully into their power and at the same time be allowed to be emotionally vulnerable. It is about showing the possibility of a communication culture in which a wild primal scream is just as allowed as a quiet whimper. In which being a man can mean both having a successful career and being celebrated as a stay-at-home dad. Not as either male or feminist. But both at the same time.

Keynote on #GenerationEquality

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words.

The fact, that I am doing this keynote – a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, comparatively old, cis-male from Germany – can be both: a provocation and a sign of hope. And maybe it is indeed both.

Male feminist engagement is a paradox in itself. We need to be aware of that. And I need this, my awareness, to be followed by a sense of responsibility: I am responsible for the choices I am making.

One of the things I always want to achieve through activism is to criticize the very privilege of mine, which I have been trying to describe by listing my non-diverse setup. My role raises a lot of questions. And quite frankly: I do not have an answer to a lot of those questions.

Should I participate, should I speak up and share a perspective that has probably been shared too many times already?

Or should I step away and make room and just listen and learn?

And no matter which decision I am making: There are always well-founded arguments against and legitimate criticism of my decisions.

So thank you once again, dear Global Shapers, for giving me the opportunity to speak, knowing that this means, that so many people, who should be speaking, who should be heard and included are not getting this very opportunity – at least not today.

If I may, I would like to talk about the current situation in my home country, which by many people around the globe is seen as a positive example during the Corona crisis. Germany is being regarded as an economic powerhouse of global scale. But I do have some doubts whether these two assessments are fair and correct.

What we’re experiencing in times of the global Corona crisis, is nothing less than the escalation of gender gaps.

Speaking from Germany and about Germany, we have an average Gender Pay Gap of 20 %, a Gender Care Gap of 52.4 %, a Gender Pension Gap of around 50 % and many many more rather invisible gender gaps.

Corona is a magnifying glass for these issues. And this magnifying glass is clearly pointing out: Germany is not doing well. Actually, not at all.

I got a WhatsApp message last week from a friend of ours. She’s a married mother of two and is currently working part-time. What she’s doing is: She’s getting up at 4:30 in the morning, starting her job at 5 a.m. and working until 9 o’clock. By then, her family would be up and she would take over the kids and the household so that her husband can do his full-time job out of their home office.

This is just one story, there are literally thousands. This has to do with a German obsession with the ideal of a traditional core family as well as with our widespread image of women and mothers being kind of a natural default option for care work. This is very hard to tackle.

And there are, of course, stories that are far worse, and that are hardly being told at all. Stories from much less privileged people. From single mothers and parents, from people with disabilities who depend on the help of others, from marginalized groups and individuals, whose situation has even worsened through Covid-19. This list goes on and on.

Here in Germany, the massive consequences of systemic toxic masculinity, for instance, are still being largely ignored. Misogyny and sexual harassment are still being seen by many as imported phenomenons rather than as deeply rooted integral parts of a German socialization. Covid-19 has already taken its toll: The quantity and the quality of domestic abuse primarily against women and children has increased in more than dramatic fashion.

Globally, the economic and physical disruptions caused by the disease could have vast consequences for the rights and health of women and girls. According to UN Women Germany, a new analysis by the United Nations Population Fund estimates

seven million unwanted pregnancies⠀
31 million additional cases of Gender violence
two million cases of female genital mutilation and
an additional 13 million child marriages within the upcoming decade that could have been prevented.

All of this is devastating. And all of this stands in sharp contrast to so many articles and op-eds claiming that the Corona crisis is a huge opportunity für positive change.

Is it?

In Germany, it took the public debate more than six weeks into the crisis, before politicians even started talking about families and children and parents. They’re still not talking that much about women, which clearly indicates a systemic deficiency once more.

The reason why parents and mothers and women do not have a lobby is because they are not represented in the decision-making processes. They do care work instead of career work, instead of paid work. Because they have to. The debate is lacking their perspective. And we are blaming the women and mothers and parents for not contributing their perspective rather than blaming the people in charge: predominantly men who hardly have any care responsibilities and who have pursued their careers on the backs of a legion of caseworkers and caregivers who have been ignored for so long.

Speaking of systems: Virtually everybody is talking about system-relevant parts of our economies and societies. System-relevance seems to have become the new hard-skill. The discussion is a large-scale in-group/out-group lab trial. If you are system-relevant, you get praise from our balconies at 9 p.m. If you are not, well… you’re not.

As if those, who have been ignored by our systems for so long already, didn’t know that…

The problem is: What if the expression “system-relevant” is just a euphemism for “Yeah, let’s get them some applause and praise and spotlight so that we wouldn’t have to change anything about their working conditions, let alone their financial resources”? And what if the really system-relevant groups haven’t yet been addressed at all?

Maybe this is complaining on a comparatively high level, but what I will never understand is, that German politics in the context of diversity and gender equality is so obviously lacking a vision. Instead: Paid work and the economy are and remain our dogma.

Our workforces, on the other hand, have been reduced to their mere capability to…. well… to work, to function, to fulfill, to provide, to support, to engage, to accelerate, to optimize, to adapt… and yet, even in times of a pandemic, hardly anybody seems to be able or willing to acknowledge a simple truth: The way our systems speak about people and their system-relevance says much more about the systems than about the people.

“Stop fixing people, fix the system” has been my credo ever since I have started working as a freelance consultant for organizational cultures. And actually, this credo has another connotation most of the time. It reads “Stop fixing women, fix the system”. For it is still an organizational reflex to expect women to adapt to organizations. And this reflex is by no means an exclusively male reflex. Patriarchy has gone to great lengths to imprint its manipulative logic into our brains. We need huge efforts to make this visible and to create access to understanding and to deconstructing our systemic reflexes.

This is where all our activisms can come together. Because together, we can make significant system change possible.

Sonja Bastin, a sociologist from Bremen, has recently given an interview in which she states:

“We have to understand that none of us could open a business, none of us would be politicians or could find a vaccine if it weren’t for people who do care work. No one should be allowed to take advantage of an adult worker or employee without paying compensation.”

Does that sound radical to you? Maybe yes. But is it a utopian or a dystopian thought? I believe we need to re-negotiate our utopias and take responsibility for our collective future as human-beings.

This is what activism can be about: bringing our utopias within striking distance. Creating safe spaces where we can discuss and negotiate our ideas of a collective present and future. Including diverse perspectives and different points-of-view across continents, industries, societies and social spheres. Like tonight.

This does not mean that we should ignore all the bad things that are happening. And this does not mean, either, that we cannot be critical about one another, that we shouldn’t challenge or speak out about our biases and blind spots and privileges.

This just means that there is still enough common ground for us all working together in very different contexts.

I would like to thank you all for being part of this. For seeking new ideas and platforms and technologies to bring change. For supporting each other and for becoming allies for all the different approaches towards gender equality. For tolerating educational gaps of activism and for trusting the good intentions of each and everyone who is participating tonight and beyond today.

I am very much looking forward to some exciting startup pitches by very smart entrepreneurs as well as to listening to the panel discussion and the exchange of diverse points of view a bit later.

Have a great evening and thank you.

This keynote was being presented (remotely) by Robert Franken during the NEXT B2B FORUM by Global Shapers Hub Frankfurt on May 26th 2020.

Men are the key to gender equality

Text by Robert Franken, originally published here.

Gender equality is a topic that Germans seem to find particularly difficult to deal with. On an international level, we are doing anything but well. According to the Gender Equality Index of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), with a value of 66.9 (100 means full equality), Germany lags behind the European average. The EU Gender Equality Report highlights the most important developments over the last twelve months as well as processes of change since 2010 and focuses on potential factors for the progress of equal opportunities for women and men in the EU.

The situation in Germany is pretty bad in the area of wage equality: The gender pay gap, i.e. the wage gap between the sexes, is stalling at 21 percent. Some people believe that this gross wage gap can be reduced to a net gap of less than five percent. However, they lose sight of the fact that wage discrimination is no less unfair simply because a large part of the responsible factors can be explained. The opposite is true: Those who know about the factors and who do nothing about them are explicitly discriminating.

Other gender gaps are no less dramatic. On average, women perform 52.4 percent more care work than men (gender care gap), earn just half of an average male lifetime income (gender lifetime earnings gap) and, finally, women are quite frequently confronted with poverty at old age as a result of the gender pension gap. It is truly a vicious circle of gender gaps, and it is high time to take countermeasures.

The economic sphere faces significant challenges. For a long time, politicians, in particular, appealed to companies to finally ensure that equal rights should also be introduced at management level. With the “Act on the Equal Participation of Women and Men in Management Positions“ (German: „Gesetz für die gleichberechtigte Teilhabe von Frauen und Männern an Führungspositionen (FüPoG)“, the federal government introduced a binding quota for supervisory boards of listed companies in 2015. In addition, the law also provided for an obligation to set target figures, according to which certain companies must set themselves target figures for increasing the proportion of women on their supervisory boards, boards of management and top management levels. However, the latter in particular subsequently proved to be hardly effective.

Many companies simply carry on as before. They more or less stoically take note of their glass ceilings and their leaky pipelines (i.e. hierarchies in which the number of women decreases in proportion to their career level). As if these phenomena were laws of nature, and not the result of structural injustices and systemic misconfigurations. If, against this background, listed companies continue to set themselves a „Zielquote null”, this seems only cynical against the background of the debates on equality. Politicians have already announced that they will react.

But it is not only because the political interventions and regulatory frameworks are too vague. Corporate leaders – and the vast majority of them are men – have also become accustomed to delegating and institutionalising the issues of diversity and gender equality. This means that they appoint equality and/or diversity officers, but generally do not take care of the details themselves.

But it is precisely these details that have the potential to provide the solution. As a man, I have to deal with my role and responsibility in the area of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), otherwise little or nothing will change. And this responsibility cannot be delegated, neither to departments nor to individuals. If the right attitude of those responsible is lacking, every individual measure is obsolete. And this attitude must be the top (management) priority.

There is still a lack of “agency” in this area. Those who have decision-making power in organizations must also take responsibility for the issues mentioned. Responsibility means that they must make these issues their own personal agenda.

Men have a key role to play in this context. Why? Because they can change the system: by reflecting on their attitude, by questioning their behavior, by making concrete decisions from positions of power. Men must eventually give up power so that power can be distributed more fairly. We need an honest examination of our internalized beliefs and behaviors, our socialization as men and our numerous blind spots and biases.

It is simply human that we think and act on the basis of so many biases. It is human that we are subject to stereotypes and prejudices. It is human that we occasionally think and act sexist, racist or classicist. It would be inhumane, however, if we did not do everything in our power to improve. Unfortunately, simple anti-bias training or similar interventions do not help, and some of them are even counterproductive. Such measures must be embedded in the cultural transformation of our organizations. And that is hard work that many seem to shy away from.

Up to now, attention has been focused almost exclusively on women. They had been identified as having alleged deficits. Mentoring programs, behavioral and communication training and numerous other measures have aimed and still aim to train women to behave in a very specific way. In other words, to teach them how best to fit into the system. However, such an approach hinders the much-needed questioning of the system and also feeds two dangerous narratives: that women are supposedly not (yet) able to do it; and that women who have been selected for certain leadership positions but refused such promotion would simply not want it. Both are distorted perceptions that distract from structural problems.

Inclusion is about fair and equal participation. Fixing women, i.e. making women fit in, is the exact opposite: It creates every conceivable loophole for our systems and their protagonists so that everything can stay the same. But that would be fatal in view of the transformation tasks that lie ahead of businesses, politics and society. Diversity is a coping strategy in the context of VUCA, not a nice-to-have.

Hopefully, it will soon no longer be a matter of teaching women how to perform management tasks in predominantly male environments. Instead, we finally have the chance to focus on changing the system. And the system is built for men, designed by men and influenced by men. This brings with it great responsibility. Men have a choice: they can become part of the solution, or they automatically remain part of the problem.

For companies this means a major rethink. The times in which paid work was standing monolithically in the centre of an employee’s life are coming to an end. It used to be the individual responsibility of each and every one of us to create compatibility between work and life, to ensure that paid work and care work could function next to each other But this is increasingly becoming a challenge for employers, too – at least in higher-qualified professions and sectors. Companies must get used to including aspects beyond the context of paid work in their area of responsibility. In short, they must do more to live up to their social responsibility. And that also means helping to ensure that men do less paid work and more care work.

All this is linked to overcoming male hyperinclusion. Men are so involved in being managers, CEOs, VPs or directors, that there are oftentimes no other responiobilities left fort them in life, in particular no care work responsibilities. When men realize that they should not only take a step back, but that this is accompanied by a great enrichment of their own life experience, then opportunities for female careers and the chance for a fairer distribution of care work open up at the same time. The latter is a core task of our time, not only from the perspective of a feminist economy.

For it’s true what Sabine Rennefanz recently formulated in her column for the Berliner Zeitung: “For a long time the Western-style welfare state only worked because women did work for free. They raised children, they cared for the elderly. But women are less and less willing to do this, with drastic consequences that everyone feels.”

Women are more and more tired of dealing with their “mental load”, the never-ending to-do list in connection with care activities. It keeps them from making a career or simply from having time for other things than housework, childcare or paid work. Some call it life.

The economy benefits immensely from unpaid care work performed by women. In a recent study, the development aid organization Oxfam calculated that women and girls worldwide perform more than twelve billion hours of unpaid work every day. If the minimum wage were applied to this work, it would be worth over eleven trillion US dollars a year.

We must finally turn our attention to men. The Swedish AllBright Foundation has been monitoring developments in Germany for a long time. Christian Berg, who runs the foundation in Germany together with Dr. Wiebke Ankersen, cites as a key factor for employers “encouraging men to take more parental leave, pick up children from daycare or stay home with sick children. If you don’t do this, you automatically promote men in the company at the expense of women.” These are already very concrete recommendations for action, which have the potential to shift organizational and ultimately social norms in the medium term.

The fact that norms are already changing can be observed not least in the investment decisions of the major players. Goldman Sachs, for example, which has not exactly been a role model of fairness and justice in the past, will no longer accompany IPOs of companies whose supervisory boards are “white and male”. A small step, but one from an influential niche.

In case we get our systems moving and start to eliminate asymmetric gender relations, we should tie a huge knot in our handkerchiefs. We must not fall into the trap of simpy replacing men in influential positions with women. This must also involve a questioning of our economic systems as a whole. Without constructive and systemic criticism of capitalism, the call for gender equality remains a lip service.

New rules for post-patriarchal systems and societies

„The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy, and patriarchy is not men. It is a system, and women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.“ (Justine Musk)

Most people are done with patriarchy. No, really. I mean it. They have analyzed and studied it. They have experienced its narrow limitations and its discriminatory nature. They came to the conclusion, that patriarchal systems are counterintuitive in times, where we’d rather embrace diversity than stick to predominantly male monocultures. We need a multitude of perspectives in order to cope with what we have framed in a cryptic acronym: „VUCA“. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.

And yet, we haven’t abolished patriarchy once and for all. We still rely on it in times of radical change. This is absurd. We almost behave like alcoholics, well aware of the fatal implications of the drug.

But why?

Female authority as a key concept

Antje Schrupp, a German political scientist, feminist and author, wrote an excellent piece on female authority back in 2001, in which she describes how the patriarchal system remains in charge simply because a trusted new approach is yet to be established. Patriarchy’s logic, Schrupp explains, has left women with only two alternatives: They can either adapt to roles and behaviors typically framed as female, or, they can strive to become like men themselves. And, of course, this is a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Sometimes, while trying to fully grasp the implications of patriarchal systems, I get the impression that there’s a fight going on on all sides: a fight for the interpretation sovereignty about what is to become an alternative system to patriarchy. And only after having read Antje Schrupp’s essay, I have understood that we are still lacking such a new order. The disorder, Schrupp has already been pointing at some twenty years ago, is still affecting large parts of our systems today.

This disorder leads to an increasing alienation: Women (and more and more men) feel like they don’t belong any more. Whether it is political parties, transnational organizations or companies: All of these institutions find it harder and harder to create attraction and, even harder, retention. And I have an inkling, that this may well have to do with the rules, by which they are still playing out campaigns or employer branding.

New rules, new narratives

The old narratives won’t resonate any longer. But what’s next then? Is this just a challenge for a new kind of storytelling? I believe, that it’s a discussion much more fundamental. It’s about a completely new set of rules.

There are still no widely accepted rules for social cooperation in a post-patriarchal society. And a lot of people (women* and men*) remain „within the logic of the patriarchy by constantly protesting against its rules or by interpreting their feeling of alienation by claiming that the patriarchy has indeed not ended yet.“

We are still struggling, both with the alienation by existing systems and with our inability to live and act by a fundamentally new set of rules. This might also explain, for example, why some men are fighting organizational promotion of women as being discriminatory against their own career advancements.

Men being stuck in traditional dramas

Instead of focusing on their impact while changing the existing system, these men are acting within the old paradigms of a system they almost certainly despise for its discriminatory setup. They simply can’t see any other way, they’re stuck in a mono perspective: get a job, make a career, establish a status and thus become attractive for a partner–then (and only then) you can have a family and a meaningful life.

It’s pretty obvious that this way of defining meaning in life has several inherent dangers. If you pursue such a one-way street in life, you’ll lack resilience every time something goes wrong. You’re only option will be to push through. The outcome can be devastating, when relationships, finances and health are at risk.

Our individual and collective actions are once again lagging behind our ways of thinking, which are already crossing boundaries from time to time. We have adopted new ways of thinking our societies, economies, businesses etc., but our actions still support the very foundations of the systems in charge, above all: the patriarchy.

Caring economy as an alternative framework

In order to overcome this paradox, we must change our reference point. No longer should we make the existing system the foundation of all our endeavors and ambitions, but a new system of sustainable relationships, where humans are no longer a disposable factor within certain economic cycles, but at the center of a caring economy. This may sound comparatively socialistic when we first hear it, but, in fact, it is most certainly the only way of creating a future foundation of social welfare economies.

Spheres of the Economy (from: “The UN Women Gender and Economics Training Manual”, p. 34)

If we take a look at the spheres of the economy it becomes obvious, that there are two spheres which represent a monetized economy (finance and production), while the remaining two spheres (reproduction and nature) are part of a non-monetized (or: maintenance) economy. We are looking at nothing less than at the core of capitalism’s drama. The barrier between production and reproduction marks the single point of failure of our economic system: It is a system of exploitation. And a one-way street.

By breaking up the barriers between the two spheres which are so deeply interlinked and dependent on each other, we could initiate a holistic approach to answering fundamental questions: How do we want to live and work together in a future where paid work will become an increasingly volatile factor while care work will even more become the centerpiece of functioning societies?

„Female“ symbolic order

Women are the cornerstone of such a caring economy. In a talk from 2017, author, philosopher and learning therapist Dorothee Markert relates to the Italian feminist thinkers, who recommend substituting female power relationships by authority relationships. Markert, once again, points to Antje Schrupp, who argues in her publication „ABC des guten Lebens“ for these new kinds of relationships among women, which could create a new foundation of social cooperation and unleash „independency from a male-shaped symbolic order“.

The key question for me would be: How can I create impact and how can I support the development and establishing of a „female*“ symbolic order? I have no answers yet, only ideas. But I am curious and thus looking forward to seeing the debate unfold.

Author: Robert Franken

#iphiGENIA 2018 Award Ceremony Keynote Speech by Robert Franken

On November 8, 2018, I had the opportunity as well as the honour to hold the keynote speech at this year’s #iphiGENIA Award ceremony at the Museum für angewandte Kunst MAKK in Cologne, Germany. The full speech has been published at IGDN’s website (verbatim). This is a an edited and abridged version of the keynote, in which I talked about (male) privilege, awareness, solidarity, feminist impact and changing norms.

(Photo by Florian Yeh)

My name is Robert Franken. I became an activist for gender equality and diversity, more or less. And, admittedly, I became an activist of privilege.

My privilege is a privilege that I share with quite a few people, I believe: I’m a 45 year old, white, heterosexual, tall, cis-gender male who is living in Germany (in case you don’t know what the term „cis-gender“ means: cis-gender is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. The opposite, of course, would be transgender.)

And here’s a piece of advice for all the guys: You are not suposed to be ashamed of your privilege – but you need to be aware of it!

Again: white, heterosexual, tall, cis-gender, German – You can’t be much more privileged than I am in this world, even if you tried very, very hard.

And my privilege of truly global scale is the number one reason why it took me so long to realize that there are quite a few things going terribly wrong in this privileged world of mine. Not for me, though, but for a lot of other people.

Have you ever thought about your privilege? Have you ever made up your mind about how your privilege constitutes your status? If you are privileged, of course.

It can be a pretty sobering experience. I mean, it sounds good: „I am privileged.“ But when you think about it: It becomes very normal very soon. It’s just your personal reality. Your routine. Your norm.

You’re getting used to it, and when you’re getting used to something you’re losing awareness of the very fact that it has always been there: your privilege. It may not feel like being fun anymore, maybe it never has. It’s just normal.

There’s this diversity awareness exercise you might have heard of or even experienced yourself. Imagine a group of people forming a line, holding hands. They’re being asked questions. Questions such as „Do you think your gender is properly represented in the media?“ or „Did you have access to a full school education?“. If the answer to one question is „Yes“, then the participants are being asked to take a step forward.

You can also add questions where a „no“ as an answer would mean a step back. And you can use very tough and challenging questions. For instance: “Have you ever been a victim of sexual harassment?“.

The goal of this exercise is, of course, to challenge privilege and to create awareness for discrimination; to prove that the particular group is much more heterogenous than you would think in the first place, and, that privilege sometimes leads to discrimination – and vice versa.

So eventually, when the exercise is over, you would ask the people standing in the back how they’re feeling. And they wouldn’t feel that great, actually. And that’s because they, once again, are being confronted with their personal discriminatory past and/or present. They’re probably quite used to that, but nevertheless, this exercise sometimes works as a kind of trigger.

The most interesting part of this exercise, however, is how the people in the front are feeling. The people who would be answering „Yes“ to almost every single question. They are the privileged ones, that’s quite obvious, isn’t it? But, awkwardly enough, it doesn’t seem to feel particularly good.

In fact, the people who are standing in the front feel extremely weird. „Weird“ as in „uneasy“ as in „bad“! And that’s because they have just been confronted with their privilege. Maybe for the very first time ever in their whole life!

So, what have they been missing?

Well. There’s so much discrimination in the world of ours that it would take ages to even come close to a summary. I feel that it’s quite an obligation to confront ourselves with at least some facts that are driving inequalities. With the dark side, if you like.

We need to acknowledge a sad fact: Germany is not doing very well in some areas of gender equality. And I will spare you the discussion around the almost untranslatable phenomenon of the „Ehegattensplitting“. Only so much: We’re the only country in the world which is rewarding a husband for a stay-at-home wife… sorry: a stay-at-home partner!

There are even worse imbalances. You’ve surely heard of the vicious circle of gaps: a gender care gap leading to a gender pay gap leading to a gender lifetime earnings gap resulting in a massive gender pension gap aka „Altersarmut”. These are embarrassing facts for one of the wealthiest economies in the world.

I am particularly interested in the gender care gap. Why? Because it is one of the main reasons for all the other economic inequalities between the genders.

According to the latest inequality report („Gleichstellungsbericht“), the average gender care gap in Germany is 52.4 percent. What does that mean? This means that, on average, women are doing 87 minutes more care work per day than men. Every day. The most dramatic care gap occurs at the age of 34: Women of that age are doing more than five hours of care work every day – men only two and a half hours. This represents a care gap of more than 100 %!

And why at the age of 34? Well, this is when there are children in the household. It’s as simple as that. With our family structures and our strange out-of-date attribution to motherhood, women are still a kind of a default option when in comes down to childcare.

This has to change if we really want to tackle the gender pay gap and all the other financial imbalances that follow and that have dramatic consequences.

I you are a woman, sooner or later, you might find yourself in the trap sociologists have called „retraditionalisation“: modern couples are entering the delivery room at the hospital – and out come couples who act like it’s 1958. It is a trap for women, because they are still the „default option“ when it comes down to childcare.

And finally, a short glance on our economic paradigms: If you look at the DAX 30 companies, you’ll have another sobering moment. 92 % of the board members are male. Germany is the only country in the world which hasn’t got a single female CEO in one of its top 30 listed companies. It’s more likely for a man named Thomas to become a board member than for a woman. We’re talking about monocultures here.

If you google for the term „Vorstand“ and switch to image search, the search results are close to satire. A smart mind once coined the term „homosocial reproduction“ which basically means that people are hiring people who are resembling themselves rather than diving into diversity. It’s a diversity horror movie with a lot of sequels. There’s not much more progress in politics, either: More men with the beautiful German name Hans have become state secretary than women.

Let’s face it: Women will not be able to initiate a turnaround here by themselves. And they shouldn’t have to!!

The obstacles that come with working in a sexist culture are beyond any individual’s control. Or, as writer and laywer Ephrat Livni has argued in a recent article for Quartz.com:

“It’s the society we operate in that needs fixing, not how we ask for money, the tone of our voices, or our outfits.“

We need to stop fixing women. And we need to include the other 50 % in order to make change happen. In order to find a collective answer to the question: How do we want to live and work together in the future? In order to achieve this, we, as men, need to live up to our responsibilities!

But, as you all might have experienced yourselves, there’s quite a massive backlash to gender issues at the moment. It’s a global backlash. It hasn’t started with Trump, but the unbearable misogyny, white supremacy, racism and sexism of the Trump era shows that a lot of men – and some women, too – have decided to remain a part of the problem rather than joining forces and become a part of the solution. As a matter of fact, sexism and misogyny are on the rise.

A sexual predator is president of the United States of America and a sexual offender will be in the Supreme Court until his death. The Hungarian prime minister has banned Gender Studies from the universities because he thinks that they are, “a threat to the traditional family“. An Austrian female politician has been sentenced for calling out a male harasser, because the judge doubted her evidence. The terrible stories keep on coming, day by day.

And gender seems to have become (or maybe alway has been) a battleground. Many people – predominantly men, but also women – feel offended by the mere discussion of gender-related issues, let alone by a debate on gender equality. The concept of masculinity (and of femininity sometimes) seems fragile. Or at least, I’ve been trying to explain some of the more severe attacks on feminism and feminists by fragile masculinity.

Am I wrong? Maybe.

But the concept of gender is so very personal and gets so uncomfortably close to our socialization as humans, that the only way to maintain our foundation as human beings very often is to lash about and hit all those who question this foundation. And those who want do debate gender roles and responsibilities.

As I said: The backlashes are everywhere, and they seem to be getting worse. Is it just patriarchy’s final battle? Or is that, what we call „patriarchy’s dividend“, so attractive, that a majority of people is once and for all working on upholding its systemic paradigms?

To me, one thing is cristal-clear: men have to get moving. We have to stand up and show sustainable solidarity. Solidarity in the fight to end patriarchy. This fight would be for our own good. The sooner we realize this, the better for us all.

Victoria Bissell Brown, a retired history professor at Grinnell College in the U.S. has written an article for the Washington Post in which she’s calling on all men. She writes:

„In the centuries of feminist movements that have washed up and away, good men have not once organized their own mass movement to change themselves and their sons or to attack the mean-spirited, teasing, punching thing that passes for male culture. Not once. Bastards. Don’t listen to me. Listen to each other. Talk to each other. Earn your power for once.”

So again: Gender equality is a responsibility for all men. Yet, men seem to have a problem with their responsibility. We still haven’t organized ourselves around the task of creating a gender equal society or to ensure fair and inclusive systems of mutual support. We still don’t engage at scale.

Let me give you just one example: Women in Iceland went on general strike because they feel discriminated against by a gender pay gap of 13 percent. The pay gap in Germany is 21 percent. No strike. Not by men, not by women. I am asking you: Where’s our consternation, where’s our rage and where’s our solidarity for this fundamental issue? We all have our answers. And maybe we have to turn those answers into collective action.

If I had something to say, I would make the diversity awareness exercise I have been talking about a few minutes ago a monthly routine. Maybe with a changing set of questions. Why? Because it is so utterly important to challenge our norms and biases on a regular basis. By doing so, we would be training ourselves to change our perspectives. To learn to walk in other people’s shoes. To create an understanding of systems and norms and privilege and discrimination. To develop an empathic approach to diversity & inclusion.

Before I end, I’d like to sort out one or two things, so we all wouldn’t be confusing them any more. I want to do this by quoting Canadian author Justine Musk who is commenting on basic truths:

“The enemy of feminism isn’t men. It’s patriarchy, and patriarchy is not men. It is a system, and women can support the system of patriarchy just as men can support the fight for gender equality.“

Well, good luck for all of us!

#men4equality – Why we won’t speak at all-male panels any longer

Events and panels, where only men are talking to men, are unrepresentative, one-dimensional and incomplete – and therefore boring and irrelevant. It is better, for audiences, participants and organizers, to call off such one-dimensional events rather than allowing a conversation on a low-quality level. This is why the signatories to this declaration have decided not to take part in all-male panels any more.

With #men4equality we are creating awareness for the fact that the very casting of panel lineups has a massive influence on the quality of the debate itself. We understand men#4equality as an invitation to event organizers to take this important matter into account when preparing their programs. If you’re still planning to have an all-male event, we will have to cancel our participation. Events of such kind simply do not live up to our expectations concerning quality.

List of initial signatories:

Rowan Barnett, Senior Director Market Development & Media, Twitter
Torsten Bittlingmeier, Founder TalentManagers
Leonhard Dobusch, Professor Universität Innsbruck
Thomas Feinen, Geschäftsführer Hoffmann und Campe Verlag
Robert Franken, Digitaler Potenzialentfalter
Stephan Grabmeier, Chief Innovation Evangelist Haufe-umantis AG
Joachim Graf, Zukunftsforscher & Publizist
Hendrik Haase aka wurstsack, Aktivist
Ralf Heimann, Journalist & Autor
Vincent-Immanuel Herr, Autor & Aktivist HERR & SPEER
Tom Hillenbrand, Journalist & Autor
Mark Hoffmann, Co-Founder & CEO Vertical Media GmbH
Simon Hurtz, Journalist
Christoph Kappes, Geschäftsführer Fructus & Sobooks.de
Friedemann Karig, Journalist & Autor
Dr. Ralf Kleindiek, State Secretary Federal Ministry for Family Affairs BMFSFJ
Johannes Kleske, Co-Founder Third Wave
Wolfgang Lünenbürger-Reidenbach, Geschäftsführer Cohn & Wolfe PR
Stephan Noller, Founder ubirch
Christian Schiffer, Journalist
Igor Schwartzmann, Co-Founder Third Wave
Michael Seemann, Autor
Martin Speer, Autor & Aktivist HERR & SPEER
Hakan Tanriverdi, Journalist
Tarik Tesfu, YouTuber und mastermind behind “Tariks Genderkrise”
Dirk von Gehlen, Journalist & Autor
Leander Wattig, Veranstalter & Publisher
Felix Wegener, Veranstalter & Blogger

Here’s a short list of things you as an event organizer should take into account when trying to make your panel relevant and successful:

If you are an event host, get the balance right. Reach out to organizations like e.g. the Women Speaker Foundation or speakerinnen.org in Germany, they can help you find excellent female speakers on virtually any topic.
When you are preparing for an event, make sure that you make gender balance your objective and not just some goal. It needs to be an integral part of your conference or panel setup.
Think about involving women in your planning process.

And here are just three ideas how you as a man can be(come) part of the solution rather than remain part of the problem:

If you’re invited to speak at a conference: Make sure that there’s a balance in diversity among the speakers.
Before you take part in a panel discussion: Ask the question whether there are just men on stage or men* and women* in a balanced diversity setup – hostess not included. 70% men may be o.k. in some industries, but more would only mean a lack of effort.
Speak out about the reasons for not attending male-only events. If you remain silent, you miss the chance of creating awareness for this problem.
Create awareness among your peers. Ask them why they wouldn’t bother reflecting on this issue. Help them make up their minds, too.

Always Remember:

All-male setups are simply boring.

Balanced lineups must become the norm.

Help us change the ratio. Spread the word: #men4equality

The feminist debate is still relevant – and a law against internet hatred and harassment has become a necessity

Author: Henrik Marstal (author and musician)

In the often heated debate about feminism, it has become customary for debaters to promote their great difficulties with the very word. Some have even argued that this is the movement’s greatest challenge.

Others argue that we should talk about “equality” instead of feminism, for this is what feminism is actually about. Or that feminism simply means “reverse discrimination of women”. These are relevant objections because feminism may appear a bit restricted at the very definition of the word.

Let’s begin with the latter: No. There are very few feminists who want women to dominate the world by establishing a matriarchal system – i.e. the equivalent of the current patriarchy which seems to be the actual cause of the problems of equality which all people might be subjected to. Continue reading “The feminist debate is still relevant – and a law against internet hatred and harassment has become a necessity”

Feminism is for all of us

Author: Henrik Marstal (writer and musician)

Some time ago, the international initiative #WomenAgainstFeminism flourished on various social media. Within a remarkably short period of time, thousands of women united because they felt repelled by feminism.

In Denmark, a 23-year-old female educationalist caused a stir in the national media by stating that because feminists hate men, they make her feel ashamed of her own sex. A Danish female blogger even opposed to any kind of feminist thought and compared feminism to religious fanaticism – and me, an outspoken feminist and a blogger myself, being her only example.

Thus, for many people, feminism is simply a word they do not bother to learn (more) about. Moreover, it is a word that apparently is connected with something negative and annoying because feminism is perceived as sincerely superfluous and irrelevant. But I am pretty sure that this resistance is primarily an expression of a universal truth: pressure causes counter-pressure. While a feminist approach as being a solution to many of the world’s problems has shown growing attention among people all over the Western world, the resistance to this approach has been on the rise, too.

This resistance comes not only from men, who regard the movement as a serious threat to inherited patriarchal privileges. It also comes from privileged women, who do not want to be reminded of the fact that they still find themselves in a highly unequal position compared to men concerning economic matters, power, justice etc.

Many people subscribe to the notion of feminism as being a totalitarian ideology with its primary purpose being to spread misandry (male hatred), to claim womanhood as a victim, to promote a matriarchal world order and to offend patriarchal matters, even in places where women feel quite satisfied with the state of affairs.

But if these people asked feminists what they want to focus on, most of them will come up with an answer that doesn’t quite fit all the resentment. I bet that most feminists would answer that they are working to fully realize equality matters between the sexes in terms of politics, social issues, sexuality, economy and notions of power. And while they answer, they will refer to statistics, reports, studies and empirical observations rather than to their own emotions.

The Swedish author and feminist Nina Björk has said it like this:

“Feminism is a political movement with its goal being to make gender an uninteresting category in everyones’ social lives.”

Ulla Tornemand, a chairwoman from Danish Women’s Society (founded in 1871) , puts it this way:

“Being a feminist means working to end oppression, discrimination and exploitation of people just because of their gender, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation and/or other issues. The correspondence of the movement’s name with the female gender is historically conditioned. So today, to be a feminist is to believe in and work for equality.”

So, with a few radical exceptions, feminists are neither male-haters or religious fanatics. For the same reason, a rapidly growing number of men have declared themselves feminists. These men, I believe, know that true equality between the sexes will help putting an end to patriarchal norms which are of no benefit for them, either.

In the aforementioned #WomenAgainstFeminism movement, there were several women with a handwritten sign which rejected feminism, including a woman with a sign that said: “I do not need feminism because I enjoy being a stay-at-home housewife and do not feel less valuable for that reason.”

Unfortunately, this woman did not know what feminism is all about. Had she known, she would have been aware that feminists do not look down on housewives, and that the movement works for equal rights between the genders in connection with childbirths, divorces and parental rights.

One of my friends paraphrased the woman’s statement like this:

“I do not need feminism because I am totally indifferent to all the women who do not thrive in the traditional roles which men often expect us to join. I therefore give up everything that feminists before my time fought for so fiercely and sometimes paid a high price for: my voice and vote, my education right, my right to be respected for who I am, my right to not constantly be viewed as a sex object by all men (until I get about the age of 45-50 years), my right to abortion and my right not to be beaten, raped or murdered by my partner. These are all factors which, even in the 21st century, are still not taken for granted outside the Western World – and only to a certain extent within this area.”

The woman might also be devoid of empathy for other women; devoid of empathy for the 29,000 women who each year are subject to domestic violence in Denmark alone (10,000 of them are exposed to repeated, serious abuse). Moreover, she might be devoid of empathy for women who suffer from having less favourable terms in economic, social or legal matters.

Finally, she might be devoid of empathy with women for whom gender stereotyping in the media, in advertising, in fashion and in porn hampers their self-expression and drains their self-esteem. This applies not less to the many women who have repeatedly been experiencing serious problems with sexism, threats of rape as well as rape without being taken seriously by the authorities as well as their friends and families.

It seems that we could draw a parallel line between the women’s liberation movement and the labor movement: Both made enormous progress for a very large social group, and both will continue to be necessary. If not, the world as we know it runs the risk of being pulled back in time. To all of us, it is indeed true that equality never happened automatically – it has to be fought for every inch.

Not many people would have missed the trade union movement. I am sure that many people admit that something similar is true for the women’s liberation movement. So put down the reservations, all you people out there: Feminism is for all of us.

Feminism for men – a manual

Author: Robert Franken (blogger and digital consultant)

It’s been quite some time since I’ve been following the debate on gender equality and feminism. And the longer I’ve listening, the more I can feel how hard it seems to be for men to come to terms with the concept, the vocabulary and their own attitude towards these issues.

This very often leads to a severe lack of participation from the male side in the debate as well as in the organizational change process. And this is the main reason for the whole issue to be somehow stalled: 50 % attention rate simply isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, there is a significant degree of negative agitation and even aggressive animosity withinthis set of topics. Some of my male colleagues not only fail to support the feminist idea, their slogans are often a direct attack on one of the most important questions of our lifetime: How do we want to live and work together in the future?

One could use one’s energy for the search for reasons why male participation is so low or to campaign against more or less open aggression by the male side. But without the knowledge of where the obvious male discomfort is rooted, there won’t be much progress.

From my point of view, there are three categories of men: Continue reading “Feminism for men – a manual”