Calls for early years to help redress gender inequality

The calls come as figures released ahead of Father’s Day reveal British men spend less time caring for their children relative to their female partners than anywhere in the developed world.

The Fairness in Families Index (FIFI) published this week by the Fatherhood Institute, suggest for every hour British women spend with their offspring, their male counterparts spend just 24 minutes.

The UK came bottom of 15 countries studied, compared to Portuguese dads who spend 39 minutes with their kids.

Fatherhood Institute chairman Will McDonald said the UK figures were not a mark of chauvinism because new fathers nowadays are ‘strongly pro gender equality and want to play a substantial role in caring for their young children’.

The problem is that ‘the UK has failed to create the structures to support families to achieve the greater sharing that they want, and that is so important for our children’s futures,’ added Mr McDonald.

He continued, ‘Early years services have a key role in helping dads play a bigger and more confident role in their children’s upbringing and education, and our 15 years’ work in the field suggests that in most cases they do not make the grade.

‘Obliging services to report and be inspected on their father-engagement is the best way to bring about improvements.’

The organisation claims the greatest factor holding back equality is the gender pay gap, a highly unequal parenting leave system, and mother-centric family services.

The three policy changes called for by the organisation are:

1. Redesign parenting leave, moving towards a Scandinavian-style system including a substantial period of well-paid, ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ leave for fathers.
2. Strengthen efforts to reduce the gender pay gap by obliging employers to offer all jobs on the basis that they can be worked flexibly unless they can demonstrate an immediate and continuing business case against doing so. This would include extending the requirement for UK companies to publish data about their gender pay gap from April 2018 to all firms employing more than 150 staff.
3. Reveal the extent to which public services are ignoring fathers – and therefore failing to support greater sharing by mums and dads – by requiring early years, schools, social work and maternity services to publish data on their engagement with fathers. Be inspected on this by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.  

Conservative MP Maria Miller, who chairs the Women and Equalities Select Committee, which made the recommendation for companies to publish pay gap data, described the FIFI findings as ‘worrying’.

She said, ‘Businesses cannot afford to ignore the parenting revolution that millennials want to see and the PM won't succeed in his vision of eliminating the gender pay gap unless we see a more equal sharing of parental duties as the new norm. 

‘Time out of the labour market to look after young children sets back women's earning power.’

Ms Miller claimed the Government has helped provide the framework for shared parental leave but added that a shift in workplace attitudes have not followed, with men experiencing workplace prejudice when they want to take it up .

She added, ‘The best employers know they need to support fathers as well as mothers to get the best out of their workforce. Until fathers can take up more parental responsibility, particularly when their children are very young, we won't see a reduction in the gender pay gap.’

Table 1: Overall FIFI ranking

Table 2: List of FIFI indicators and UK rankings (2016) 

View an infographic summary of the FIFI report here.