health
parenthood
Dad, your kids deserve to come home at four, too
In a cultural and social climate like the one used in Israel, mothers are usually the ones who leave kindergarten and stay with the sick child.
Why?
Because they usually make less money.
How do we change this situation, and why are the fathers the ones who should lead the change?
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parents
father
Mom
Michal Lazarovich, guest article
Sunday, 07 February 2021, 07:35
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Where's your voice?
Father and son in the kitchen (Photo: ShutterStock)
The gaps in Israel between the home and the family and the economy and the work environment are larger in relation to the other developed countries in the world.
In a triangle where we have more children on the one hand, but work more hours on the other, together with an education system that is not adapted to these two data, we get an equation in which women are gone.
Disappearing from senior positions, under-representation in positions of influence throughout the economy, including in public positions and in politics.
There is a tendency to say that there are no "magic solutions" to such complicated problems, it is complex, requires more than one policy and quite a bit of money.
But I think there is at least a partial magic solution.
This solution is called ancestry.
Active fathers, mixed fathers, partner fathers.
Fathers who are in the WhatsApp groups, fathers who knock on the table under parental guidance because there are not enough girls in the computer department, fathers who go out at 4pm to pick up and disperse to classes, fathers who say to their employees "You said your son is sick, no? Why are you not with him?" They will feel uncomfortable when they leave the office at 9:00 PM, fathers in the garden, fathers who sat in the cabinet meeting and shouted "Why close the gardens at 1:00 PM ?! How can you work like this?"
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To the full article
I know these fathers exist, but they are still not the significant voice in the neighborhood, in the kindergarten committee, in the workplace and in government.
More than that I know that such fathers exist potentially, angry fathers who do not have maternity leave by law, fathers who are disappointed when they come to see their children and girls only for a good night story, who look at the clock at 16:00 and feel guilty that they did not leave early again but fear the looks and comments To be received in the hallway on the way out.
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Do not blame, change
There is no victim accusation here, neither towards women nor towards men.
It is clear that the culture, norms, values and also the organizational climate in the workplace do not allow today to easily reach the status of a partner father, and even make it difficult.
Whether it is rights and conditions for parents that are only possible for women or whether it is in the informal messages that pass from the organization's management or from the direct supervisor to the father who wants to be more active and involved.
Admittedly, there are changes that can only happen in legislation like maternity leave for fathers or shortening of a working week.
But legislation and regulation will never suffice in a world where organizational climate, culture, values and norms speak a different language.
At the end of the day, it is impossible to regulate the comments they receive or the scolding look a parent receives who wants to stay home with the child in quarantine or enact a law against cynical reactions thrown at those who leave at 15:45 with an embarrassed look and apologize for picking up children.
Without accusations.
Dad tries to work from home with a baby by his side (Photo: ShutterStock)
How do you do that?
Create an organizational culture that allows both parents to be relevant and involved in their children's lives, in three steps:
The first and most influential step is always the agenda led by the organization's senior management, CEO, human resources department, vice presidents and significant and significant figures Others, which is expressed both through personal example and through the accessibility and simplification of workers' rights.
The second step is the introduction of organizational norms to which management is committed - clear rules regarding working hours, reducing work slips into private life, late hours at night or weekends, paying attention to hours when multi-participant meetings are scheduled, giving legitimacy to vacation days and child illness.
The third step, the responsibility of each and every manager in the organization at the day-to-day level, the terminology, the reaction when an employee takes a child's sick day, the criteria for selecting the outstanding employee and more.
Many government officials are promoting bills relating to formal regulation and additional parental rights.
At the same time, in the civil service we have decided to work to remove the bureaucratic obstacles in exercising parental rights for fathers, expand them, make them accessible and also, and perhaps most importantly, create the positive organizational discourse around the model in which both parents share.
A model that creates equality and reduces gaps and most of all - a model that helps our children win both father and mother.
Feel free to adopt the model.
Michal Lazarovich, Director of the Gender Equality Division and Advisor to the Commissioner for Women's in the service of the State Commission.
Has been leading the issue of gender equality throughout the civil service for the past three years, one of the founders of the # Dad_Barba campaign - Finding Your Balance
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