Dads Want Flex Too: Making Flexibility a Leadership Standard
Flexibility isn’t just a women’s issue. But we still treat it like one.
This is the fourth of five insights from the Australian Institute of Family Studies on how caregiving intersects with paid work—and what that means for leaders serious about closing the gender pay gap.
Here’s the data you probably haven’t seen on your executive dashboard:
👨👧 In 2022, over 90% of fathers with children under 15 were employed—virtually unchanged in decades.
📉 But part-time work among fathers has doubled from 6% in 1991 to 12% in 2021.
It’s a small but growing signal:
More dads are trying to make space for caregiving.
But workplace systems still penalise them for it—or ignore it entirely.
Here’s What Needs to Change:
🔹 Make flexibility gender-neutral.
Too often, policies exist on paper but are quietly discouraged for men. Change starts with leaders modelling it out loud.
🔹 Treat parental leave for fathers as leadership preparation.
If we celebrate taking time off to climb Everest, why not to raise a child?
🔹 Track uptake—not just availability—of flexibility.
If few fathers take it, that’s not a policy success. It’s a culture failure.
The Strategic Playbook for Leaders:👇
✅ Normalise father-friendly leave. Profile dads who’ve taken extended leave in internal comms and town halls.
✅ Design dual-career conversations. Ask male leaders how they balance family and work—not just women.
✅ Embed shared-care metrics. Track flexible work and leave by gender and role seniority.
✅ Tie culture to outcomes. If men are “allowed” but not encouraged to care, the burden stays gendered—and the pay gap persists.
📘 In Closing the Gender Pay Gap, I highlight how redesigning roles and rebalancing care responsibilities can transform leadership pathways—not just for women, but for everyone.
We won’t fix the gender pay gap by focusing only on women.
We need to redesign work for shared lives.
📩 Message me for a copy of the whitepaper.
How can we make caring leadership a norm, not a negotiation?
A former Board Member, CPO, and 2022 HR Leader of the Year, Anoop creates the space for C-suite leaders to turn complexity into clarity and strategy into action.