Dads for Daughters. Michelle Travis

Bill says, “and it now more than ever focuses me.”

      When his daughters were seeking jobs, Bill told them to choose employers based on their track record for promoting women. That advice got Bill looking harder at his own company, which he wanted to be a place where he’d be proud to have his daughters work. “I wouldn’t be truthful in telling you I was feeling that a decade ago,” he admits. Once Bill prioritized gender equality, he increased the women in MGM’s management ranks to forty-three percent, and MGM Resorts was named a Top Corporation for Women’s Business Enterprises in 2016.

      Fred Paglia is another executive who’s made the connection between being the dad of a daughter and being a women’s ally in his workplace. Fred works in the foodservice industry, which is the second largest employing industry in the US. When he became the president of the North American division of Foodservice at Kraft Foods Group, he realized that his company wasn’t a place where his own daughters would have equal opportunities to rise. “My girls are fourteen and twelve,” he said at the time, “and to be genuine with you, I wake up every day and look into their eyes before I leave for work and try to make the path a little easier for them. What father wouldn’t want to do that?”

      Fred was savvy enough to know that he didn’t actually know how to accomplish his goals. So he approached Fritzi Woods, who was the CEO of the Women’s Foodservice Forum, to get advice. The Forum is an organization dedicated to advancing women into executive roles in the foodservice industry. Fritzi was so impressed by Fred that she invited him to join the Forum’s board, and they became partners in expanding opportunities for women in their industry. Fritzi said that most of the progress she saw in her industry had been the result of male leaders like Fred—dads who are “hoping to pave the way for their young daughters.”

      How Dads Can Get Started

      If you’re the dad of a daughter and you’re in an influential position in the corporate world, it’s time to make the connection between your role as a dad and your role as a business leader. As a father, you can begin this journey by asking yourself if your workplace is a place where you’d want your daughter to work. Is it a place where your daughter would be welcomed, valued, and taken seriously? Is it a place where your daughter could thrive professionally with the same opportunities as men? Is it a place where your daughter could become a leader? If the answers to these questions are “no,” then there’s work to be done.

      After taking Jason Kilar’s advice and watching Wonder Woman (alongside your teen daughter, if you have one), the next step is establishing a concrete strategy for advancing women into leadership roles at your company. In general, a successful strategy requires setting specific goals, making the goals public to increase accountability, and linking the goals to managers’ performance reviews and compensation. More specific strategies often depend on the existing workplace culture and particular industry—a lesson that Fred Paglia learned at Kraft Foods—which means seeking expert advice on how to establish an individualized women’s leadership initiative at your firm.

      An excellent resource is Jeffery Tobias Halter’s book, Why Women: The Leadership Imperative to Advancing Women and Engaging Men. This book makes the business case for gender diversity in leadership roles, which can arm dads with ammunition to convince colleagues why they should care. The book also describes best practices of Fortune 500 companies that have established successful women’s leadership strategies, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. The LeanIn.org’s Women in the Workplace Guide also provides action checklists to help establish hiring, evaluation, and performance practices to reduce gender biases that create hurdles for advancing women into leadership positions.

      Dads of daughters can also find a wealth of information from Catalyst, which consults with companies to build workplaces that advance women into leadership roles. Catalyst has worked with more than 800 organizations to diagnose barriers to women’s advancement, engage men as women’s advocates, and create more inclusive workplace cultures. Catalyst also networks business leaders to share information about successful strategies.

      One focus of Catalyst’s work is diversifying companies’ boards of directors. Catalyst offers business leaders a database of experienced women candidates for board positions. Business leaders can also find or refer women candidates for board positions on theBoardList.com, which includes over 2,000 qualified businesswomen. Created by Silicon Valley executive Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, theBoardList.com has helped place more than 100 women on boards of directors. The Catalyst Women on Board program also links highly qualified business women with male board members for a two-year mentoring program that positions women for board membership and executive opportunities.

      Dads of daughters can also take advantage of Catalyst’s MARC initiative, which stands for “Men Advocating Real Change.” Dads can become MARC Leaders by participating in workshops or executive dialogue sessions to become effective women’s advocates and break down barriers to women’s advancement. Catalyst also offers tools for dads to set up MARC Teams at their companies. MARC Teams meet regularly to discuss gender diversity, using Catalyst guides on various topics, such as tips for eliminating bias from performance reviews.

      Men in corporate leadership positions can also join the Catalyst CEO Champions for Change initiative. Members take either a corporate or a personal pledge to support women’s advancement. Leaders who take the corporate pledge agree to share their gender diversity data with Catalyst to support research and accelerate progress.

      Another step that dads of daughters in corporate leadership roles can take is to implement some variation of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule.” Named after former Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney, the rule requires NFL teams to interview a minority candidate for all head coaching and senior operations positions. Although the rule doesn’t force teams to hire minority candidates, merely opening the door helped double the number of minority head coaches in the league.

      Jason Kilar supports having a similar rule for female candidates in high-level positions in the entertainment industry. “Just getting women in the room,” he explains, “could go a long way toward disrupting the biased hiring practices that have historically favored men.” Checkr, a leader in employee background screening services, recently adopted a “Rooney Rule Plus,” which requires managers to include at least two women or minority candidates in final stage interviews for every position before making an offer. In 2017, forty-four prominent law firms partnered with the Diversity Lab to pilot a variation of the Rooney Rule called “the Mansfield Rule.” Named after Arabella Mansfield, the first woman attorney in the US, the rule requires law firms to ensure that at least thirty percent of candidates for leadership positions are women or minorities.

      In addition to setting specific gender diversity goals, dads of daughters can become more effective corporate leaders just by talking with their daughters to increase awareness and understanding of the challenges that women face in the corporate world. Gail Golden is the founder of an executive development company, and she’s seen the power of the father-daughter relationship first-hand. As an executive trainer, Gail has learned that getting men to connect their role as dads to their role as business leaders can make them more effective diversity advocates. “Having a daughter changes a man’s leadership style,” says Gail, “making him more aware of discrimination and more likely to fight bias against female employees.”

      In Gail’s experience, dads learn the most when they ask their daughters if they’ve ever faced sex discrimination themselves. When a dad’s own daughter faces unequal treatment or limited opportunities, the experience can shift his priorities. At that point, it’s no longer abstract statistics. It’s a feeling of not being able to protect your daughter from harm. And while many dads are deeply invested in their daughters’ success, there’s often nothing they can do to directly fix their own daughter’s unfair situation. That frustration can prompt dads to start advocating for gender equality in their own companies. “Although we like to pretend that we are ‘all business,’” says Gail, “in fact we bring our whole selves to work, like it or not.” For dads of daughters, that can be a very positive thing. As executive coach Susan Bloch explains, “Daughters are educating their fathers that they deserve a seat at the leadership table.”