Today is the 25th anniversary of the  day that Jerome Teelucksingh rebooted International Men’s Day (IMD).  He chose the 19th of November to honour his father.

For anyone new to IMD, it’s stated aims are:

1. To promote positive male role models; not just movie stars and sports men but everyday, working-class men who are living decent, honest lives.
2. To celebrate men’s positive contributions to society, community, family, marriage, child care, and the environment.
3. To focus on men’s health and wellbeing: social, emotional, physical, and spiritual.
4. To highlight discrimination against men in areas of social services, social attitudes and expectations, and law.
5. To improve gender relations and promote gender equality.
6. To create a safer, better world, where people can be safe and grow to reach their full potential.

But is IMD still necessary?

As with similar celebration days (e.g. international women’s day, international day for people with disabilities, etc.), there is always part of you thinking “Is this really necessary?  Should we only consider this demographic one day a year?  Surely, we should be able to advocate for and challenge discrimination against this particular group every day of the year?”.  But we don’t.  Because we are busy people and we only have so much time and there are always more important things to do.

In some quarters, reactions to any events like this are often dismissive or downright antagonistic.  It feels like this is true particularly for International Men’s Day, given the overall demographic (roughly 50% of the population) are still largely seen to have advantages in most parts of life, certainly working life.  To save you the trouble, I will trot out the usual joke that accompanies IMD – “isn’t every day, international men’s day?”.

Why Aren’t Men Showing Up?

However, in the last 10 – 15 years, it has made it’s way in to the corporate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) landscape.  Most larger firms will recognise it with appropriate events organised to celebrate, inspire or educate.  In our experience at Men for Inclusion, the majority of those events are organised and managed by women (although partially due to the fact that women are far more likely to be in HR or DEI roles).  Sadly, they often make up the majority of the attendees too.  Mark spoke at an IMD event 2 years ago where he was the only man in the room.  So even when we try to celebrate men, a fairly large contingent of them aren’t interested.

Why is this?

Part of this may be down to a general lack of awareness.  Perhaps a worry that being part of an event that could focus just on male issues, especially male mental health, might feel uncomfortable or even stigmatising.  Or it could be the usual excuse of just being too busy.

But I am not sure that is the primary reason.  Given these events are usually managed via an internal DEI group (either within HR or as part of an employee resource group), more and more men (particularly, straight white, mid-career men) are checking out of all DEI events (assuming they ever came in the first place), because they don’t believe anything is in it for them.  They think that DEI is about helping and supporting others and that there is no support to help them with their career challenges.  They no longer think they have a voice.  Or if they voice their concerns, they are shut down or cancelled.  No one is listening to them.

Their overall experience of DEI in the world of work has arguably not been the most pleasant of journeys for a lot of them.  We have asked them into rooms and then told them that they are privileged, biased  (albeit unconsciously), aggressive (albeit in a micro-way) and, oh, by the way, you now have a target to make your team more diverse.  And then they saw a load of additional development programmes for people not like them and saw their company make commitments to have more gender or ethnicity balance in senior ranks.  We then asked them to be allies for those under-represented groups and take part in mentoring or sponsoring initiatives to support them.  It is no surprise that some of them started checking out of DEI efforts.

A Global Trend of Polarisation

We have recently seen a similar phenomenon with the gender polarisation within the US election.  Women voting overwhelmingly for Harris, and Men, likewise for Trump.  At a cursory glance, that could easily seen through some simple binary or sexist lenses.  But the data does not seem to support that.  Recent research by Richard Reeves and Allen Downey (1) from the Of Boys and Men organisation shows that men are largely to supportive of a more gender equal workplace (although younger men are less supportive than older), but the overall message coming from men, particularly younger, working-class men is that they are not being listened to.  Although they recognise the struggles of others, right now they are more concerned about their own challenges, particularly when it comes to the role of men in modern society.  There are gender inequalities affecting men, particularly in education and some parts of health-care, notably mental health, but men don’t feel that anyone, particularly in the political realm, is trying to systemically do something about it.  Many countries have ministries for women and equality (rightfully so);  hardly any have similar ministries for men.

It is also worth noting that this gender polarisation trend is not unique to the US.  A recent review of social attitude surveys by the Financial Times (2) across multiple countries found that in the 20 – 29 age group, men are moving increasingly to the political right, women to the left.  Whatever your political views, this gender divide is not a good thing – it is likely to create further barriers between men and women and create less equitable outcomes in the workplace and beyond.

How did we get here?

A large part of a DEI efforts in the past 20 – 30 years have mostly focused on the D (Diversity).  Many would say rightly so.  We absolutely needed better representation of women and ethnically diverse people across large swathes of industry, from the junior ranks to the board.  And huge progress has been made.  Every organisation that I have spoken to on this subject will talk about how different their company and / or industry is from where it was 20 years ago.

And that success has been based on amazing work that has enabled the empowerment of women and others from traditionally under-represented groups.  Massive investment has gone into awareness, leadership programmes, mentoring, sponsoring, etc. etc. focused on those from those more marginalised groups.  Progress has been made – but arguably, those efforts have often been on “fixing” those people from the under-represented groups.

Progress has also been made because of those from majority groups who have either put themselves forward or been called in by others to become allies, advocates or accomplices to these changes.  For example, most senior women I have spoken to, will talk about a senior male sponsor who made a real difference in support they career aspirations and enabling the journey to the position that they wanted in their careers.  More broadly, male ally programmes, for example, have made a difference.

But we are not done.  And the approaches I have just highlighted are no longer enough.  What got us here, won’t get us there.  It is time to pivot and look at new approaches.

What does the data tell us?

If you look at the data, there are a number of lenses showing strong progress between 2010 and 2020 and then, over the last 2 – 3 years, the data is to flat-lining or a few places, getting worse.  Using gender as an example, here are 3 data points that I think illustrate this quite clearly:

• In our Men for Inclusion analysis of the gender pay gap, in 2017, the overall median gender pay gap between men and women was 11.9%.  By 2023, it was 11.4%.  Hardly a meteoric reduction.
• In 2015, according to McKinsey’s women in the workplace report, only 37% of first level managers in Corporate America were women (despite men and women entering the workplace at roughly 50/50 levels).  By 2023, it was 39%.  So it is changing at roughly 0.25% per year.  Only another 44 years to go on this one then.
• According to the Energy & Utility Skills’ Inclusion Measurement Framework report, 28.2% of women left the Energy and Utilities sector in 2022.  In 2023, it was 29.6%.  Despite amazing efforts to attract more women into those sectors, the rate at which they were leaving is accelerating.

In my experience, when most companies realise that they need better representation, particularly in their senior ranks, their efforts follow this 4 step process (again using gender as our lens).

1. Hire more women
2. Develop and promote more women internally
3. Improve retention by adding better women friendly policies (maternity, flexible working, menopause, etc.)
4. Invest in the culture so that women feel that they get the right colleague support to make it worth staying.

Unfortunately, this can be quite an expensive approach.  Companies spend a lot of time and money on 1 – 3, but still find (as the energy and utilities are possibly finding out now) that those women don’t stick around because 4 has not been done.

We think this 4 step plan is potentially in the wrong order.  If we started #4 before the others, they would probably a) be a lot cheaper and b) have a lot more chance of success.  Because changing culture is not about a focus on diversity, representation, “others”, it is a job for all of us.  It is the I in DEI – it is about Inclusion and everyone has a stake in that, including straight white men.  Inclusion is the fertile ground in which diversity can flourish.  It is also about recognising career barriers for everyone – not just under-represented groups and having better solutions that do support everyone.

Building an Inclusive Culture for All

So how do we build this new inclusive culture.  Here are 4 steps that I think we should all consider:

1. Turn the mirror on ourselves.  Hand on heart, are we always as inclusive as we could be?  Do we check our own biases?  Do we intervene on behalf of others?  Do we go out of our way to make sure everyone feels included?  Do our actions align with our well-intentioned words?  And if not, how are we going make change to do better?  And after some self-reflection, ask for some feedback – how inclusive do your colleagues think you are?
2. We have to listen more to everyone.  Not just those from under-represented groups with a very different lived experience to us, but to the typical majority group too.  If they feel that they are not having the careers they would like to have, we need to understand why and look for solutions for them too.
3. Bridge the divide.  We need to bring everyone together and have some tough conversations.  We don’t have to all agree all the time, but we have to find solutions to better workplace culture that can work for everyone, not just for a select few.  Most people want very similar things from their careers – they want to feel that they get opportunities, that they are treated equitably, that if they work hard (and smart) that they are rewarded for it and they want to work with others who are supportive and inclusive.
4. Make improving the culture a continuous programme of work.  Don’t wait for your HR, DEI or ERG teams to do it for you.  Think about how positive the culture in your team is and look at ways you could measure it.  Bring your team together and discuss how to make that culture even better.  Define what a great culture looks like (or use a company definition if it exists) and look at how well your team measures up against it.  Then work on where improvements can be made.

It seems to me that we are at a pivot point on building equitable workplaces.  Do we carry on focusing on “fixing” the under-represented groups, setting targets and quotas and continuing to sow the seeds of division?  Or do we change our strategy and focus on Inclusion, focus on everyone, listen to all concerns and find better workplaces solutions for all.  If we want great organisations with a great culture, the choice for me is clear.

So, given it is International Men’s Day, now is the time to start on this new strategy.  Steps 2 – 4 above need to start with engaging the disengaged.  We need to talk to and listen to, those men who feel that they are not being listened to.  We have to recognise their struggles too.  We must work with them to find a more positive narrative about the role of men and get them involved. Now is the time; time for change;  time for inclusion; time for everyone.

(1) https://aibm.org/commentary/no-young-men-are-not-turning-away-from-gender-equality/

(2) https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998