The Arc of History: The DE&I Change Curve
Given the strong push back we are seeing to gender equality and related diversity and inclusion work in certain areas, it is easy to feel a little despondent about continuing progress.
The daily stories about equity-related programmes & functions being shut down are the clear outward signs of a stalling in progress that has probably been happening for a few years now. A lot of improvements have been made in the past couple of decades (I am sure many would argue but still not enough) but by most metrics, progress has stalled recently. You only need to look at gender pay gap reporting to see that.
But with a longer historical perspective, we can see more fundamental shift, certainly within the UK. With a starting point of the clear equirement being a 50% split between binary genders in all walks of life, here are a few data points:
- In 1960, only 4% of MPs were women; in 2025 it is 40%
- In 1960, only 42% of women were in employment; it is now 72%
- In 1960, 2 – 3% of nurses were men; it is now 9%
- In 1960, the number of stay at home fathers was “statistically negligible”; it now numbers around 141,000 men
We are still going through a fundamental shift of the traditional roles and responsibilities of men and women in the home and in the workplace.
We have moved on from an era where there were clear “rules” and expectations of what men and women wanted to do with their lives and what they were good at. Men were the strong, resilient breadwinners; women the caring and nurturing homemakers. Today, we perceive gender more on a spectrum and have expectations that people, especially leaders, can be both strong and decisive as well as nurturing and emotional.
This is a change programme of monumental scale; the hardest change programme in the history of business. And like all change programmes, everyone needs support to move through the change curve and come out the other side. The change curve tends to look pretty similar, whatever the change is.
I would argue that a lot of our investment, both time and money, into supporting people through this change curve has been focused on women (and girls). And rightly so. We absolutely needed more women (and we still do) in boardrooms, in government, in local community leadership roles because gender balance fundamentally works and time and time again, delivers much better outcomes for everyone.
However, we have not invested as much in our men (and boys) and I think this a big reason why we are now struggling to make further progress. This is now one of the most urgent focus areas for all of us working in DEI.
I am not saying we should invest any less in women and girls (and any other traditionally underrepresented groups), but we need to get more men to the table. Our suggestion is to focus on Inclusion. Inclusion gives men a stake; it answers the fundamental “what’s in it for me” question. It is both asking them to help (because we need everyone to be support this macro-shift) but also recognising that their lives are not perfect either and we want to help them too. Inclusion is about solving the career (and life) challenges of everyone.
I personally don’t have all the answers, but I do know that the only way we are going to make progress is by getting men, women and those from all non-binary genders into a room and having some difficult conversations. Because, when we do that, I have seen ideas, action and progress coming to the fore. This is what we do at Men for Inclusion. We are here to spark conversation