Being a father to school-aged daughter 'makes men less sexist'

Being the father of a school-aged daughter makes men less sexist, according to a new study.

The team behind the work say the findings support the idea that men become more aware of the challenges facing women when they see the female experience of life up close through their offspring – something dubbed the “mighty girl” effect.

More fundamentally, they add, it pushes back against the idea that people’s views are fixed after their formative years, suggesting efforts to improve attitudes on gender equality should not be confined to the classroom.

“Basically we are saying there is scope for changing attitude later in life,” said Dr Joan Costa-i-Font, co-author of the research from the London School of Economics.

While some previous research has suggested having daughters might shift a man’s attitudes, the new study looks at when this might occur.

Casual sexism creates victims. We should acknowledge that and police it | Libby Brooks Read more

Writing in the journal Oxford Economic Papers, Costa-i-Font and colleagues describe how they examined data from the British household panel survey, conducted every year between 1991 and 2012. The team tracked responses from more than 5,000 men and more than 6,300 women who had a child under the age of 21 living with them – regardless of their relationship with that child.

They then looked at individuals’ levels of agreement with statements such as “a husband’s job is to earn money; a wife’s job is to look after the home and family”, and how that changed over time, combining those who agreed or were neutral on the point into one category and those who disagreed into another.

The results reveal that men with daughters were more likely to disagree with traditional attitudes than those without – provided the daughter was school-aged.

Female scholars are marginalised on Wikipedia because it's written by men | Victoria Leonard Read more

After taking into account factors including education, marital status, number of children, employment and income, the probability of holding a traditional attitude to the division of work fell from just over 37% of men who had yet to have a child or had only sons, to 33% among those who had least one daughter of secondary school age – an 11% relative reduction.

“The effect doesn’t kick in immediately,” said Costa-i-Font.

While the team do not look at why raising a girl triggers such a shift, they say the findings tie in with the idea that fathers’ increased understanding of females’ lives is important. “They experience first-hand all the issues that [exist] in a female world and then that basically moderates their attitudes towards gender norms and they become closer to seeing the full picture from the female perspective.”

But, he added, the effect would not be seen in men who already held feminist views, and no effect was seen in mothers.

Costa-i-Font said the effect was also seen when the team looked at how men responded to the statement “both the husband and the wife should contribute to household income”. They also found that couples were less likely to have the man working but not the woman when they had a school-aged daughter.

“It is not just that we find effects on attitudes; we find effects as well on behaviours, which is important because attitudes could be cheap talk, but behaviours are not,” said Costa-i-Font.

But he admitted the study has a number of limitations, including that it only looks at cases where children are in the same household as their parents.

Natasha Devon, an author and campaigner on mental health and gender equality, said an important consideration is how to change the attitudes of men who don’t have daughters.

“We need men to see women as human beings even if they don’t have a good relationship with their mum or sisters or have a daughter,” she said.

“I think we need to find out what it is specifically about having a daughter that changes men’s minds and look at how we can ingrain that more into the socialisation process for all boys from an early age.”