The Real Gift We’re Giving this Father’s Day
A Love Letter to Our Daughters, a Commitment to our Partners and a Promise to Our Sons
By Vital Voices Solidarity Council Members Alvin Allgood, Gary Barker, Jackson Katz, Marc Pritchard, Alex Prout, Ryan Soscia and Salman Sufi
This post was published on June 16, 2019
Every Father’s Day, we enjoy receiving gifts like the “Greatest Dad” baseball caps, ties, jazzy socks, and sports-themed greeting cards that populate convenience stores on every corner. And every Father’s Day, we also enjoy the opportunity to recognize the men in our lives who have helped shape us, and to reflect on the responsibility we have as fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, godfathers and everything in between to build a better future.
As providers and leaders, we recognize that the role of a father is life altering. Being a father is a responsibility that includes shaping the next generation of leaders, and leaving those future leaders with a world better than the one we inherited. And part of our responsibility as fathers to make this world a better place must include making it intentionally gender-equal.
In a gender-equal world men and boys are not unnecessarily aggressive or devoid of emotions. In a gender-equal world women and girls are not seen as objects or second-class citizens, nor are they vulnerable to violence. A gender-equal world creates space for gender identities to flourish, free from gender-based violence or viciousness rooted in hatred and misogyny.
So rather than a typical thank you note for the cards and caps, we’d like to use this Father’s Day to give a gift back.
To our sons: we give the gift of leading by example. We pledge to be the role models you deserve to see. We pledge to be men who stand firm and are active participants in the fight to end gender-based violence.
To our partners and the mothers of our children: we pledge to do our fair share of the care work, since we know that, globally, women continue to carry out on average more than three times the amount of it.
To our daughters: we pledge to create a world in which you feel safe and supported in all ways. One that values your contributions and makes way for you the change you want to see in it.
This Father’s Day, we pledge to give the gift of continued hard work –work to end gender-based violence. It is a fight that will only be won if we are at the table. It is a fight that will only be won if our eyes are open to the current reality in which we live and our resolve to change it.
An estimated 15 million adolescent girls worldwide have experienced forced sex. Fifty-eight percent of the 87,000 women intentionally killed in 2017 were killed by intimate partners or family members. Women and girls account for 71 percent of trafficking victims in the world. And an estimated 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced either physical or sexual violence.
This gender-based violence has no place in a gender-equal future. As fathers, we recognize our responsibility to shape a generation of leaders who can see that future come to fruition.
As members of the Vital Voices Solidarity Council, we are among just one of many groups of men standing firm as allies in the fight to end gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is not a “woman’s problem.” It is a stain across society, and it is all of our responsibility to bring gender-based violence to an end — for generations to come.
We wish all fathers and father figures a happy Father’s Day, and hope you’ll join us in continuing the work today, tomorrow and into the future.
The authors of this piece are members of the Vital Voices Solidarity Council, a unique endeavor bringing together men who are allies in the fight to raise global awareness on behalf of women and girls around the world.
