Our 850th Dad in the Limelight is Jeffery Tobias Halter. I want to thank Jeffery Tobias Halter for being a part of this series. It has been great getting connected with him and now sharing Jeffery Tobias Halter with all of you.
1) Tell me about yourself, (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge)
Hi. My name is Jeffery Tobias Halter. On the internet, you may know me as @YWOMEN, the creator of the Father of a Daughter Initiative or the guy who gives keynote speeches in red high heels to make a point that men and women are having vastly different experiences in the workplace. My work is about generating the powerful conversations needed to advance women and engage men. We’ve been talking about women in the workplace and marketplace for more than 20 years, but the pace of change has lacked a true sense of urgency, at least until recently with Gretchen Carlson’s #BeFierce book and the #MeToo movement sweeping the globe. We’ve reached a real tipping point, and it’s crucial to have men as part of the conversation. As 85 percent of senior leadership in this country, men may be 85 percent of the problem, but we can also be 85 percent of the solution.
You’ll find me:
- Twitter: @YWomen
- Facebook: YWomen/Father of Daughter Initiative
- Linkedin: Jeffery Tobias Halter
- TEDx Talk in red heels:
In real life, I’m a son, husband, father and now a grandfather!
2) Tell me about your family
I’m a Baby Boomer and just celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary. We have a son and daughter, both grown and married, and we now have one granddaughter.
3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?
In many regards, it’s a tale of two lives. I had a sales career in the Fortune 500. As was the case in the 80s and 90s, you traveled a lot, relocated when the company said so (during one stretch moving up in the company, we moved eight times in 10 years) and tried to raise your family. Around 2000, I would transition from sales management to diversity education and strategy. This is when I first realized, like most men, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Not just about this “women’s thing,” but about all the things that we, as men, pay little to no attention to on a daily basis, such as sexism, bias and white male privilege. During the past 15+ years, I’ve come up to speed. I’ve opened my eyes, ears and mind.
My generation of Boomer fathers wanted to raise strong and independent daughters. We encouraged them to excel academically and to seek meaningful careers. But when they graduated from college and were offered 80 cents for every dollar earned by our sons for the same jobs, we kept silent. After a 30-year career in corporate America, I’ve come to realize that most men never make the connection that if we, as fathers of daughters, aren’t advocating for women’s advancement and workplace equity, we are allowing society to place a lower value on our daughters than our sons.
Most men still lead very compartmentalized lives. We put on our suits and head off to work laser-focused on the workday ahead. We may periodically handle carpool or make an emergency grocery run on the way home but during the workday, we rarely make any connection between family and work. And we certainly don’t see the correlation between what goes on in the workplace and the futures our daughters.
Ask yourself would you want your daughter to work at your company? Consider the snide comments, inappropriate jokes, mansplaining, assumptions that a woman should take notes in a meeting or how your female co-workers are “talked over” and their ideas are ignored or hijacked by men.
With this in mind, I created the Father of a Daughter (FOD) Initiative to help guys make the connection between advocating for women in the workplace and creating a brighter future for their own daughters.
3.5) Tell us more about your Father of Daughter (FOD) Initiative:
The Father of Daughter Initiative is a roadmap for men to make the connection between women at work and their daughters and to take action to bring about change for the women in their lives. Some actions include:
- Encouraging qualified women to apply for positions when they become available
- Mentoring or sponsoring a female co-worker
- Having a candid conversation with a female co-worker about her experiences working in your company and industry
- Becoming aware of and correcting micro-bias in the workplace
Of course, you don’t have to be a father to participate. The Women Championing Women and Advocating for Women pledges provide road maps for anyone who is looking for actionable steps to take on a daily basis to create an equitable future.
4) What advice would you give to other fathers?
It’s time for fathers to break our silence and commit to advocating for our daughters, our working wives and female colleagues. Based on today’s wage gap, a woman starting her career now will lose $430,480 over a 40-year career, according to a report by the National Women’s Law Center. For Latinas, this lifetime wage gap totals $1,007,080, and for African American women, the losses are $877,480. I think men should find those figures to be offensive and resolve to correct them!
5) How have you come to balance parenthood and outside life?
LOL. Don’t think that’s possible. The balance comes later. Raising a family today is totally different than in my day. Everyone works 50 to 60 hours a week, commutes and never shuts down. I think being a parent today is the single toughest job in the world. And I think organizations, specifically the business community, has to be a part of the solution. Unemployment is basically at zero in this country. If you as a company cannot adapt to your employees’ needs, whatever they may be, you will continue to lose them to companies that do “get it.” Additionally, men have to take on more child-rearing responsibilities as well as more housework, cooking and laundry. We, everyone, is running at an unsustainable pace, and we need to just get through it one day at a time.
6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with?
Many men have come to understand the business case for the influence and impact of women in the marketplace and the workplace. This the analytical or “head piece,” which tends to be a comfort zone for many men. To get men deeply involved and engaged in women’s issues, they must come to understand and develop a strong personal conviction that bias is wrong and impacting women they know personally. This is the “heart piece” that will help drive the perception of the gender pay gap and other inequities from “women’s issues” to workplace issues that must be solved with a sense of urgency.
7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far?
For me, as I started to do this “women’s advancement work,” my peer-group of macho buddies kind of gave me a lot of grief. It only took telling them one time that I am not doing this for their approval but so that their daughters will have more opportunities did they get it.
8) What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?
I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. One of my most important values is that you can literally do anything with an education and hard work. I got my master’s at age 40, and I’ve instilled this value in my children. Both are happily married, in good careers and both have master’s degrees.
If you have any questions for Jeffery Tobias Halter, please leave a comment here and I will make sure that he gets them so that he may be able to respond!
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