What’s Good For The Goose…

What is feminism’s next battle? Men.

No, not fighting them, but championing their causes. After all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Newsweek has declared the battle of the sexes over, and quoted Gloria Steinem saying: “Women’s liberation is men’s liberation too.”

Apparently the fact that we need men is news (although as someone who likes to open pickle jars I have always known that to be true).

• We’re not talking about Mr. Cleaver bringing home the bacon—we need men so that we can excel at work, to level the playing field at home. We need them as dads, partners, and cheerleaders—from the classroom to the boardroom. So let’s retire the tired old “battle of the sexes” war cry—equality should never have been a zero-sum equation.

So, if it is true that united we stand and divided we fall, how exactly do we help one another?

The more women there are in boardrooms (not making the coffee) the better the bottom line:

• McKinsey estimates that the United States could increase GDP by 9 percent if we achieved true equity at work.

Paternity leave helps moms maintain a career and helps dads bond with their kids:

• It’s no coincidence that Iceland has the most generous paternity-leave program in the modern world—three months!—and also, the smallest wage gap.

Women and men work better together, so let’s get some men in the classroom in as well as women in science labs:

• Recent research from the London Business School suggests that productivity levels go up when men and women work in tandem—in part because gender parity counters the idea of groupthink, and reduces the sprouting of likeminded groups that defend ideas that may be ill conceived.

The masculinity isn’t dead — it is needed like never before. The question is whether this generation is willing to man-up.