Caring Fathers and Gender (In)Equality?

The involvement of fathers in nurturing and raising children is regarded as one way of eroding cultural and social inequalities between genders. The aim of this paper is to determine whether there is genuinely an erosion of gender inequalities in those families where fathers contribute to child nurture in the early phases of a child’s life, or whether the status quo is merely modified. It examines when gender equality is (or can be) achieved in families and what the relationship is between gender equality in the family and gender inequality in society. The paper is based on a qualitative study conducted in 2006, in which semi-structured interviews were used to capture the ways in which parents construct their parenting and non-parenting roles, and how they form and perceive their parenting and gender identity. To analyse this issue, the paper also goes beyond this one study and looks at findings from other research and studies related to this issue.