Andffetto-daughter. Inspired by their daughters, many top manager and entrepreneur fathers give more space and credit to women in the company. Bocconi research investigates this new aspect of management. The New York Times he elected it word of the year 2010 and eight years later then British Prime Minister Theresa May brought her to the international political limelight, using her to denounce Jeremy Corbyn, who, as an opposition leader, allegedly used contemptuous tones against her in Parliament, making her feel the object of “mansplaining“. Here is the word, which in the meantime in Italy has also resounded this winter in the theater with The mansplaining explained to my daughter by the comedian Valerio Lundini now on Rai2 with the third season of his A piece of Lundini. Untranslatable into Italian, mansplaining stigmatizes the patronizing attitude of men who tend to give unsolicited explanations to a woman, with an opinionated and simplifying tone. And even if those who explain something to someone with a condescending tone are now generally boiling, the prefix “man” remains there and catches the eye.
Fathers of daughters vs mansplaining
Someone who could get away with reducing the risk of running into a certain type of explanation but there is: the fathers. Of a female. It’s called the daughter effect, and it’s more than a mansplaining vaccine. Maddalena Ronchi, a researcher at Bocconi in Milan, discovered it thanks to the chatter between her friends. «They told me that at the end of the master, the only job offers had come from managers with daughters. Sifting through the sociological literature, I then saw that in fact this subclass of fathers is more prone to gender equality and in the electoral sphere he makes more liberal choices, for example by worrying that the possibility of abortion is protected. I then dug into the managerial field to understand if the arrival of a daughter affects the decisions made, ”says Ronchi, who was based on Danish statistics, the only ones that reported qualifications and family data.
“The daughter effect explains the increase in pink hires, high-level wage equality and the fact that awareness of gender inequality changes over time. If twenty years ago the best a father could wish for a female it was a good marriage, today it is more and more a good job. Finally, it must be said that at the same time corporate performance does not decline: paternity does not recede “, he concludes.
When the company inherits it from the daughters
Another illuminating fact comes from the industrial district of Monza and Brianza: compared to nine per cent of Italian family businesses led by womenhere the keys of the company, where there was, they went to the female heir in almost half of the caseswe read in Top500 +, a research by Cerif (Family Business Research Center) where the thought goes to who will surely have used Eve’s grace in The lady of the roses by Pierre Pinaud (still in cinemas), when he says: “My father left me his dreams and all the mess they cause.”
“My father was born in 1943,” says Michela Conterno, CEO of della Lati, a company in the Varese area. “We have never discussed inclusion since our sector, that of plastics for engineering use, is historically masculine. But he has always been sensitive to femininity. He grew up with a separated mother and two daughters, who were also twins. It was inevitable that 55 percent were women on the board and 40 percent in top management? Many years ago he actually tried to involve an uninterested cousin in the business management … The generational change, inevitably in my favor, took place successfully and during Covid he told me: “Michela, how glad I am that you are to manage the company in this difficult moment “. The greatest satisfaction of my life “concludes Michela.
Will there be “womansplaining” after the mansplaining?
With the fading of mansplaining, will “womansplaining” make its way? “Women are more attentive to details, they have a more complete vision. I notice it every day, also thanks to my daughter »confesses Ciro Mongillo of Eos Im, an investment company in private equity and renewable energy (over a third of the employees are women), and father of Valeria, head of a central sector. “It helped me to be more balanced in the world of work, to sign an important UN manifesto, to link our name to the Milano per la Scala Foundation, to the Italian Chamber of Commerce in London and to a series of social projects aimed at schools and social networks . Daughter effect also means growing as a man, especially when working with women who are also a strong side for fathers “he concludes.
Speaking of parents: Silvia Spronelli is president of Solo Rents, the “daughter company” of her father’s, which now has 300 agencies in Italy. “I opened a real estate agency in Cesena at the end of the 1980s,” says his father Loris. «Silvia was often waiting for the specialization to become a magistrate but in the height of the real estate boom of the 90s she has an intuition. She notices the difference in treatment given to those who entered the agency only to rent. You want to dedicate a brand only to locations, help to make it happen, at the age of 40, she takes it in hand, ”says Spronelli who has 60 per cent of female employees in the office.
Daughter effect and intellectual parity
Father and daughter (Getty Images).
Behind the milestones of the daughter effect, much remains to be done. “Years ago, I heard in the office saying ‘she’s got her head right’ about the married man who became a dad. In short, he had stopped hunting and would have been more efficient. Instead, a woman would have been the potential absentee. After all, who would have reproached a man for spending little time with his daughter at home? Well, if we have to talk about the daughter effect, I would start by inviting fathers to ask for “intellectual equality”! Don’t let yourself be treated like idiots: if you are asked for less, you will know how to do less and less, and when you have a daughter you realize more “specifies Domitilla Ferrari, author of The bad boss (Longanesi). «In any case, if you think that once upon a time the Marketing and Communication office was reserved for the manager’s daughter and the role of CEO for her son, today we have to celebrate. More and more women take the reins of society and when it happens they innovate its culture. Because? With a son the father embarks on a macho race, with the daughter he is more open because it is natural for him that she has a different point of view so that she eventually gives in to new proposals. But I suspect that the higher you go, the more you will remain “the daughter of” »she concludes. The “daddy of” in the meantime has however changed, never mind.
“With the growth of my two daughters, my ability to listen also towards male colleagues has grown»Confesses Alessandro Giaume, 62, Innovation Director of the consulting firm Bip. “I see managers with daughters more aware of how much it is necessary to be attentive to questions and behaviors. I would say that we are more focused on the pursuit of fairness in decisions»Concludes Giaume. Meanwhile, speaking of fairness, a task for fathers (ie: reading The word dad by Cristiano Cavina, Bompiani) and one for the daughters: write him a dedication, on that book, write easy words especially for them, the men.
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