Reimagining Gender Equity: Real Change with MARC and Gender Partnership

From the MARC Team at Catalyst.

From September 14 to 16 we organized a global event called?‘Real Change with MARC: Reimagining Gender Equity’, a milestone in the evolution of MARC?and Catalyst.

Over three days, speakers, MARC alumni, leaders, teams from across Supporter and non-Supporter organizations, and Catalyst employees came together virtually and on-site in Panama, the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore. This event enabled individual and collective reflection; allowed us to connect as humans through our lived experiences, challenges, and aspirations for the future; and immersed us deeper into exploration, empathy, and emotions surrounding the role of men in gender equity.

Using the framework of "How We Think, How We Lead, How We Grow, and How We Care," we delved into the topics of masculinity, gender partnership, the collective responsibility for engaging men in DEI, and?much more.

If you registered for our virtual program but were not able to attend each session, recordings from both days are?available on demand?through October 17, 2022. Simply click on the event link above and log in to the Attendee Hub. Click “On Demand” to watch the recordings.

The takeaways from the event were many and nuanced. Here are a few key areas that we wanted to highlight:

• Language.?Our words matter. If inclusion is a value and a priority, we can be more mindful and inclusive in the way we speak. Yet we must also avoid being too academic and losing touch with our colleagues and employees.
• Engaging Men.?We can acknowledge the fears men have about advancing gender equity without absolving them of responsibility for taking action and leading advocacy efforts.
• Healthy Masculinity.?Boys and young men often want to express a more progressive and healthy masculinity. However, they are not receiving permission from those around them to express it.
• Masculine Anxiety.?Men feel distress when they do not think they are living up to society’s rigid standards of masculinity. This anxiety is strongly linked to men’s willingness to interrupt sexism in the workplace.
• Vulnerability.?Self-disclosing and sharing personal stories helps to support mental health in the workplace. We need to invest in each other’s mental health and talk about it in the same way we talk about our physical health.
• Burnout.?It’s about more than overwork and long hours. To prevent it, we must look beyond self-care and support managers in their ability to have meaningful conversations with their teams.?
• Gender Partnership.?We are all impacted by gender norms, and we are all accountable for dismantling them and striving for sustainable, scalable culture change.

To coincide with the Real Change With MARC event, we released a new Catalyst tool focused on?gender partnership?and exploring how people of all genders interact within and across genders to advance equity and inclusion and bring about lasting culture change. This tool will enable deeper conversations about how gender affects the opportunities, careers, and daily experiences of employees in the workplace. It includes real-life stories from MARC program participants about how they have become better gender partners, as well as?a questionnaire that can help you create a personal action plan you can use every day to promote gender equity.

We are deeply grateful to every supporting and participating organization–especially our hosts Chevron, P&G, Dow, and Google–and to every person that made this event a success. Thank you all!

Sincerely,

The MARC Team

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