Dads in the lead: Challenging parental leave stigmas
Submission deadline: 25 July 2025
First Publish Dates: 1-5 September 2025
As more men take parental leave, workplace dynamics are shifting, challenging traditional norms about caregiving roles. We’re looking for fathers to share their experiences of taking leave, the support they received, and how it has shaped their careers and families.
About the belonging at work campaign
We’re asking eligible Endorsed Employers to provide the testimonial from a father within their company who has utilized their parental leave policy.
The questions to answer
Supply the testimonial from one employee that answers the below questions:
- What was your parental leave experience, and how did it challenge or change your perspective on work-life balance?
- What barriers or stigmas did you face when taking parental leave, and how did your workplace support you?
- How do you believe encouraging more dads to take parental leave can positively impact workplace culture and family life?
Word limit: Maximum 300 words in total.
Keep in mind that your submission will be published along with submissions from other Endorsed Employers too. Here are some suggestions to consider to help yours stand out:
- Did you face any negative comments about the decision? How did you overcome these/how did your manager support you?
- Was there anything unusual about your parental leave approach? Did you take it later or earlier than men typically do in the company?
- What was the impact on your family, career or sense of self?
Potential article headlines
(These are only examples and will depend on the actual content submitted)
- Why more dads are taking parental leave and reshaping the workplace
- Breaking stereotypes: how fathers are leading the way in parental leave
- What happens when dads take the lead on caregiving at home and work
To submit your organization’s advocacy campaign contribution, complete the form below.
Please make sure your submission includes the name, pronouns, role title, and a picture of any person(s) we can attribute the answer to in the article.
FAQs
What type of images do you need?
Please ensure any headshot photos are high resolution (minimum 1MB), ideally taken against light and neutral backgrounds, with the individual’s face visible and not blurry, to ensure we can use them in the campaign.
Ensure to include a description of all images in the image file name, including the name, role title and pronouns of the pictured people.
How will the advocacy campaign content be shared?
The advocacy campaign content may be curated into any number of formats, including long-form articles, shorter carousel-style stories, videos, or infographics. Each content piece will then be shared across a variety of marketing platforms including our website, social media channels and newsletters. Where relevant we will also broadcast through our partner network and syndicate affiliations.
Will all my content be included?
Due to the high volume and variety of submissions for each focus area, we are unable to include every word of every supplied Endorsed Employers’ content. We will carefully adapt, edit, and curate the content to meet the needs of your organization, but also the needs of our audiences, while always maintaining the veracity of what has been supplied.
We rely on all our Endorsed Employers to provide content relevant to the topic details — the more relevant the content provided, the more space it will be given in any individual feature. Our team will be in touch if we need further clarification on your submission.
I need to speak to someone, who should I contact?
Please reach out to your DEI Account Manager, or campaigns@work180.co if you have further questions.
How will I know when a campaign is live?
Once the main campaign content piece is published, you will be provided with the links.
Please feel free to share these across your own channels. If there are specific hashtags that we are using for the campaign, we will provide these to you to utilize when sharing across your own social media platforms.
Will I get to view the campaign before it goes live?
No. The time between drafting, building the content, and publishing is very tight. This along with the number of stakeholders involved in each campaign, and the number of campaign content pieces a single submission may be involved in, it simply isn’t fair or feasible to allow any one client to approve the content before it’s published. We ask that clients get all the content they submit to be approved prior to submitting.