According to a new study by Harvard University, US judges who have daughters are more likely to rule in a ‘feminist’ direction on gender-related cases. Which made us wonder – have we all inadvertently taught our fathers to be more feminist?
The study, which looked at 2,600 rulings made by 240 judges at the US Court of Appeal, states that this effect was mostly driven by male, Republican judges – ie the group least likely to rule in a ‘feminist’ direction in other circumstances – and certainly seems to indicate that daughters can influence their father’s point of view in quite a broad way.
The study even speculated that this played out in the infamous 1973 Roe vs Wade case, which effectively decriminalised abortion in the US. The daughter of Judge Harry Bluckmun, who wrote the ruling, became pregnant as a teenager and dropped out of college.
Other research suggests that having a daughter leads to most men developing more progressive views on gender ideology – in both the UK and the US – with some showing that it can even make a man more likely to vote in support of women’s issues, particularly with regard to reproductive rights. Conversely, there’s little evidence of a change in mothers’ attitudes to gender issues.
The thinking is that with the birth of a daughter, men become more aware of and sympathetic to gender inequalities. So, although you’ll probably never hear your dad utter the phrase, ‘I’m a feminist’, your very presence has probably made him... a bit more feminist.
All of which is rather refreshing, really. We spend so much time fixating on how important it is for young women to have a good relationship with their fathers, and how, if you don’t, it can fuck you up for life (can anyone spell daddy issues?), it’s nice to look at how we’ve done our bit to influence them as well.
So next time your dad starts grumbling about reality TV, social media or how much time you spend on your phone, remember that he’s probably far more right-on than you give him credit for.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.