A morning on the playground gets founder Jason Modemann thinking. The Mawave CEO explains why the distribution of care work is crucial for equality at work.
Jason Modemann, CEO and founder of the Mawave agency and father of a daughter, started counting people on playgrounds – and suddenly he realized why equality at work often fails.
Last week I was at the playground with my little daughter on a Friday morning. While she played, I sat on a bench and at some point started counting the adults around me: eleven mothers, four grandmas – and me. Of course, this is not a scientifically based study that I have presented here. But it wasn’t the first time that I noticed this one-sided picture.
Eleven mothers, four grandmothers – and one father
The longer I sat there, the more I thought about a discussion that we have all the time in companies (which is of course important!): equality. We talk about women in leadership positions, career opportunities, quotas and modern working environments. At the same time, a normal Friday morning on the playground shows that imbalances start much earlier.
The figures are pretty clear: women in Germany do an average of 43.4 percent more unpaid care work than men. On average, that’s around 29.5 hours per week compared to 20.5 hours for men. And even when it comes to children’s sick days, mothers still cover around 73 percent of the lost days.
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When I read these statistics, it honestly gave me pause. For me, the question of equality is not just who sits in the meeting later, but also who organizes the pediatrician’s appointment in the morning. Anyone who spontaneously stays at home when the daycare calls. Who in the background ensures that everyday life functions at all.
I believe that we are starting the debate about equality in the wrong place. Because if care, care work and family responsibility still lie predominantly with mothers, then many people do not start their everyday working life with the same conditions.
Of course, one thing is clear: As a founder and managing director, I cannot solve this social reality. But I can acknowledge that it exists.
What framework conditions I create as an employer
And that’s exactly where it becomes concrete for me: equality doesn’t just start with policies or benefits, but with the question of what framework conditions we as employers create in order to do justice to the different realities of life. For me, flexible working hours, understanding of family obligations or the opportunity to combine family and work more individually are not benefits – for me, these are the prerequisites for performance to be evaluated fairly at all.
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Maybe that’s why the playground is actually a more honest indicator of equality than any company quota. Because as long as little changes there, we will probably have many of the discussions in the office over and over again.
Jason Modemann is the founder and managing director of the social media agency Mawave Marketing. At the age of 27, he leads over 150 employees. Mawave’s customers include Red Bull, Nike and Lidl. He is also the author of the book “Always hungry, never greedy.”