October is here and, I don’t know about you, but it now feels like we’re in the countdown to the end of the year.
The last few months have been a bit tough on the business front. A number of clients got cold feet and despite much effort to speak with potential podcast sponsors I’ve been getting lots of (polite) rejections one after the other.
A few weeks ago I felt like I was (sort) the character in a chapter in an entrepreneur autobiography where they start questioning whether they should give up on the idea and do something else. After weeks of nos, I then got a yes, followed by a couple of positive responses from organisations I’d previously got polite rejections from.
Not perfect, but good to restore some faith that other people also see value in the thing that you’re doing.
Beyond this there’s been various life admin to work through, some runs ahead of a race in a forest just out of Copenhagen in a few weeks and getting back in the studio for What The Denmark.
I hope you’ve been having a good start to the month. Now, on with the newsletter..!
🤔 Thinking
Things I’ve been thinking about last month
Should the law change so men take more paternity leave?
This has been a much-discussed debate in Denmark during September as a new law is up for discussion.
The current situation is that maternity/ paternity leave is:
- 14 weeks for mother
- 2 weeks for father
- 32 weeks for the parents to split between themselves
The proposition is to change it so there is a more equal compulsory split between parents (details here). In short:
- 11 weeks for mother
- 11 weeks for father
- 26 weeks for the parents to split between themselves
This has brought up some interesting questions/ responses from people in Denmark, and has been something a lot of people are talking about. Some of the arguments I have been relaying in my head:
It’s good to make parenting more equal from the start
This is a great way to get men more involved in raising kids. It’s been shown to have lots of benefits.
Yes, but it’s not necessary
If parents want to split paternity leave they can do so already
But a lot of men feel pressured to take the minimum paternity leave
Workplaces still default to men taking less. “Norms” aren’t updating quick enough
The state shouldn’t interfere in the choices of couples
The decisions around how to co-parent is something that should not be regulated in this way
But recognise the wider impact of men not doing more in paternity leave
Knock on effects in women’s careers, father-child relationships and gender equality
What about men whose careers will suffer?
It could jeopardise important projects, deals etc. if key people have to leave a business for 3 months
… welcome to the life of working mothers?
Should doing important work be the sole domain of men?
What about all about the self-employed men?
It’s much harder to just stop work when you are self-employed, even if you continue to get paid by the state
What about all about the self-employed women?
(But I get the distinction between paid employee and self-employed person)
Biologically, women need to spend more time with the baby
Last time I checked, men can’t breast feed
I’m not sure, but there must a middle ground
It might be not as straightforward, but having two parents involved in the early stages of a child’s life will also have other benefits that perhaps aren’t being factored in.
It seems to be quite a good example of how and whether regulation should be used to enact social change.
Some will take the stance that a) men taking 2 weeks paternity leave isn’t a problem and b) the fact that the option exists for men to take 2 + 32 weeks already means that there’s the ability for equality and so the reason it’s not is that people don’t want it. The government shouldn’t meddle.
People on the other side will more likely say that even though the options exist, more needs to be done to make people act.
I don’t feel I can say I think either solution is “perfect” but err more on the side of:
- Feeling the status quo needs to change regarding gender equality and this seems a policy to redress that
- Yes there are downsides to both approaches, but the broader outcome of more paternity is worth it in exchange for limiting the choices for families that wouldn’t instinctively do it
It seems a bit like the debate over whether there should be quotas for women in senior leadership roles. An imperfect solution, but at least doing something to shake up business as usual.
Anyway, I’m still open to debate on this! What do you think? If you have any thoughts/ feeling, please do share..!
🎧 Listening
A selection of podcasts etc. I’ve enjoyed recently. You can see the full list here
- How They Made Us Doubt Everything | BBC: great short series exploring the deliberate way that the tobacco industry obfuscated the truth about its link to lung cancer, and how this same playbook was adopted by oil companies regarding climate change 10-30 years ago
- Belize | Music Planet: Road Trip: fun podcast that explores the music of a country. This reminded me of when I was in Belize nine years ago, particularly Andy Palacio.
- Side note: I then went and found my old travel blog post from when I visited a particularly musical town in Belize. It was quite amusing – especially the lengths I had to take to find and then transfer music files to my iPod as the only way to listen..!
- How We Approach Compound Words | Word Matters: some language geekery from the editors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Light-hearted discussion including about how, linguistically “booty call” and “butt dial” both follow the format {area of body} {making a phone call} and yet have very different meanings…
📖 Reading
- How To Get Rich | Felix Dennis: bit of a crass title but some good business principles amongst at times tiring anecdotes
- Overcoming Hate Through Dialogue | Özlem Cekic: honest book about hate speech and bigotry. Written by a Turkish-born Muslim Danish politician who describes her journey of being spat at on the streets of Copenhagen, to hating Danes, to receiving death threats, to visiting her haters for a coffee.
📼 Watching
- Cruella | Disney+: the prequel to 101 Dalmatians. Enjoyable watch set in 1960s/70s London – Emmas Thompson + Stone clearly having a lot of fun. The film was mentioned in a podcast interview I sat in on earlier this year with the producer talking about her own dog
- Ted Lasso: it continues to delight. Fun discovery that all of the characters have Twitter accounts
- Audrey: biopic on Audrey Hepburn. After watching, I realised how little I knew about her. Fascinating life story – easy to see why she was idolised