A number of people online are declaring that some of the best bosses in the workforce are middle-aged dads who have daughters.
The reason? Male bosses with daughters are more likely to see the world through their daughters’ eyes, sympathize with women’s struggles, and go to bat for them when it comes to promotions and pay raises. There’s research that backs up some of these ideas, and it’s something more people have noticed anecdotally and started discussing online, Fortune recently reported.
As one TikTok user describes the appeal: “He’s no longer the main character in his own life,” adding that a girl-dad boss has more awareness around issues like “sexism, confidence gaps, unfair expectations. . . . He listens more, he’s less reactive, he’s got perspective. That self-awareness arc makes for a better leader.”
Another proud TikTok user gushed, looking pleased as punch: “When your Gen X girl dad mentor at work tells you he’s proud of you.”
“POV: corporate girlies when they find a male manager that’s a girl dad,” wrote another. In the clip she is celebrating and dancing around the room.
Many in the comments agreed with her sentiment. “When they have daughters it changes the game,” one person commented. “Someone needs to do a case study on why they are the best managers,” another suggested.
It’s not just hearsay—data has long backed this up.
Having a daughter can also push male CEOs toward greater support for women in the workplace as they become more attuned to the struggles they face, research from the Stockholm School of Economics, Erasmus University, and Jönköping University confirmed. A male CEO having a daughter, rather than a son, correlates with a 4% increase in female directors and an 11% increase in female employees, the research found.
Further research discovered firms at which senior partners had more daughters than sons hired more women partners. They also performed better than their competitors. At firms where senior partners had more daughters, the female hiring rate was 11.87%—but at firms where the partners had equal numbers of daughters and sons, it dropped to 9.78%. It dropped even further for those who had more sons than daughters.
It’s not only in business that girl dads are making the world a better place. U.S. congressmen with daughters are also found to vote more liberally on women’s issues, especially on reproductive rights, as do U.S. federal judges.