Gary Ford, co-author of the recently released “The Accidental Sexist” is extremely modest about his contributions to levelling the playing field for men and women. “My wife keeps telling me she will expose me as an imposter because I don’t do everything I want to do. I don’t have a naturally high EQ. I’m a typical bloke,” he jokes. Perhaps that is where his strength as a male ally lies.

Having worked for almost 40 years in IT, a “heavily male-centric” milieu, Ford’s last job was with JP Morgan in the UK, where he helped build the male allies programme, engaging men in gender equity discussions. After quitting the corporate world, “I thought of things I could offer other companies.” He searched for male allies on LinkedIn and stumbled across Brian Ballantine, a Luxembourg-Briton who created the grand duchy's male allies network. The two immediately hit it off, organising awareness-raising events on a voluntary basis.

More focus

“We began to feel we were becoming the entertainment,” Ford recalls. “Oh look, a bunch of strange men who want to talk about gender equality, let’s invite them along!” More importantly, they struggled to attract men to engage in the conversation. “We realised to have an impact, it needed more focus.”

The project evolved into a business advising and training firms in gender equity, which has been running for three months. The first observations, says Ford, are that “there is demand but there isn’t much money from what I’ve seen [...] The women’s groups we work with have a few thousand pounds for an event instead of tens or hundreds of thousands. This is what it takes to radically change a culture.” Unexpectedly, the pandemic has served to further the cause. “There’s research to show how impactful the pandemic has been on the careers of women. I think there’s a resurgence to think about gender,” Ford says.

The Accidental Sexist

The pandemic was also a trigger for Ford to put pen to paper about his learnings. When consultancy work dried up in 2020, he started on “The Accidental Sexist: A Handbook for Men on Workplace Diversity and Inclusion”. The project snowballed, attracting collaborators Stephen Koch, a senior leader of large teams in finance with whom Ford had worked for the JP Morgan male allies programme, and Jill Armstrong, who led the “Collaborating with Men" research project on men and inclusion.

The practical guide on building a workplace where everyone is a gender equal ally found support with publishers Rethink Press, a hybrid house using Amazon publish-on-demand tools. Published in May 2021, for a while it topped the Amazon lists for HR and business ethics. While Ford acknowledges it won’t make him rich, the book is one tool of many that is needed to bring a cultural change. Ford points out that gender equality laws have been in place in the UK since the 1970s, “but nothing is changing”. This, he says, is because well-intentioned people “underestimate the size of the task. It’s not purely a financial commitment, it’s an investment of time and that’s hard.”

Most people don’t think they are the problem

Engaging with their target audience is also tricky because and the barriers for women to access careers aren’t obvious to men and “most people don’t think they are the problem”. Ford says he is finding it easier to have these difficult conversations with men, and to expose his own ignorance and vulnerability.

“I think it has opened the door for a fascinating conversation that gets different every time you have it.” Ford's commitment also comes from a personal place. A father of two girls, he says: “I’d like them to be able to work in an environment where they can pursue a career without additional barriers.”

“The Accidental Sexist” is available to order from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, WH Smith and Blackwells.