Rise of the “Playpen Man”: The missing half of gender equity

For decades, gender equity has rightly centred on the rise of women. It has asked how economies, workplaces and public policy can remove the barriers that keep women from participating fully in economic and civic life. In Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, this work has been led by committed professionals, economists, academics and policymakers. It has produced awareness, workplace reforms, leadership platforms and long-overdue recognition.

That work remains necessary. Global indices continue to show that full gender parity is still generations away, particularly in economic participation and political representation. But the next stage of gender equity will not be achieved by looking only at women. It will also require us to look more honestly at men who are already changing, often quietly, and often without the systems needed to support them.

While the story of her has advanced, the story of the silent him has evolved in parallel. Yet because our institutions have been so focused on correcting historic injustice against women, they have often missed a subtler shift: a growing number of men are no longer content to live inside the old provider-only model of masculinity.

They want to earn, but also to care. They want to lead, but also to be present. They want partnerships that are not merely supportive, but genuinely shared. They are navigating a new kind of adulthood, one in which work, parenting, domestic responsibility and emotional presence all compete for legitimacy.

This emerging figure deserves a name. I call him the “Playpen Man”.

The man inside several circles

The phrase is not meant to diminish him. It is meant to describe the space he now occupies. A playpen is bounded, visible and watched; it allows movement, but only within limits set by others. Many modern men find themselves in a similar enclosure. They are encouraged to be progressive partners and present fathers, but the workplace still rewards uninterrupted availability. They are told to share care work, but public policy often treats caregiving as primarily maternal. They are expected to be emotionally intelligent, but many cultures still mock male vulnerability.

This is especially visible among Millennials and members of Gen Z. Surveys from organisations such as Pew Research Centre and the OECD point to younger cohorts expressing more egalitarian attitudes than many of their predecessors, even though behaviour still varies sharply by country, class and culture. The direction of travel is clear: belief is moving faster than systems.

The Playpen Man is therefore not simply a man who “helps” at home. He is a man attempting to co-own domestic labour, parenting, partnership and income generation at once. He may still be judged by the old yardstick of earnings, authority and stoicism, while being asked to practice the new disciplines of empathy, flexibility and shared responsibility.

That is not role expansion. It is role compression. The old male role was narrow but clear. The new one is wider, morally better, and far more complex.

The attitude–action gap

The difficulty is that cultural approval does not automatically become lived practice. Many people now say they support gender equality. Fewer households divide unpaid work equally. Fewer workplaces treat fathers’ flexibility as normal. Fewer policy frameworks are designed around care as a shared social responsibility.

This gap is not simply a failure of individual will. It is structural. A man may believe in shared parenting, but still work in an organisation where leaving early for a child is read as lack of ambition. A couple may believe in equal domestic labour, but still operate inside economic pressures that push one partner into longer paid work and the other into unpaid care. A society may celebrate “modern fatherhood”, yet ridicule the man who takes it seriously.

Germany’s experience with parental leave is instructive. Its 2007 reforms introduced income-related parental benefits and father-specific “partner months”, signalling that fathers were not optional helpers but legitimate caregivers. Research following the reform found that fathers who took leave subsequently spent more time in childcare, showing how policy can reshape behaviour when incentives and legitimacy move together.

That lesson matters beyond Europe. If institutions want men to share care, they must stop designing care as a concession to women alone. Parental leave, flexible work, eldercare support and household-related benefits must be built around shared participation. Otherwise, progressive men will be praised in speeches but punished in practice.

The cost of not seeing him

In many Asian and patriarchal cultures, the pressure is sharper. A man who co-parents actively may be admired privately but teased publicly. A husband who adjusts work around family may be seen as less driven. A son who shares domestic responsibility may be treated as exceptional rather than normal. These small signals matter. They determine whether new behaviour becomes a stable norm or retreats under social pressure.

The risk is not that men will suddenly become the new victims of gender reform. That would be a crude and unhelpful reversal. Women still carry disproportionate burdens in unpaid care, career interruption, safety, representation and leadership. The point is different: gender equity cannot mature if it treats men only as obstacles to be corrected or allies to be recruited. Some men are now participants in transformation itself, and their experience must be understood if the transformation is to last.

Cultural transformation is outpacing institutional adaptation. That mismatch creates friction for the men attempting to live differently and for the women who cannot achieve equity without genuine co-ownership at home and at work.

From support to co-creation

The language of gender equity must therefore evolve. Men are no longer merely “supporting” women’s advancement from the sidelines. In many homes, they are negotiating the terms of care, time, income and identity in real time. They are not perfect. They are not uniform. But they are no longer absent.

What must change

Three shifts are now essential.

First, policy must be redesigned for shared participation. Parental leave, flexible work and care infrastructure should be framed as family and labour-market policy, not as special accommodation for women. When men are structurally enabled to care, women are structurally enabled to work and lead.

Second, measurement must catch up with reality. Economies still undervalue unpaid care and household labour. If men’s growing contributions remain invisible, policymakers will underestimate both the scale of change and the support required to sustain it.

Third, masculinity must be allowed to become multidimensional. Organisations and families must stop treating ambition, care and emotional presence as competing traits. A man should not have to choose between being respected as a professional and being present as a father, partner or son.

A more complete future

The past half-century of gender reform has been defined by the necessary and overdue rise of women. The next chapter will be defined by synchronisation: whether homes, workplaces and policies can adapt to the fact that both women and men are changing.

The Playpen Man is not a deviation from the norm. He is an early signal of where the norm may be heading. He is still constrained by old expectations, but he is also testing new possibilities. If institutions fail to see him, they will also fail the women whose equality depends on genuine shared responsibility.

The question is no longer whether men will evolve. Many already have. The real question is whether policy, culture and workplace design will evolve fast enough to meet them there.

Gender equity, in its next stage, will not be built by asking one side to rise while the other remains unchanged.

It will be built, deliberately and imperfectly, by recognising that both sides must rise together.

(The author is a senior policy practitioner and financial sector professional with extensive experience in leadership development, labour market reform, and gender responsive economic policy)