Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create More Equitable Workplaces Together

Utahns know the truth: our workplaces weren’t built for today’s families — and everyone is paying the price. Women continue to face stalled careers and limited access to leadership, while men who step up at home often face stigma or subtle penalties at work. The result? Women carry more of the caregiving load, men struggle to fully participate in family life, and Utah organizations lose out on the talent, innovation, and leadership they desperately need.

In their new book Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together, renowned gender-in-the-workplace scholars W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith argue that the system — not individual women or men — is the real barrier. And they offer a bold, research-backed blueprint for leaders who are ready to fix it.

Join the Utah Women & Leadership Project for a timely conversation with Brad and David as we explore what Utah companies can do right now to redesign work in ways that strengthen families, expand leadership pipelines, and unleash the full potential of both women and men. We’ll dig into three transformational levers:

• Rethinking workplace culture and outdated norms that hold Utah women back and punish men who seek flexibility.
• Going all-in on caregiving supports and benefits that actually match the realities of Utah families.
• Embedding gender fairness into everyday processes and policies so equity becomes routine — not exceptional.

This is not another conversation about “fixing women.” It’s a conversation about fixing the workplace. And it’s one Utah leaders cannot afford to ignore.

Biographical Information:

Dr. W. Brad Johnson is Professor Emeritus of leadership, ethics, and law at the U. S. Naval Academy. A clinical psychologist, he was a commissioned officer in the Navy’s Medical Service Corps, serving at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Medical Clinic at Pearl Harbor, where he was the division head for psychology. For 20 years, he was also a clinical faculty associate at Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded the annual Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. He is an award-winning mentor with distinguished mentor awards from the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association. He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has served as chair of the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Committee and as president of the Society for Military Psychology. Dr. Johnson is the author of more than 140 journal articles and book chapters—many on the topic of mentoring—and 14 books in the areas of mentoring, gender in the workplace, and professional ethics. Recent books include: Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together; Good Guys: How Men Can Become Better Allies for Women in the Workplace; On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty; The Elements of Mentoring; and Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women. He speaks around the globe on the topics of mentorship, gender-fair workplaces, and inclusive leadership.

David G. Smith, PhD, is co-author of the book Fair Share: How Men and Women Can Create a More Equitable Workplace Together, a Professor, and Co-Director of the Gender & Work Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. A former Navy pilot, Dr. Smith led diverse organizations of women and men, culminating in command of a squadron in combat, and flew more than 3,000 hours over 30 years, including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a sociologist, his research focuses on gender, work, and family issues, including allyship and inclusive leadership, mental load, gender bias in performance evaluations, and dual-career families. He is the co-author of the books Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace and Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women, and numerous journal articles and book chapters focused on gender and the workplace.

Moderator:
Dr. Susan R. Madsen is considered one of the top global scholars and thought leaders on the topic of women’s leadership, has authored or edited nine books, and has published hundreds of articles, chapters, and reports. Her research has been cited in the U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Parenting Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Washington Post. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes and other local and state newspapers. Professor Madsen is a Professor of Leadership in Extension at Utah State University and serves on many nonprofit and community boards. She is also the Founding Director of the Utah Women & Leadership Project, the visionary behind Utah’s A Bolder Way Forward, and her passion is to strengthen the impact of girls and women in Utah and worldwide.