Why a penguin?

Did you know that penguins have “maternity leave”? That the two-parents-to-be naturally share their responsibilities? Well, they do!

Logo of the campaign – The Emperor Penguin (pdf)

Once the female penguin lays their half-a-kilo egg, the mother’s nutritional reserves are exhausted and she very carefully transfers the egg to the male, before immediately returning to the sea for two months to feed. It is the male penguin that takes it and incubates it in a fold of abdominal skin for about 65 days using the stored fat. After two months the female returns and the parents take turns foraging at sea and caring for the baby penguin.

Flickr

This looks to us like a great natural example of gender equality and sharing of responsibilities in parenting, and this is why we adopted the symbolism of the penguin(*) for the campaign.

In addition, this also supports our idea to promote the breaking down of stereotypical gender roles, and to ensure true gender equality in both spheres of family life, within the caring and the working roles.

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(*) The idea of the Emperor Pinguin as symbol of reconciliation was originally proposed by the Polish Presidency of the European Union in 2011.

During the Expert Conference on Mechanisms for reconciling professional and family roles for women and men as a chance to actively participate in the labour market accompanying the Informal Meeting of Ministers for Family and Gender Equality, which was held on 20-21 October 2011 in Cracow, the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy presented a proposal of the logotype promoting the idea of reconciliation professional and family roles of women and men.