Is it still a man’s world? For my daughter, that’s hopefully changing

This First Person column is the experience of Nathan Friedland, a nurse in Montreal's West Island. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

"I GOT TWO TICKETS FOR TAYLOR SWIFT!"

My daughter Kayla's all-caps text let me know her excitement for those golden tickets.

She'll be going with her best friend, Hailey, who I consider to be a second daughter. The two have been inseparable since their first year of high school together.

Purchasing the tickets involved codes and online lineups for a desperate shot at attending. The whole convoluted process and my daughter's willingness to go through it made me wonder what about Taylor Swift makes her arguably the most successful pop star of our time.

So much of being a "girl dad" has been a learning process.

When my fiancé, Mara, and I were looking at our first ultrasound images, we had decided we didn't want to know the sex of our baby. But as a nursing student, I still searched the image for a sign.

Cripes, what if this is a girl? I thought. We were thrilled to be pregnant, but I knew nothing about raising a daughter. My parents raised me and my three brothers, so I didn't have an example to follow. Would I be a good dad?

I started working full time as a nurse not long after Kayla's birth, and that's when I began to see just how differently men were treated compared to women. When I approached a patient with my stethoscope around my neck, most assumed I was a doctor. Along with that assumption came more respect than what my mostly female nursing colleagues would get from their patients under the same circumstances.

Doctors would treat me better when I said something in a meeting or called one of them on the phone. I saw how women in nursing were often disrespected by male doctors and even their patients, but I was treated with more deference for doing the exact same job at the exact same level. There were times that I wished I said something, but I never did. Sure, I've heard a few homophobic quips about being a male nurse, but it was nothing like the volume of sexism my female colleagues faced every day.

Was it a man's world even in a female-dominated profession? Was this the world Kayla was going to live in?

As Kayla grew older and went to high school, I noticed that the school's dress code was arguably sexist. Female skin was highly regulated but males could wear almost whatever they wanted except for a baseball cap. She noticed this too.

After several dress code "violations," Hailey wrote a dynamite letter to her teachers arguing that the code was unfair to women. It resulted in a meeting with the principal, but then nothing changed. By not altering the code, this male principal gave the impression to Hailey and Kayla that it is a "man's world," even if they tried to fight it. But I was still proud of Hailey for standing up for herself.

A few months later, Kayla and I were walking through a busy shopping centre. "Never trust a man," I told her.

Why would I say such a horrendous thing to my daughter while we were buying clothes? As the dad of a daughter looking at all the signs and flashy posters in the mall, all I saw was the portrayal of women as sex objects.

At that time, my observations about men were compounded with what I saw at work. Males ogling females in a place where females strongly outnumbered them. Males hitting on females even though these men were married and, even worse, men using their positions of power to objectify women. Americans had elected a president who on tape bragged, "You can do anything" when pursuing a woman and he said to grab them by their genitals.

Were female-dominated positions, like nurses and teachers, doomed to be always asking for better conditions yet to never receive them?

These memories came back to me with a newfound focus when Kayla suggested I listen to Swift's The Man and watch the Barbie movie. I thought the song sounded generic, but Kayla urged me to listen closely to the lyrics and watch the music video, which spelled out how much easier it is to be a man in this world than a woman.

Is Swift so popular because people are tired of the status quo and want change? Is it any coincidence that The Man and Barbie have similar themes? That men and women should be treated equally, and that it is unfair men have it easier?

Kayla has grown into a remarkable young woman. She's a brilliant writer, a college graduate with a job, and she will be starting university this winter. She's assertive, as is Hailey, and I'm certain that as they get older, the two of them will have even more of a positive impact on this world than they've already had.

The two of them at 19 years old have already accomplished far more than I did at that age. In fact, my nursing career did not begin until I was 32. Was I allowed to take such time to find myself because I am a man?

Now that I'm in my 50s, I desperately want to grow old enough to see how Kayla and Hailey turn out in a world where one woman's popularity has perhaps made them believe that it does not have to be a man's world after all.

And in addition to being a proud "girl dad," I'm now also a dedicated Swiftie.

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