Dear Daddy is a short film made for CARE Norway, the Norwegian branch of the international aid organisation CARE, and released in late 2015. In about five minutes, a girl's voice speaks to her father and walks him through the life ahead of her: the jokes, the names, the pressure and finally the violence that too many girls and women experience. Its central argument is simple and uncomfortable. The words men and boys use casually, and the jokes they let pass, help build a culture in which violence against women can happen.
The film reached millions of viewers within weeks of its release and remains one of the most widely shared campaign films on the subject. Below you can watch it, then read about who made it, what it is arguing, and what the evidence says about preventing violence against women.
Watch Dear Daddy
Please note: the film contains references to sexual harassment, rape and domestic violence.
What the film is about
The narrator addresses her father directly. She describes moments that sound ordinary at first: being a small child, growing up, being looked at and talked about by boys at school. Gradually the tone shifts. The labels thrown at her harden into insults, then into harassment, and the story moves towards sexual assault and an abusive relationship.
What makes the film unusual is its point of view. Instead of a statistic or an expert, we hear a daughter speaking to the man who loves her most. The question she leaves hanging is not whether her father would ever harm her. It is whether he, and the men around him, will speak up when other boys and men talk about girls in ways that make harm seem normal.
The film's original headline, widely quoted when it circulated, turned one of its lines into a hook about the insults she expects to be called. That bluntness is deliberate: the film wants viewers to hear the language as it is actually used.
Who made it and how it was received
The film was commissioned by CARE Norway and created with the Oslo agency Schjærven. It was directed by Jakob Strøm and produced by the Oslo production company Tangrystan, with post-production by Clockwork, Oslo.
In 2016 Dear Daddy won a Silver award at the Clio Awards in the Public Service category for short-form film. CARE's broader work focuses on women and girls in poverty and crisis, and the film was part of its campaigning against gender-based violence.
Reactions at the time were strong and varied. Many viewers, especially parents, shared it as a conversation starter with their own children. Others found it painful to watch, which is part of its purpose. You do not need to share every emotional response the film provokes to take its central question seriously.
From words to violence: the argument
The film draws a line from everyday language to physical violence. That idea is not only a campaign slogan. The World Health Organization lists harmful gender norms that uphold male privilege and limit women's autonomy as a community-level risk factor for violence against women, and it identifies attitudes that justify violence and a sense of entitlement as individual risk factors.
This does not mean every crude joke leads to an assault. It means that attitudes are shared and reinforced in groups. When demeaning talk goes unchallenged, it signals that the people present find it acceptable, and that silence is part of the environment in which some people go further.
That is why the film targets fathers rather than perpetrators. A father is in a position to shape how his sons talk about girls, how his friends talk in front of him, and what his daughter learns to expect.
What the numbers say
WHO estimates published in 2023 show that about one in three women worldwide, roughly 840 million, have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner, or sexual violence from someone else, during their lifetime. About a quarter of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner.
The most extreme outcome is also measured. According to the WHO fact sheet, in 2023 an average of 140 women and girls were killed every day by a partner or another family member. Those figures are the backdrop to the film's final scenes.
What fathers, and everyone else, can do
The film ends on a request rather than a conclusion. Prevention research and campaigns such as this one point to a few practical habits:
- Talk to sons early. Discuss respect, consent and how to treat people they are attracted to, in age-appropriate ways.
- Challenge the joke. A short "not funny" or a change of subject in a group of friends can shift what is considered normal.
- Model it at home. Children learn more from how adults treat each other than from what adults say.
- Listen to daughters. If a girl describes harassment or pressure, believe her first and help her decide what to do.
- Know where to turn. If you or someone you know is in danger, contact local emergency services or a domestic-violence helpline in your country.
Five minutes is not long. The film asks viewers to spend them listening, and then to carry the conversation into their own homes.
Sources: Film by CARE Norway, created with Schjærven and directed by Jakob Strøm (Tangrystan); first shared with us via Newsner; The Clio Awards: Dear Daddy (Silver, 2016); World Health Organization: Violence against women fact sheet.
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I never wanted so much to please man, I don't really understand the video, but if it's true, it's bad. The first impression in my woman-lish brain is: TY, dear daddy that you made me want to know, to study, to understand and NOT to please..
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