The Shriver Report: Aptly and Provocatively Titled “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything”

What does “A Woman’s Nation” mean?  For the first time in our history, half of all U.S. workers are women (or put well otherwise: “the footprint of today’s American worker is as likely to be a heel as a boot”). And here is the other staggering statistic: Mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.  This latter news is something we assessed from the members of Executive Moms over two years ago, but how powerful it is to see this substantiated on a fully national scale.

This is far more than a change in workplace demographics. This marks a social transformation affecting nearly every aspect of our lives – how we work, how we play and how we care for one another.  These shifts ostensibly mean the battle of the sexes is over; according to the findings of this report which was months in the making, men and woman in fact overwhelmingly agree on what they want in life, and how they view their roles in marriage, as parents, and in their jobs.  And yet, The Shriver Report also reveals that some of our institutions lag behind and don’t yet reflect this new dynamic. “Government, business, the media and our faith communities, in many cases, still cling to outdated models of who works and who cares for our families.”  (We know)!

There are a range of opinion pieces and copious information to read through, but here are a few of our favorite nuggets:

  • Today: women now earn 60% of the college degrees awarded each year and fully half of the Ph.D.s and the professional degrees. Almost 40% of working women hold managerial and other professional positions. Companies led by women generally are proving to have healthier bottom lines.
     

  • Most workers—men and women—now have family responsibilities they negotiate daily with their spouses, family members, bosses, colleagues, and employees. (But it is still a rare doctor’s office that is open evenings or weekends, even though so many people work at all hours in our 24/7 economy).
     

  • Now both men and women agree that government and business are out of touch with the realities of how most families live and work today. Families need more flexible work schedules, comprehensive child care policies, redesigned family and medical leave, and equal pay.  Over 80% of men and women agree businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families risk losing good workers.
     

  • Even as most women today are providing for their families by working outside the home—they are still earning less than men—while providing more than their fair share of caregiving responsibilities at home.  (No one reading can identify, right)?  While childless women working in corporations earn nearly the same pay as their male counterparts, mothers earn 15% less on average than men and single mothers earn 40% less.
     

  • Love this quote: “Mothers have taken up paid employment in great—and ever rising—numbers, yet the public discourse often remains mired in controversy over whether mothers should work, rarely appreciating the ship-has-sailed reality that most simply just go to work each day.”
     

  • And finally a quote from Maria Shriver on her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, as her inspiration for working on this project: “My role model, like most daughters, was my mother. She was my first image and idea of what it meant to be a woman. It didn’t matter to me that she wasn’t like the other mothers. She wore men’s pants, smoked cigars, and worked outside the home. She was my mother, and she was fearless. She raised me exactly the way she raised my four brothers: to believe I could do anything. She sent me right in there to play tackle football with the boys. She said, “Maria, this may be a man’s world, but you can and will succeed in it… And while she liked to hang with the boys, all her heroes were women… She told me their stories, because she wanted me to appreciate the gift and the power of women to change the language, the tempo, and the character of the world. And she was right.”
     

We did a brief interview with WBCS-TV on the subject:

Here’s the link if you want to read the transcript or watch it online:  http://wcbstv.com/topstories/women.in.workforce.2.1253704.html

And to read more of The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything, visit http://awomansnation.com  This is one we plan on continuing to talk about.  We hope you do too.  Post your thoughts on The Executive Moms Network … and talk to each other.