A Study by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress
http://awomansnation.com/
Finally Corporate America is realizing it is smart to support women. 38% of households now have women as the breadwinners of the family. Institutions are adapting to the modern workplace, and the biggest demand is for more flexible work hours.
Maria Shriver appeared today on Meet the Press as Guest Editor for "A Women's Nation." Whom You Know admires and supports Maria Shriver. In this report online, Shriver states:
"My goal has been to make The Women's Conference a nonpartisan meeting place where women could come together and share experience, information, and motivation with one another. Participants come from all walks of life—from foster-care graduates to heads of Fortune 500 companies, from stay-at-home moms and retired grandmothers to college students and small-business owners. Every age, every ethnic group, every economic circumstance. They come to be inspired by speakers from all over the world, who share their wisdom and strategies on finances, spirituality, health, political power, relationships, how to overcome obstacles, how to navigate every area of human life."
"It was back in 1961, when my uncle, President John F. Kennedy, asked former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the very first Commission on the Status of Women. According to anthropologist Margaret Mead, who co-edited the final report, the goal was "a review of the progress that has been made in giving American women practical equality with men educationally, economically, and politically."1
President's Commission on the Status of Women, American Women (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 18.
The Commission's 1963 report, American Women, said that the role for women "most generally approved by counselors, parents, and friends [is] the making of a home, the rearing of children, and the transmission to them in their earliest years of the values of the American heritage."2 ibid p. 19
Back then, only 10 percent of families were headed by unmarried women—and in families where both parents worked, less than a fifth of the wives earned as much or more than their husbands.3 See chapter by Boushey, Table 1, p. 38; Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America 2008/2009 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).In fact, most women's jobs were in what the report called "low-paid categories" such as clerical work. And the Commission also found a "widening gap [between] the educational and career expectations for boys and for girls."4American Women, p. 4. The gap in political participation was wide, too. There were only two women senators and 11 congresswomen, and just two women had ever held cabinet posts.
Among the Commission's policy recommendations: equal pay for equal work, access to child care and paid maternity leave, and enhanced educational opportunities for women. Mead signaled in the final report, "The climate of opinion is turning against the idea that homemaking is the only form of feminine achievement."5American Women, p. 204.
Indeed it was. The report was published within months of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, the opening salvo of the Women's Lib movement, which promoted the idea that women's true fulfillment could come only outside the home with "liberation" from wifely and motherly duties. With that, the pendulum of opinion seemed to swing all the way in the other direction.6 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963).You could understand why women got whiplash.
All of a sudden, so many women became activists, taking to the streets and the halls of power. Many of these women risked their reputations, their security, their jobs—sometimes even their lives and marriages—to knock down walls of inequality. They got many outdated work laws changed and new anti-discrimination laws put in place. Their work and their courage created opportunity for many women, enabling more women to go to college and professional schools, more women to play sports, more women to get on career tracks. Today we stand on their shoulders. Their work freed so many of us to dream new dreams and fulfill them. And with the simultaneous sexual revolution, the advent of the pill, and the Roe v. Wade decision, many women postponed or even said no to marriage or children. Women were moving up the ladder in just about every area of endeavor.
Fast forward to 2009. For the first time in our nation's history, fully half of U.S. workers are female—and mothers have become the primary breadwinners in 4 in 10 American families.7 Heather Boushey, "Women Still Primary Breadwinners" (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2009). Institute for Women's Policy Research, "Unemployment Among Single Mother Families," IWPR Publication #C369 (2009). Ellen Galinsky, Kerstin Aumann and James T. Bond, "Times are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home" (New York: Family Work Institute, 2008), p. 8.That's a sea change from 40 years ago. What had been a slow and steady shift has been accelerating during the current recession, when more than three-quarters of the jobs lost have been men's jobs, especially in areas such as construction and manufacturing.8Boushey, "Women Still Primary Breadwinners."
With more and more men forced to stay home, more and more women are bringing home the bacon. Women are more likely than ever to head their own families. They're doing it all—and many of them have to do it all. When they work, it's no longer just for "the little extras." Their income puts food on the table and a roof over their heads, just like men's income always did. In fact, half of all families rely on the earnings of two parents and in more than 20 percent of all families a single mother is the primary breadwinner.9 Institute for Women's Policy Research, "Unemployment Among Single Mother Families," IWPR Publication #C369 (2009)
Seventy percent of families with kids include a working mother.10
- Galinsky, Aumann, and Bond, "Times are Changing," Figure 5.
And more and more of them, like me, are moving into what I call "the squeezed generation," caring for both kids and our own aging parents."
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Maria Shriver is First Lady of California, an award-winning journalist and producer, best-selling author and mother of four. As First Lady, Shriver has created groundbreaking programs and initiatives that empower people to become “architects of change” in their own lives and in the lives of others. Shriver has used her voice to advocate on behalf of women, the working poor, the intellectually disabled and families like hers who are struggling with Alzheimer’s disease.
Under Shriver’s leadership, The Women’s Conference has grown into the nation’s premier forum for women, annually uniting more than 100 internationally acclaimed leaders and visionaries with 20,000 women from all walks of life to share enriching stories of transformation and success, inspirational life lessons, practical tips and life-changing tools. The Women’s Conference expanded in 2009 to two full days. In 2004, Shriver created The Minerva Awards—named after the goddess Minerva on the California State Seal who epitomizes courage, wisdom, and strength—given annually at the conference to recognize and reward the achievements of women who make extraordinary contributions to their communities and the state. To extend the reach of the conference, Shriver also launched a dynamic online community at WomensConference.org with the goal of providing a daily gathering place for women everywhere to become architects of change.
With a career in journalism spanning more than two decades, Shriver has been a network news correspondent and anchor for CBS and NBC, winning Peabody and Emmy Awards. She is the author of six New York Times best-selling books. She recently executive produced HBO’s “The Alzheimer’s Project,” an Emmy Award-winning four-part documentary series that took a close look at cutting-edge work being done in the country’s leading Alzheimer’s laboratories and examined the effects of this disease on patients and families. Shriver is a graduate of Georgetown University, with a degree in American Studies.
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Whom You Know looks forward to more coverage on this important and pertinent report.
