Think Progress

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, and Zaid Jilani

A Nation Transformed By Women

On Friday, the Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with California First Lady Maria Shriver, released The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, a groundbreaking examination of how "women's changing roles are affecting our major societal institutions, from government and businesses to our faith communities." For the first time in American history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. Considering that in 1967, women made up only one-third of all workers, this is a dramatic transformation that fundamentally changes how all Americans work and live, "not just women but also their families, their co-workers, their bosses, their faith institutions, and their communities." Unfortunately, America as a nation has not yet come to terms with what this means. "This report tries to chapter those things out and say all of these institutions have failed to adapt to this change that has happened, and that in order for them to survive and become smart about the American worker they must adapt and must change," Shriver said on NBC's Meet The Press yesterday. "Our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past," writes CAP President and CEO John Podesta in his preface to the report. "This report contemplates what a new America should look like after we finally embrace this important new dynamic in our lives and the changes it has caused in our homes and businesses."

THE TRANSFORMATION: In 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the first Commission on the Status of Women. Two years later, the commission released its findings, reporting 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." The report added, however, that "the climate of opinion is turning against the idea that homemaking is the only form of feminine achievement." At that time, "in families where both parents worked, less than a fifth of the wives earned as much or more than their husbands." Today, almost 40 percent of working wives are earning as much or more than their husbands. "As women move into the labor force, their earnings are increasingly important to families and women more and more become the major breadwinner -- even though women continue to be paid 23 cents less than men for every dollar earned in our economy," writes CAP Senior Economist and the report's co-editor Heather Boushey. But "these gains are by no means an unqualified victory for women in the workforce and in society, or for their families. Most women today are providing for their families by working outside the home -- and still earning less than men -- while providing more than their fair share of care giving responsibilities inside the home, an increasingly impossible task." The Great Recession has only amplified and accelerated these trends as men have lost three out of four jobs since the recession began in December 2007, "leaving millions of wives to bring home the bacon while their husbands search for work."

THE POLICY ADAPTATION: "The institutions need to adapt to who the American family is today," said Shriver on Meet The Press. "They need to get smarter. They need to get more progressive." CAP Senior Fellow Ann O'Leary and former visiting CAP fellow Karen Kornbluh in their chapter Family Friendly for All Families note, "Too many of our government policies -- from our basic labor standards to our social insurance system -- are still rooted in the fundamental assumption that families typically rely on a single breadwinner and that there is someone available to care for the young, the aged, and the infirm while the breadwinner is at work. ... We need to reevaluate the values and assumptions underlying our nation's workplace policies to ensure that they reflect the actual -- not outdated or imagined -- ways that families work and care today." Among other policies, O'Leary and Kornbluh suggest anti-discrimination laws be reformed so that employers cannot discriminate against or disproportionately exclude women when offering workplace benefits and increase support to families for child care, early education, and elder care to help working parents cope with their dual responsibilities. "One of the things that the administration could do, that the federal government could do is become a model employer," said Podesta on Meet The Press yesterday. Government and businesses need to be "more flexible about creating the circumstance where women and men can have the flexibility to lead good lives." Adaptation isn't just needed in how government and businesses treat their employees. America's immigration, health care, and education systems need to reflect this transformation, as do the media and faith institutions.

THE PUBLIC PULSE: As part of the effort to understand the actual conditions in American homes and workplaces, CAP commissioned a landmark nationwide poll that "takes a broad and deep look at what men and women think of their changing roles in society and their attitudes toward each other as spouses, parents, bosses, and co-workers." Working with Time magazine, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Abt SRBI Inc, the survey of 3,413 people nationwide found that there is a "basic alignment between men and women in terms of what they want in life and what they believe about one another." In fact, the poll's authors, CAP senior fellows John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, with Susan Pinkus and Kelly Daley, conclude that "the battle of the sexes is over." "The profound shift in women's role in the U.S. economy has not led to massive conflict between men and women. In fact, the opposite happened -- men and women view this change in quite favorable terms." "Virtually all married couples see negotiating about the rules of relationships, work, and family as key making things work at home and at work." "One clear message emerging from this poll," however, "is that the lives of Americans have changed significantly in recent years, yet the parameters of their jobs have yet to change to meet new demands." "Political and business leaders who fail to take steps to address the needs of modern families risk losing good workers and the support of men and women who are riding the crest of major social change in America with little or no support," conclude the poll's authors.

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"The only thing we can find about Rush Limbaugh [saying racist remarks] is that he thinks quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated by some people who want black quarterbacks to succeed."
-- Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, 10/15/09

VERSUS

"Media Matters has documented at least 28 examples of Limbaugh making racially charged remarks."
-- Media Matters, 10/16/09