COLBY, Kan. - Today, women now earn 60 percent of the college degrees awarded each year and fully half of the Ph.D.s and the professional degrees. Almost 40 percent of working women hold managerial and other professional positions. Women make 80 percent of the buying decisions in American homes. Companies led by women generally are proving to have healthier bottom lines. This is a permanent change in our culture.
There's far more occurring here than simply a change in workplace demographics. In the preface of the recently released study, The Shriver Report, Maria Shriver offered the goals for the report:
We decided we needed to learn some new, hard facts about today's American woman. Who is she? How does she live? What does she think? What does she earn? What are her politics? How does she define power? How does she define success? What does she think of marriage? What does she really think of men? How does she want to live her life moving forward?The project combined the efforts of The Center for American Progress and Shriver's Women's Conference.
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. Nearly 4 in 10 mothers (39.3 percent) are primary breadwinners, bringing home the majority of the family's earnings, and nearly two-thirds (62.8 percent) are breadwinners or co-breadwinners, bringing home at least a quarter of the family's earnings. What's more, women are now much more likely to head families on their own.
...Women now, for the first time, make up half (49.9 percent as of July 2009) of all workers on U.S. payrolls. This is a dramatic change from just over a generation ago: In 1969, women made up only a third of the workforce (35.3 percent). (Ann O'Leary and Karen Kornbluh, pdf)
What does it mean for everyday people, especially in families where wives are suddenly the primary providers? For starters, for some, of course, women as primary breadwinners is old news, especially among Latinos and African Americans. So much has changed for the main stream population, though, and its effect on our society are still being sorted out.
Women becoming primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners changed everything. But, even though we were all witness to this phenomenon's slow emergence over many years, these changes seem somehow to have snuck up on us. As a result, our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past, where the typical family was composed of a married-for-life couple with a full-time breadwinner and full-time homemaker who raised the children herself.
Government policies and laws continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family.
(John Podesta)
Women are now increasingly sharing the role of breadwinner, as well as the role of caregiver, with the men in their lives. The authors of this study are worried, however, that the public policies in our country have not changed with the times.
Men who oppose women's equality today often express a defensive resistance. They're interested in preserving certain arenas as all-male havens. Women, we might be told, are not qualified for the positions they seek; they are not strong enough, not tough enough, not [fill in the blank] enough to make the grade. This defensive resistance lies close to the surface; a gentle scratch can elicit a furious response. "I will have none of the nonsense about oppressed and victimized women; no responsibility for the condition of women...none of the guilt or self-loathing that is traditionally used to keep men functioning in harness," fulminates Richard Haddad, a champion of men's rights. (Michael Kimmel)
In the end, both genders are trying to figure out how to navigate this new world. Unfortunately, the report posits, women not only have to sort these issues out with the men in the homes and the workplaces, but they also have to fight the fights for their own rights in the state houses and in Washington D.C.
The transformation in homes and workplaces has not been adequately reflected in our laws and policies, making women's lives more difficult, according to the report.
"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." (Ann O'Leary and Karen Kornbluh, pdf)
The report advocates reforming existing laws by:
- Updating our basic labor standards to include family-friendly employee benefits
- Reforming our anti-discrimination laws so that employers cannot discriminate against or disproportionately exclude women when offering workplace benefits
- Updating our social insurance system to the reality of varied families and new family responsibilities, including the need for paid family leave and social security retirement benefits that take into account time spent out of the workforce caring for children and other relatives
- Increasing support to families for child care, early education, and elder care to help working parents cope with their dual responsibilities
If you are interested in learning more about this report, click here.
Some of the best sports writers I know have been females. Hooray for putting an end to the boys club.