so i come transfixed so excited to talk about your new book "under the bus: how working women are being run over." it is a provocative title. we will jump right into it and i will give you a minute to tell

us what you mean by this. >> first let me say what a pleasure it is to be here with you on c-span. so the book came out a guesstimate disappointment really with some of the dialogue that occurred after sheryl sandberg published her book lean in which i think says some important things. there's a lot of things that were said that are what effect the vast majority of women for whom leaning in isn't an available option. their challenges are much more at essential. so what i wanted to do was expose the broader questions affect men and women in the workforce and think about the possible solutions that we as a nation could be moving towards. >> host: it did seem part of your frustration was about the conversation around working women and which working women we are talking about.

this focuses on women with less education on the socioeconomic ladder. obviously you have a legal and policy background familiar with the civil rights act in the family medical leave act. the premise seemed to be one of the loss goes far enough. we simply need more government to help women especially those on the lower socioeconomic scale. >> eric to pieces. one is that we simply don't have responses to some very broad question these are just low-wage women although they are particularly important. for example we don't have a child care system in this country. we have some band-aids. we have subsidized programs that are very underresourced. only 18% of eligible children are able to get into the government subsidized programs. middle-class families struggle very deeply with the cost of

childcare. you hear the childcare of actual quality child care can cost as much as tuition at a university. we have that out of whack. what was interesting coming out of policy out of policy in ma as i started looking into the laws that i believe to be very important and still do, that they have some real gaps in there. as i look into the history, and i realize for the title comes from that in the dealmaking process their categories of workers with women of color who got thrown under the bus. so they were left out of wage and hour laws and don't have the right to organize in a union or may not be covered by the family medical leave act. i think we don't look at mouse at the gaps and think about what we impact is.

i started inking about as i got deeper into this issue and started inking about the domestic worker who basically has no legal protections in the work place and i started wondering, a nanny who doesn't get paid or is not at least guaranteed a minimum wage or overtime, isn't protected against administration, can't join a union, what happens when the nanny has a stake kid? what goes on in that situation? what is the childcare situation for someone in that category? as i said, i got into these other issues of family leave and childcare and discovered even to my dismay the department of labor doesn't survey the kind of care that children are in. there is a quite large self-care and those are the reasons that

they are just left by themselves. no matter what your perspective is on working women or whether or not we need a strong government and a role in providing a fair workplace, the fact we have a large group of children growing up without supervision is an economic issue for all of us. the consequence of that are elastic. >> host: one of the things you have in the book jacket is a lot of these women as you see it will get into the specific policies but they are systematically left out. do you think policy makers are overtly eliminating them were saying we don't need to worry about those women are they really that bad? >> honestly, not anymore. it doesn't play out that way. it is now in an urgent questions of the cost.

but at its origins it was actually quite explicit and when i was digging into the history around the new deal and when congress adopted the flagship pieces of legislation the fair labor standards act their son explicit conversations on the record coming from what we would call dixiecrat who reflected a very strong point of view about the southern economy being dependent on agricultural farming -- the economy that was dominant in the south and they wanted to reflect what they thought of as their way of life. it's very supportive talking about how important it is to keep our traditions that can't

be paid the same as the white man because that is not what we do. you have these conversations and then you have implementation or categories of workers who were well known for african-american and many of them were the domestic workers and the farmworkers in the and the farm laborers were with him as well. they were cut out in a concession to the dixiecrat too wanted to preserve their economy as well as the dominant white majority. >> certainly we both agree 80 plus years later things have evolved in many ways, many good ways. at the same time you of course point quickly in the book to the pay gap comedy idea women are only paid -- why women are only paid 70 cents for every dollar a

man makes. this conversation happens all the time. we just had equal pay day here in washington, and marks the amount of time extra women would wear makeup of lost wages. at the same time we see that more and more mainstream are questioning this number that we say ok there is the wage gap but it's not quite as large. do you think it's fair to keep using the number? are we able to convince people we need policy if we use a smaller number. is that the problem? >> i think it is a fair number that i would agree with those who are critical to say it's not a reflection of discrimination. so economists say they are somewhere around 20% pay gap. about 49 50% is attributable to

occupational segregation. we could have an argument about whether that is a choice or whether there are cultural constraints are difficult for women to break into different professions. >> tell us what you mean. >> what is interesting is one fifth of women workers are inside jobs. five job categories talking secretary and childcare child teachers and so forth. those jobs are dominated by women. they are lower paid than those dominated by men. there may be some disagreement between women groups and other groups but many women's groups would assert and i would agree with them that because the jobs

are dominated by women doesn't mean they should be paid less. when you look at jobs of equivalent skill experience and so forth but it doesn't make sense to jobs dominated by men should be paid more. if you say part of the pay gap is due to occupational segregation women go into certain career paths that are lower paid. i think it is a reflection of a broader set of constraints on the roles of women and the expectations of their ability to earn money. whether it should be valued as a role for a man is driving a truck and an expectation because women are caregivers that they do this job tickets discounted because it's what their nature is. >> fair enough. some people say men and women are different and we have different strengths and so women

may choose to go into certain jobs to give them what comes naturally to them. i would think there are also benefit in some ways. we know men die more frequently on the job. that is somehow reverse discrimination allowing men to do jobs more dangerous than women. it is not a problem? >> i would be more than happy to see more than schoolteachers if they want to be schoolteachers. i think it's a good thing for society to have more diversity to whether they fill different roles. i think it's hard for women to move into professions dominated by men for a lot of reasons. if we impose some constraints on ourselves which from the broader culture we don't want to be unladylike. driving the truck is not what a lot of women do. there are plenty of examples of

the hostility that women can face in those jobs that are his. choice is the operative. people should have the liberty. how do we dismantle barriers if they shouldn't be there. i think that is terrific. we should pay schoolteachers adequately and they should be paid at the level commensurate with skills and experience they have. >> this is so interesting because you mention you think women are still met with hostility and disapproval when they move into the male-dominated fields. i was thinking about this and i live in washington and i'm hard-pressed to say there's no discrimination or sexism here but i also wonder, is this part of society still backwards?

isn't much worse? is a more pronounced in more of the fields veterinary care do you think it is economical? >> i don't have the data on my but certainly where the most egregious examples come from. it may be the segregation in terms of gender is most extreme dared and those are the jobs that tend to be associated with the cheese metal or masculinity. i know one in a too broad of a conclusion. there are difficulties for women in those professions and i really think it's wonderful there's some organization to try and break down the barriers and offer women training. those are good paying jobs. been a while there may be something that will be great for

certain women because it pays a decent wage and they can raise their family on it. the door shouldn't be close to them because their colleagues might not want them there. >> some women give them more flexibility. restaurant industry service industry to create their own hours. i wonder if there's lessons we should take away from white collar jobs. i remember reading about wal-mart's flexible worker range for its legal department and how it trickles down into other areas. do you think there is room for that work here for more educated women are higher skilled jobs can it work in lower skilled jobs too? >> you really make me inc. to one of the facts it's not that surprising in retrospect this seems surprising was how much more accessible flexible

schedules are too white collar workers and higher earning workers and men particularly are the ones who have family leave and sick leave and vacation days. you point out they also have more flexible schedules generally. the way the fair labor standards act works if you are a salaried employee you don't punch a clock if you have to run out for a dentist appointment in the middle of the day. you don't account for the hour and half by working an hour and a half another time. people understand he probably will. the ability to deal with daily circumstance is. i was thinking about that on the way here about all of the snow days we had in the d.c. area. for people now becoming less of a mother's issue, but also a father's issue. mothers and fathers struggling to figure out if the school was

closed to would stay home and who would go to work. a lot of white collar folks were able to telecommute or come in late. if you're an hourly worker at mcdonald's, it's just not an option for you. it is a good point in icing data that shows flexible work hours increase productivity for the economy you have lower job turnover so you have greater experience and you don't have a cost associated with recruiting and training somebody new. it's definitely something we should try and push down because those of us who've been lucky enough to benefit from the education and socioeconomic class has allowed us to be lawyers and doctors has by and large been able to take advantage of those circumstances when we have a family crisis or when there is a snow day or

whatever reason you might give flexibility in your job. >> host: were we talk about flexibility for white-collar jobs is an area where i think we see a lot of real progress for service industry. you don't need the same person to do the job all week long especially women who want to pick up extra hours here and there that they would benefit from the workplace policies. >> there's some interesting examples in other countries. prime minister cameron was a big proponent of flexible work hours in england. one of the things they did was to guarantee men and women who wanted to propose may maybe a short work week of 410 hour days for different configurations come in late and leave late or some other option or job sharing couldn't make a proposal and the employer action would accept it

unless there is some business reason why they couldn't. if it was just a matter of rearranging some responsibilities that didn't have a major impact and i had to forward and implement. that is a wonderful approach. the other thing we need to consider on the flipside is that we have situations where people don't know their schedules until the day of or maybe the day before so they call in and they are told sorry you don't have a shift today for yes you are working a double shift and all of a sudden they have to find childcare for they don't have work that day meaning they earn less money which means they might not afford childcare for the next time at work and that kind of complete lack of control over the schedule is hard enough for most people. anyone who works in a law firm and has been there on a friday

afternoon when the partner comes and dumps a task on your desk and says this is for monday morning understands the loss of control of your schedule. the low-wage workers in an everyday roller coaster of knowing whether they are working or not working. they do not how much they're earning. >> host: maybe we should shift in from a moment ago do you do favor any talk about it in the book that the more top-down one-size-fits-all policy that would blanket a larger group of people because the feeling of smart people have been left out. you've worked on the issue of the paycheck fairness act as a way of closing the remaining wage gap whatever it may be. certainly some criticism say a law like that makes women a

liability. it makes them more expensive to hire that they see women as a potential lawsuit and if there is a man equally qualified, that is a safer route. do you worry about that? >> guest: i don't actually. we had title vii on the books in the equal pay act since the early 60s and i don't think they resulted in an impact where women have been less willing to hire women minorities, religious minorities, disabled and so forth. they've been a necessary response because those groups are not being promoted not being paid fairly. the paycheck fairness act is designed to close gaps and strengthen the enforcement mechanisms. the equal pay act doesn't have much so it's really kind of a limp noodle of a statute. the idea with the paycheck fairness act is to strengthen

the enforcement provide a stronger leverage for the eeoc enforcement organizations to get employers to pay women a fair wage as well as move towards transparency in terms of salaries which is a very important piece. a lot of people don't know there are significant numbers of employees told by their employers they are not allowed to buy contract for by the order of the boxes are not allowed to share salary information with colleagues. i can understand why. on the other hand it makes it difficult for women, for minorities to understand where they stand with respect to their colleagues. the case of willie led that are which is quite famous is

telling. she worked for her employer for several decades and it was only issue is getting close to her retirement as she was slipped a note by somebody. she didn't know where it came from they said you've been paid 40% less than the guys for your entire career. it was shocking terror. she had made it a good year one of the few women that has endured and told her i'm certainly not those positions and to find out at the end of the day she has been discriminated against so significantly. she went to the supreme court and lost because of what i think is an appropriate reading. the conservative majority basically said they shouldn't complain when she was first

discriminated again. the fact that the matter was until decades later when she knew she'd been discriminated against because the employer had imposed secrecy on salaries. congress ended up for enforcing what it originally meant which was discrimination and she should have been able to make a claim. by then she had lost because the laws didn't get changed until the case went to the supreme court. she was out not only wages but she was out of her retirement which works significantly -- she was significantly underpaid in terms of retirement because it is based on her salary. catastrophe independent foreign 74% think discrimination is somewhat of a problem. everyone has a story but that doesn't mean they believe it is widespread and everyone knows it exists. and we have this issue of privacy and wanting to balance that with transparency.

a couple things come to mind. one is the best thing for women not more lies perhaps but just a growing economy which would then lead to its competition. they would have to compete with other businesses out there because employees become more valuable. is that perhaps a stronger solution? >> guest: sabrina a stronger economy helps low-wage workers. there is no question and we've seen the last couple years as the economy recovered. that doesn't address the wage gap and it doesn't address the structural issues that we have. to go back to the domestic workers, the category of workers, the home health aide that is one of our most rapidly

growing sectors. there is a huge demand for home health aides. they are still carved out a bit fair standards labor act. this is a category of workers not entitled to minimum wage or overtime and are often expected to work inhumane hours going patient to patient. they have very difficult jobs because dealing with elderly or disabled people who need to be moved lifted in all sorts of ways and yet we haven't seen the great demand and certainly a huge need wages are moving out. it comes from sort of a waiting of a belief in the economy that the government does play a role and i think coming out of the new deal we saw some of the real

significant changes brought about that were not good by president roosevelt. to a great extent the economy growing helps everybody. in order to counteract some of the structural problems we have with certain types of job categories, there needs to be a stronger government hand in this particular place is. close to one area in particular is minimum wage. we don't just need an increase. we need a living wage which he said would in effect be higher than any kind of modest raise. do you want to elaborate on what the living wage really means? >> there have been a number of states and localities and in my state of maryland contractors with the state has to pay a living wage and there's a lot of

people lobbying to have changes like that pushed through the federal government. if you get a contract from the u.s. government come he should have to pay workers a decent wage. we have seen a lot of moves in the last election to raise the minimum wage across the country. a lot of states have done away with the bifurcated minimum wage, which gives employees a much, much lower wage. a state like washington state which is now $15 an hour they are not seeing bad law says and they are not seeing employer flight. it has been good for the economy and good for the workers. it is definitely something we need to examine very strongly. the minimum wage has not kept pace with overall cost of living and has not kept pace with the growth of the economy. you see where we are now.

we are well behind where it should be if the minimum wage had been pegged to the economy. >> host: i certainly think there are those businesses able to increase employee wages more aggressively should be applauded. i'm also noticing the trend with jobs that are less skilled, the automation. you go into convenience stores and there isn't anybody checking you out and that seems to be increasingly a consideration and i suppose it's worth a conversation we talk about in our after to micromanage wages are we going to see more women out of work altogether? >> it is certainly a criticism raised of after to ensure people get paid a decent wage. i still think that data don't bear that out and a lot of job

categories you just can't mechanize a mini. nobody wants a robot to watch their children. not based on what we have right now as well as home health aides and the person who does your hair for your nails. any number of categories of workers that are just not the kind you can really do buy a machine. i think around the margin there is some truth to that. by and large there will be such a benefit to low-wage workers that it is worth moving forward. >> host: this raises another question that we often still think about and maybe you can talk about the structure of the work place. as things have changed we see many more women in managerial positions in h.r. positions. those women are overseen other women and i wonder when we talk

about discrimination are we too one-dimensional? do we think people are too quick to dismiss employees? not only someone from a family who own businesses but also an organization of the most frightening things that somebody losing an employee. so are we too one-dimensional about how they behave? >> guest: that's a very good point. i feel entirely the same we bend over backwards to keep people structural work place that allows them to have a life outside without making too many sacrifices. i think it's very important and maybe a cultural shift we need to go through because the fact

is we have well over three quarters of women in the workforce. over three quarters of women with children between six and 18 who are working in two thirds of women with children under six who are working on for single moms it is a much higher number. we are in a world that we have to learn to live with. whatever you do have about whether it should work or whether it's preferable they stay home we have to address the facts we have that women are working and it's unlikely we'll go back to a situation where women don't work. we care about the next generation and the future of our country and then invest the resources to allow women and make sure their children have the best care possible. post go before we move into the

issue of childcare subsidies, one that is important to you as well cover the issue of paid leave, the family medical leave act since 1993 again is another law that sounds like you think covers a lot of people that are simply not enough. maybe you can share more. >> guest: unfortunately the family medical leave act with intention. it covers many fewer people than misunderstood. for example employers with over 50 employees are covered at all and only employees who worked over 1250 hours in the previous year. estimates show more than 40% of workers are covered at all. but even that being said and it is hard to take unpaid leave so at the end of the day you see large categories of women opting

out because they can't afford it. the consequences of that and i have read numbers of studies that analyzed women who've gone back to work after cesareans that were not -- that they didn't heal from very well after hemorrhaging after different kinds of sickness and difficulties of nursing. impact on others to have to go back soon is demonstrable. the impact on children is very significant. unfortunately the family medical leave act hasn't dealt with that very much. the authors of the legislation hoped it would spur more paid leave, but it hasn't. unfortunately the calculation is only 10% of american workers have paid leave. that is very low. that is a significant problem and one if we look at other

developed countries we are really an outlier in this category. >> host: i thought the numbers were a bit higher. i don't want to tease that out. i do want your opinion on the cost of paid leave for employers but the young women the young woman or man who doesn't have a family who has to pick up the slack for the person who's out. i'm on the safe side that i understand tremendously the need for time off paid time off. someone else has to do the work i'm doing and many jobs very physical jobs. do we have to consider how those men and women and men as well as be affected? >> guest: either leave policies don't cover childbirth. they cover child care which can be done by god or by a partner

and they also cover other types of family medical issues. everybody has situations and i can understand concerns or can stand says it can be difficult and maybe people feel like they are bearing an unfortunate amount of workload, but it more or less comes out in the wash because we all want to have that security that if we are suffering from some family be come a parent that is. who needs us to be there and if you need to go to your parent's bedside, you want to be old to do that and not risk your job. it was very important that there are too few workers covered by the family medical leave act and certainly well to few who don't have paid leave. >> host: you mentioned one woman in the book and this might shock some viewers.

you talk about her story in which she asks for a day off and she gets fired. i wonder is that the outlier of course there are people who just unfeeling. most of us who oversees staff want employees to be happy so they are dead. is that the outlier or do you think that happens more than we realize? >> one of the reason i want to bring stories like that out is because the outliers to people in our world and people who work in larger organizations and professional organizations are not that unusual example for women who work in the more manual labor doing domestic work, but that is particularly difficult situation where they are either looking to care for patients, under the patience or

disabled patients they are caring for children in someone's household and that is where many of the most poignant stories occur and the outliers in individual examples of one employer is the family and the employee is a woman carrying for their children. sometimes they become more emotional than they would in an professionalized atmospheres we work in. what i wanted to point out to the reader is there are things that are legal. and women who work in the circumstances don't have any protection that the pregnancy discrimination act won't tell them if they realize they're pregnant. they can be fired. post to what ways would you tweet some of these files or implement laws to cover these women that fall through the

cracks? >> guest: one of the things in play right now is to provide domestic workers that category of home health aide in mayonnaise as opposed to babysitters. to provide them with a minimum wage and overtime protection. this is an interesting historical issue because originally these workers were cut out of the law as we were talking about because of the explicit racism in the interest in preserving the jim crow economy in the south. but as time went by, it became increasingly clear there was an injustice being done. in the 70s the congress finally passed legislation to amend the fair labor standards act to incorporate those groups into the law. what happened was the labor department under president nixon

issued a rule that cut the knot again. this has been 40 years since then trying to fix that up regulation. president obama has issued a new rule that would once again try to cover these workers and it is now being held. once it is implemented it will be the subject of much litigation, but it's a very important move forward. one of the things that surprised me, thinking that i knew a lot about employment laws for the categories of workers who have been cut out and as we draft when there was misogyny and racism. what happened is this the status quo. you've worked on the hill at night for on the hill and when you draft legislation, usually looking at models. on the paycheck fairness act started up today.

you don't generally change the whole framework. the existing omissions were continued on. i don't have every solution obviously. i think that is far more brilliant people than me. what i wanted to do was say we need to go back to square one and think about the protections we want for workers. if that is our frame what is it that we want to provide incentive thinking here is that the fair labor standards act does. >> guest: that is a fair assessment. one thing that comes to mind is you think about how big the country is. everybody has something different they're looking for. some people want their benefits more flexibility and that goes up and down the economic ladder. is it possible as we see that

the family medical leave act and others that we somehow limit people's choices are we going to make it less flexible or again another way of putting this is somebody who helps manor house gave me a price of what it would cost. it seemed fair, seemed appropriate. she got much higher when have been able to do it. if we have more regulations, will we find we can't negotiate contracts and pricing and work for both parties? >> you're appealing to the lawyer in me. there is sort of the various statutes we talk about a lot of the time when this was the big debate. can you constrain the right to contract. there was a big debate in the supreme court at the time which struck down president roosevelt statue's multiple times trying

to limit the amount of child labor. i think where i fall is there are differences in bargaining power between different groups of people. one of the things the statutes attempted to do was give people the more vulnerable workers the ability to have some leverage on their side and putting restraints on the employer. it does constrain the ability to negotiate. in a positive way particularly when you talk about individual workers and i think a lot of cases independent contract areas are working as house cleaners or gardeners and so forth. they may not be in the grants and looking on the situation for the stronger party to negotiate

a wage that is simply not a fair one. >> host: when we started the conversation we talked about sheryl sandberg and thereby she gives to professional women. do you think for lower skilled women that there are things they can do outside of government to make it easier for them to house >> guest: sabrina, that's a very good question and it does make me want to say cheryl samberg was right in this area. women are actually doing a lot to remedy the situation. you've seen the rise of a lot of state worker centers. a lot of them are about women and run by women the national domestic workers association and and they've done quite a bit to organize within. they are not protected by the

national labor relations act. they've come together in other ways as moral support. they share information. they provide skills training. i actually had the immense honor of being invited to a meeting of a group of domestic workers at casa of maryland and it was an incredibly interesting conversation because they came together on weekends to share these kinds of stories. what is your experience in the work place? there's at least two common experience of domestic workers being subject to sexual harassment. they share stories. @help each other get into new situations if they are looking for a bad employer. but these are women who had gone to annapolis to lobby for a

minimum wage increase. even though they were protected by the minimum wage their assorted engaging. most interesting to me if they can't be like a union said they do something totally different. they talk about working conditions and wages but they are also moral support. they have help with legal matters. i do think there is a lot going on that made me very hopeful. but it is a completely new phenomenon and we'll have to see how it can be scaled and whether it will have a broad impact. >> host: some of us will have to do with the larger conversation. we want to make sure the more people who recognize the person cleaning your home or help your elderly parent you want to treat them with a sense of respect and

hope that more people think in those terms. i'm happy to hear you say something positive because it is hard not to look at the title of this book, "under the bus: how working women are being run over." a little bit of a downer. and as they feed into this is that life in america is hostile towards women, the work place discriminates against women that don't have opportunities. visit perpetuate the image of america or do you think there's something more positive. up until now it's been in progress for women. certainly when you look at the new dom beyond, we are talking about the national labor relations act medicare and the family medical leave act ni.

we are looking at some significant, significant steps forward that i reflect it in where women are in the workplace and women have seen some wage increases. i think we can do better. my positive as i think it's a great country. i think we can do better. >> host: there's more for all of us to talk about. one thing we think about not to jump from the working women to the professional women but we do talk about technology. do you think there's a place for technology in terms of helping low skill workers and making things easier for them? >> guest: one of the interesting thing that has happened is there's very sophisticated technology around scheduling. unfortunately it has not been used so much to help workers has to be very much on the employer

side which is developing the software and trying to maximize profits. i think it can be seen if they can be given more notice about the way the schedules play out. you can still have a fair amount of give and take in the eye than flow of customer demand to give the employer's ability to be responsive to the economy at any given time. also giving the employee more notice. the technology if it's what i've were holistically is how we benefit more workers. things like telecommuting for workers doesn't work for everyone. but i think it is certainly something we should think about how we can optimize the advances we've made in technology to make it so low skill workers get more skills, that they have access to

more jobs. until we figure out how to connect workers with jobs in a better way has always been a problem with labor market which leads to disagreement among economists. they recognize the labor market is very broken and that employees don't necessarily know this job in florida and in wyoming, how do you match that up. technology has an opportunity to correct those problems. >> host: that is fantastic at how things will change in the future. we have a few minutes left, but if you don't mind to put this in the context of the political landscape today. we have an election coming up. where do you see under the bass fitting into the conversation about women and women voters and women candidates in 2016?

>> guest: i have been very pleased to see how much a lot of the topics i write about are part of the national conversation from the minimum wage to childcare to paid leave to sick leave. these are issues not debated in the public arena. president obama has been speaking broadly about the need to move forward on these policies. i think it is actually a time where some of the ideas seem sad i can't remember the word, provocative they are not so provocative. the policy proposals that i make are very much in the mainstream. they are being debated more and more. more and more members of congress are interested in or supported legislation that addresses the issues that i raised. so i'm actually very hopeful we've made some strides forward.

>> host: do you think we need to have a woman candidate to talk about these issues? i think more of these policies would come from democrats than republicans. they may have different approaches dealing with these but at the same time do you need a hillary clinton are there other democrats on board? >> guest: the family medical leave act was signed by president clinton and senator chris dodd was one of the late proponents. i hope it doesn't have to be a woman of though i'm happy to have a woman. it would be wonderful to see a woman president whoever she may be whether it's carly feer rina or hillary clinton it would be tremendous to have that forward movement. men are part of families and if they don't have a wife mother or sister and i know they have a mother.

i think the daughters are sometimes the most forceful proponents. i am hopeful and there have been plenty of advances that have helped women put forward by men. as you mentioned earlier, i advocate more universal solutions. a lot of proposals are as helpful for men as women and we don't live anymore in a society. the structure, the work place about working on week in a well-paid job are able to afford not having a second and come. the wife was able to stay home. many more who women and men are feeling this time pressured in constrained and now they work too many hours and don't make

enough money. if the wife is working they are juggling. a lot of issues are deeply resonant for men in our society. men as well as women can be the leader. one of the things i have found gave me some hope for some of the activism around the recent supreme court case, the lopez case dealing with the pregnancy discrimination act. their right-wing groups come together around needing to protect pregnant women in the workplace. women should not be discriminated against. for whatever reason they have every right to work whether you don't want to encourage them not to get pregnant, whatever the reason is, people can come together across a spec drove

that we need to address the issues because they are working and go through their pregnancy or terminate their pregnant they. we want them to continue. we need to make sure they don't get discriminated against in the work place. >> host: the final chapter is also a book this year called linked together. i like the title of your chapter and i was thinking you are talking about how i worked together to create good policies. also how we work together and it's a rather partisan environment these days. do you think that partisanship can be overcome because it sounds like sometimes politics but are there other ways we can compromise because there will of

course be conservatives with much government but we will help people in need. just go health care and they can often be both affect areas and also doesn't mean a solution. i think that is fine. what we need is quality and affordability and accessibility. parents get their kids into those programs. they need to make sure they are not in some unsafe facility with some under skilled caregiver and we need to make sure they are affordable. there are many number of ways to combat that and a lot of conservatives would recognize that it's a very important value in children who are left in health care which i cannot get over that term. it's just not good for our

country. >> guest: i do think america is a country that is extremely charitable that we don't want to turn our backs on those in need so hopefully we can come to some agreement on how best to help, especially working women. any final thoughts on the things you would love to leave the listener's wit and when they pick up their copy of "under the bus" that they might be thinking about him looking for. >> guest: one of the things i discovered through this is my own family history. my great-grandmother came from sweden and she was very poor and she laughed her father he basically sent her away because he couldn't afford to have her anymore and she's been taking care of her younger siblings because her mother had died. all her siblings died at that point the widowed father basically put her on the boat. she came to the united states and was able to make it.

she worked as a domestic worker. really made me think about downtown iv and the upstairs downstairs in her life. it made me realize how many americans have that somewhere. if we think about what made it possible for someone in my family to make it where we are now -- it was very opening to see what my great-grandmother face. her legal situation is the same situation they face now. no legal protection. it was for me important to unearth some of that history and understand my family has had these stories. >> guest: that is interesting that everyone in america was an emigrant at some point. everyone has something like that to fall back on.

i wonder -- i should say i hope that while legally there may be room for improvement, culturally things have shifted. i would like to think women make up almost 50% of the workforce. the largest are now in managerial positions. do we see a positive future for women workers in america? >> guest: we do see it. women are working. i think as a society we are grappling with it and moving slowly in the right direction. but i think so. >> host: i still feel very optimistic about the future of the united states and opportunities for women and girls. final thoughts if you had to tell young girl today who maybe doesn't have the educational for financial opportunities ahead of her that you and i have benefited from what would you recommend? what would you say