it was such a pleasure for me to visit the council of women and girls event held at nasa and see local high school girls exposed to the magic of space exploration. and to be with president obama when he welcomed into the oval office the three winners of the international google science fair competition, all american girls i might add. [ applause ] we are determined to help girls discover and develop their passion for careers in stem. because of president obama's leadership, millions more female students can afford to go to college thanks to increase in funding to pell grants. the president's commitment to fund community colleges have helped women secure training they need for high skills jobs in the future. women in their early 20s, including my own daughter are able to receive coverage under their parents health insurance

because of the affordable care act. [ applause ] president obama has taken critical steps to help working women whether they are fighting for equal pay or flexibility in workforce, start agnew business, seeking protection at home, staying healthy which includes preventative care and, yes, contraception. [ applause ] and for seniors helping with the cost of prescription drugs and strengthening medicare and social security. in ways large and small, we see the impact of the obama administration's historic efforts to promote the interests of women day in and day out. for the first time, for example, the lesbian service member and her partner were recognized when they attend a white house dinner in honor of the veterans who

served in the iraqi war. [ applause ] for the first time there are now three women sitting on the supreme court, including the first latina. [ applause ] for the first time and you may most know this, there's a female four star general in the u.s. air force. [ applause ] for the first time there's a woman directing the national oceanic atmospheric administration and a woman in charge of the u.s. geological survey. for the first time there are women serving aboard our u.s. submarines. i'm glad there are women out there to have the skills to man a submarines. as cool as it sound i don't think you want me manning the submarine. i shouldn't be in the controls. i look forward to the firsts that we'll don't have in the months ahead.

i'll close by sharing a story of jackie bray of north carolina. i met jackie when the first lady invited her to the president's state of the union address a couple of months ago. jackie is a single mom like me and she was laid off from her job a year ago. but because of her ambition and determination she enrolled in a community college and mastered new skills like laser training in robotics. she successfully land ad job as a machine operator. after attending the president's speech jackie said and i'll quote, i'm just a girl who had really big dreams to work for the most amazing company on the planet and i'm living that dream every day and i can't explain how much it means to me. jackie's story reminds us of why our work is so important. we know that there's still a lot of hard work to do and women will be a critical part of driving the country forward. so this morning we're going to

highlight how the obama administration has improved the economic security for women and their families. and we'll chart our course for the very hard work that we know remains ahead. so now it's my pleasure to first introduce our moderator of this morning's panel. i'm sure that everybody knows mika brzezinski. she's a co-host of msnbc's morning joe. a little applause for mika. [ applause ] it was coming. not only is she my dear friend but she keeps me calm each morning when joe tries to raise my blood pressure. [ laughter ] [ applause ] joe will be joining us soon too. another brave man. mika's recent book "knowing your value" is a must read for women in the workplace. she is an outstanding role model, helping women stand up for themselves and recognize their own contributions and also most importantly she's a

terrific mom and we're that you feel to have her two daughters here. mika, please come up and take your seat. [ applause ] joining mika are some of the most impassioned advocates for american working women. we have joe eschevarria, the ceo of deloit, one of the corporate leaders in creating women friendly workplaces. joe, please come up as well. [ applause ] we're joined by karen mills the president's small business administrator who is celebrating her third anniversary with the administration today. [ applause ] also we have gene sperling the director of the president's national economic council who i would like to point out helped launch the 10,000 women initiative at goldman sachs.

gene. [ applause ] and his successor dina powell. welcome. and cecilia rouse a princeton economist and former member of the president's economic council of advisors. so thank all of you for joining us this morning. and with that i have the pleasure of turning it over to mika. thank you again. >> valerie, thank you so much. no gender gap here. not even close. not in this white house. it's really great to be here. my thanks to valerie and tina tchen. it's a tremendous honor to be here today. i would like to point out valerie already mentioned my two special guests. they didn't appreciate the 4:30 a.m. wake up call. welcome to my world. but some day girls you'll get it and i'm so glad you're here.

we're going to be looking at the accomplishments of this white house as it pertains to women and the economy. we have clearly a lot of work until to do and many challenges before us, and the key is to talk about them, address them and overcome them as soon as possible but also to celebrate what has been done especially in the past few years by this administration. i want to give you some background on our panel so we understand who is taking part in this conversation. as valerie mentioned, gene sperling is director of the national economic council and frequent extremely patient guest on "morning joe." you're good. you're very patient. >> thank you. >> yes. gene left his job to devote his cause of educating girls in underprivileged nations. he founded the are center on

jif universal education. he's married to a busy working woman. he met his wife when she was a writer for the west wing and he was hired as a consultant. very cute. gene considers his mother to be one of his heroes as she was a pioneer for educational reform and equity. doris sperling worked for over 50 years as a teacher and a teaching assessment specialist. mrs. sperling also was a founder of the family learning institute in an arbor, michigan so you can definitely say that gene has this issue in his genes. he'll be giving us details on where women stand in our economy, but also at 9:30 i'm officially allowed to ask him about the jobs numbers that are released this morning and get the first white house reaction to that. so i will be watching my iphone for the time because at 9:29:30 i'm going there.

so we look forward to that. karen mills, administrator of the u.s. small business administration. karen leads a team of 3,000 employees whose mission it is to help entrepreneurs and small business owners grow and create jobs. 3,000 employees. and three sons. which is harder? three sons. yep. i figured. two older brothers. she grew up in a mom and pop business where literally her pop and mom ran the business. tootsie roll. to this day karen's mother is her business role model as well as that of her three sisters. karen started one of the first women-owned private equity firms in the world and throughout her career she's owned, managed, men toward and invested in small growing businesses across the country. she doesn't just crack the glass ceiling or break it, she doesn't shatter it, karen will not be

happy until it is ground to dust. [ applause ] there will not be one by the time she's done. joe eschevarria, ceo of deloit and has been with the company since 1978. this is a great company as it pertains to women and getting the best productivity out of them and letting them have the flexibility they need to run lives, families and their businesses. he grew up in the south bronx. he's the son of a single mother who worked two jobs to get the family by so joe knows why we're here today because joe has lived it. and he continues to live it because joe is the proud father of three teenage daughters. you're in such trouble. so, let me just -- i've got some interesting facts about joe that were sent to me. he's been accused of being a tad bit overprotective about his daughters.

he denies this. do you deny this, joe? oh, really. because apparently -- well apparently you interview prospective dates and track -- wait, wait. you track your daughter's driving habits through gps. under the guise of safety. you're concerned about speeding but really what troubles you is when the gps shows excessive idling. oh, my lord. i need that gps. will you clue me in on that. i got a 16-year-old right there. we're online. we're live around the world. you're done. his wife is an accomplished i.t. consultant. and, joe, i love the facts that are sent to me. joe's 38 framed pictures of his family in his office and he picked them out and framed himself. this was also sent to me. joe would like to you know he

has 1100 female partners and directors at deloit. [ laughter ] okay, joe. and joe will be making -- that doesn't fix it. okay. joe will be making an announcement which we actually shared with the world on "morning joe" this morning about yet another commitment that deloit is making to further women in the kmarks commitment they are making with tens of millions of dollars and it's really incredible. we're glad to have you on the panel. finally we have cecilia rouse. she's a professor at the economics of education at princeton university. and professor of economics and public affairs also at princeton. her research and teaching focus on labor economics and education which makes her expertise perfect for our panel discussion today. she served in the white house in the late '90s on the national economic council sean recently

served on the president's economic advisors and when she came in the door everyone hugged her. she's popular. they love her. like me she agrees that quality time is any time you can make it happen, especially when you have two daughters and her two daughters like mine, age 9 and 11, are here as well as her husband. so, girls, welcome. it's wonderful to have this panel. this is really perfect and the reports are incredible. i'm going to put some ground rules out for the discussion. first of all, i expect you all to jump in and interrupt me. i'm not comfortable unless that's happening. i'm used to that. we'll conduct this panel "morning joe" style. i'm not busted. gene sperling, big picture first of all, sell me, impress me. what are the most important accomplishments by this administration to lift up women in this economy if you can think

of two or three that come to mind. >> i think the entire focus that when we're doing public policy, we're being very conscious of where things we do have a very significant impact for women. you have to not just remove the barriers that exist, you have to be conscious when you're doing public policy. where things are cut will disproportionately hurt women, hurt women with children, and so when you look at what we've done on the affordable care act, the 20 million whom are getting preventative care, of course that's an overall issue but that is a woman's issue. when you look at, for example, one of the most important budget issues that you probably don't hear much about right now which is medicaid, 68% of medicaid recipients are women. 50% of every woman with a disability is on medicaid.

and here's one four. 40% to 50% of every birth takes place under the medicaid program. so, when we go out and, of course, we're in the season where there will be budget fights back and forth, but it's important for people to understand the numbers that are behind them and when this president is out there fighting for things like this, it's not an abstract just budget fight, it's about the people behind the numbers and if you allow, as house republican proposal does to cut by 30% something like medicaid, that's going have a disproportionate impact on women, on the 70% of women in nursing homes. when you talk about retirement security, we all know that women live longer, that the poverty rate for women alone, widowed is

significantly higher. things that are important for our economy as a whole and one point i want to make is that, you know, looking at this from the economics, i know president obama feels very strongly this way, which is that the things that are good for tearing down barriers for women in the economy are good for our economy. they are good for everyone. so you were kind enough to talk about my, both my mother and my wife, let me mention my sister. my sister is from chicago. she's the only person in our family who roots for the same sports teams that the president and valerie does because the rest of us root for the detroit tigers. but she is a professor of immunology at the university of chicago. now why do i mention that? if you look at what is maybe the

most significant skill gap we face in our economy right now, it is the shortage and the projected shortage of people in stem, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. that's an overall problem for our economy. and yet even though more women are graduating from college, even though more women are often girls are better at math when they are very young, when you get to our workforce, only 25% of those jobs are being filled. now that's about investment, that's also about flexibility. it's about flexibility in tenure programs, in getting ph.d.s, and all of those things deny opportunity to women, it keeps us from -- but it also keeps us from having our team at full strength and when you devote -- when the president invest in stem and invest in more opportunities starting with young girls moving up to get education in this area, you're

tearing down barriers for women to get what are always higher paying jobs but you're also strengthening the workforce as a whole. >> karen and joe and c.c. i want to get into some specifics on this. aside from the fact that president obama would face the wrath of valerie and tina and michelle there's a huge value in this effort. there's a reason for it. it goes way beyond vanity project or some sort of favor he's doing for society. this has to do with our country's economic future, does it not? >> it absolutely does. and we always talk about small business acdriver of the economy. and gene has long been a big proponent of small business. but one of the fastest growing segments in small business are women entrepreneurs. they are joining one and a half times as fast as other entrepreneurs, and i travel all around the country and they are

starting all kind of businesses. they are starting main street businesses but also running defense contracting businesses, and hi-tech businesses. and one of the problems is they reach a barrier, glass ceiling when they try to grow their business. they don't have enough access to capital. they get blocked out of venture capital markets. they don't have the mentoring. and the advice. and the networks that others do. and that's something we focused on at the sba. we put about almost $5 billion in the recovery act out to women entrepreneurs and small business owners making sure they didn't get boxed out when the credit markets froze. >> exactly. joe, i'm going to ask you in a moment why this works for deloit. why your company end up getting massive returns. but c.c. karen told me an incredible fact when we walked in here. 70% of last year's valecdorians

are women. the numbers are leaning in our direction in what we bring to the table in the workplace. it has to do with education and a desire to also the desire to be part of society on a professional level. >> if you look at the changes in our labor force over the last 30, 40 years, we know that women have been increasing their participation in the labor market, they're more likely to be looking for a job and have a job. if you look at just the long-term trend, women have been joining the trends. men, the long-term trend we've been seeing declines in their participation in the labor force which means today women are about 50% of the labor force and they're an increasingly important part of the paycheck for a family. right now they contribute about 40% to a household. that means we're participating in the labor force, very important to the economic well-being of our family. meanwhile, so i feel like i'm 200 years old but in the early '70s, women, if you think about education, women were applying to medical schools, law schools

and many of them were told there's not a place for you here. that was in our lifetimes, not my daughter's lifetimes but that was not very long ago. now what we see are women are going to college at greater rates than men, they're graduating college at greater rates than men and outstripping men in the educational arena which means that not only are weep participating now but going forward is really women that are going to have the skills. >> joe, don't worry. we still need men, a few of them around. on cece's point tell us the latest investment that your company is making and also the concept behind it. why it works for deloitte, why this should be a business model that is echoed around the world at other companies. >> i'm bringing the business side of this.

>> closer to your mouth. the dividend for us is really nothing more than a business imperative -- yours is working. we're going to hire this year up to 18,000 people. 18,000. more than half of that will be women. they'll almost all be college educated. so that's interesting. >> that's excellent. [ applause ] >> 18,000 -- we've taken over here. >> good. >> the brave good man is going to sit up a little bit now. so 18,000. so this in the end is really about what will karen was talking about was the business imperative for us. you're not going to get businesses without linking it to a set of outcomes. so if more than half of the women graduating from college

are women, more than half of the people who are graduating from advanced degrees are women, you're not going to be a very successful business if you don't have that same representation. it's not rocket science. so about 20 years ago, we had a pretty pioneering ceo who started a thing called the women's initiative. it took a little of explaining what that meant. let me tell you the result of it was first. today in our firm, we have 5,000 partners, principals and directors. we have a firm of over 50,000 people. more than half of those are women. we have 5,000 partners. it takes 12 to 14 years to bim one of those. when we started only 7% were, now 25% are. that's the 1100. our board chair was a women that just finished her second term and she was succeeded by a minority. now we have a minority ceo and minority chair. our board, and if you look at the data around public boards in the united states, you get a very small percentage, less than

5%. our board is 35% women. 35. if you put minorities, i count as one of those a puerto rican from the south bronx, it's 50% women. so that's the end result. that's all interesting. that's just a lot of dem graphics. when we started this journey, we were the smallest of the professional services firm in the early '90s. we are now the largest professional firm in the united states by a considerable margin. this was part of that journey. so for us that's what it's about. that's what it's about. >> you know, i was telling joe earlier, meekia, that i remember this. and i remember mike cook, the ceo coming forward and deloitte stepping out. it was not a safe journey at the time. and what happened was they attracted the best and brightest women who saw that they could have a career path there and have family and have great

success because the environment was supportive. and other firms until new york at the time and across the country followed that lead. so when you talk about having an inclusive economy, this is really the same theme. it's about the economic result. we need access and opportunity for all of our terrific people in this country and all of our entrepreneurs because that's how we make the foundation stone for this economy that's built to last. >> we have more women bread winners than ever before. fair to say? okay. so what -- i guess karen and cece, i'd love for you -- we are five minutes away from the jobs numbers, gene. i am watching that clock. what would you consider to be the greatest challenges still ahead for women who want to own small businesses or jump into the economy in some way, shape or form who feel still like it's a world that they can't be a part of? karen and then cece.

>> i want to come back to this access to capital issue, which really is a substantive problem. you know, we've got 8 million women who own small businesses. it's about 30% of the total. back in the '70s, it was about 5%. so women are entering, becoming entrepreneurs. but we need to make sure that they have access and opportunity. and at the sba, we give loan guarantees where the market is not functioning. and it won't surprise you to know that we are three to five times more likely to give a woman to a woman or a minority own business than a conventional bender. why? because they're great businesses but the market is not working perfectly. that is where government can have a role. it's at a pretty good bang for the taxpayer buck because we make loan guarantees and the loans perform really quite well so there's not a lot of cost. we need to make sure both the

main street women and like i said these high growth companies have the kind of support, the tools that these women entrepreneurs need. i was talking to one of the women who runs a helicopter technical company. she does parts and for helicopters. she's now exporting to 11 different countries and because of the career free trade act, she's been over there on a trade mission and she's about to sell helicopter parts in korea. and that's the kind of company we're talking about who is going to create employment. she's in philadelphia and those are real jobs here in this country. >> cece. >> well, i think one of the things that women need to understand and i think is also going to be a transformation in the workplace is that it is possible to work and to take care of family. if you look at it the gender gap for women and men who don't have children, it's much smaller than once families start. so many women believe it's a tradeoff.

you have to make a choice, either i'm going to work or take care of my children. in some jobs, there is a hard tradeoff because the workplace is not very flexible in terms of how they it can structure their time. a growing number of workplaces are building flexibility not just for women but for men too because men are doing more at home as well, that they can reap great rewards. we did the report for this forum two years ago, and that was a great endeavor and it was a really intellectual little interesting endeavor for me. i learned a lot but the research at that time suggested that it could be profitable for companies to have more flexibility, that the workers were healthier, happier and more productive. because of that work, actually, i sparked an economist who did an experiment in china where they actually implemented workplace flexibility and the numbers are through the roof. the workers are more productive. they work more hours and the work that they will do is more accurate. and so i think what we're going to be seeing going forward is that with flexibility, you get

the best workers, they're more productive and we can get win win. >> let me just echo the logic of that because it's fairly -- it makes fairly common sense. if i went out to this room and i was a company and i said i want to hire and help promote the 20 best people here, not just on the job but i want you to rise to high levels, however, if you are a very, very committed parent, please go to the side, i'm 30 or 40% of you are not going to be really a candidate to be an executive here or my sister or get all the way to tenure and a p.h.d.. of course, you would say you just weakened your potential management field. you just weakened your potential ph.d. field. that just makes common sense. so now, for whatever reasons, if we asked people to move to the side, it would be a larger number of women. but it also seems a shame that if -- whether it's