things. are there things related to the live in thatt to you think we can find agreement on? are we moving toward agreement, do you think? where is the consensus around things we are moving toward that you would like to see? >> >> in a poll the majority of republicans and democrats, women n the brink, families of all incomes, agree we need to modernize the relationship with women. we need paid family leave. they agree child care is a huge barrier to work. what keeps me up at night is not that people don't agree with these things, but how we turn hat into shoe leather activism and make our representatives change it. >> but what about something like

the minimum wage. you have a population that's aging, a big part of the population and a lot of people who are taking care of people who are older are older themselves and financially vulnerable. some would argue that raising the minimum wage at this point actually makes that harder because it makes it harder for people to get the care they need at a price they can afford. how does something like that get resolved in your opinion? >> we need to show that we're all dependent on one another. you have people who are care givers for their parents, care givers for children, care givers for the sick and disabled. they all care about each other in a community. it's not caregiver against person being cared for. we need to figure out ways, and i think they spoke about this on -- on the panel earlier this morning, we talk about how we value care in our society. somebody caring for elderly parents or working as a home health aide earning poverty level wages, that's not good for the caregiver or the person

receiving the care. there's been studies on the minimum wage that shows it doesn't cost jobs, there's ways use medicaid and child care credits to improve wages. we need to not pit elderly against children, we don't need to pit elderly against those receiving care. we need to have a system overall that values care. >> what does that look like? tell me what that looks like. because if you're talking bt a household budget, what about child care and elder care have to come out of that budget, how does that happen? it's nice to say we can't pit people against each other, but who's picking up this etab? >> the book outlines public and private solutions. in terms of public solutions, part ol valuing people is recognizing that they need paid sick days and paid family leave.

we talk about private solutions, corporations can offer those kinds of benefits to their employees. when we talk about wages, the government can be a provider. child care is one of the biggest barriers to work for low income women but i don't know any women across the income scale who isn't concerned about how difficult it is to find affordable child care arrangements. the arch cost of child care is 40% of people's incomes. i think a discussion about the government ose role in comprehensive child care and pre-x is a conversation we're beginning to see happen. >> i want to say, at least for seniors, a substantial amount of he care giving is unpaid and uncompensated. really there, what we've seen in a number of places is employers

starting to take a step in terms of additional flexibility in the workplace. that's something we want to continue to encourage. many people who provide care don't think of themselves as a caregiver, they say, yeah, i do ther rands, do shopping, so it's important to recognize that. states are providing respite care for those taking care of seniors. i don't think there's going to be, i may be wrong, but i don't think there's going to be a massive government solution, whether it's at the federal level or state level. it's going to be a patchwork of family members, of employers and others having to step in, particularly on care giving. importantly, we've been talking to a lot of health care providers, hospitals, doctors, you would be stunned at the

number of people who go in for very significant care, medical care, and as they leave the hospital, or the doctor's office, there's no thought about having a conversation with the person who is going to follow up. things like that can make an enormous difference. >> let's go back to the comment about people shouldn't confront each other and so forth. this is totally inappropriate in washington. politics is organized warfare between groups, especially under conditions we have now where the money is short and it's not going to loosen up for a long time so if we spend it here, we cannot spend it here. so far, the political system has decided, ok, we're going to cut across the board. that means we'll be cutting children's programs, we're going to be cutting research on children and other things. that's exactly what we do now. we cut head start but we protected the programs for the elderly. that's the future because the congress set it up so that all programs for the elderly are on

automatic pilot. we are confronting a really serious problem. we are going to have to fight. there's going to have to be some better organization to get our -- to switch these resources, take for example child care. i completely agree with you on child care. we don't spend nearly enough on child care especially because we have so many single mothers. this raises the broader point, we're not about to change. our demographic changes toward reductions in marriage and increases in female families are not going to change. we're going to have many, many of our kids for the foreseeable future. we need to support the families even better than we do now. we do a lot now, we should do more, pesslirble -- especially on child care. we're going to have to save money somewhere in order to spend the money we ought to spend on kids and the future of the country or we're going to pay a price. >> can you talk more, ron, because you've been sounding the alarm for quite some time about family structure. marriage is one of the cores of

your work, is the whole question of marriage. by the measures one might argue, i know we were hearing about family structure -- >> it totally failed. >> what we heard earlier is marriage among the middle class is more stable than it's ever been but among those financially vulnerable it's more difficult than it's ever been. so the we is, what now? marriage is not the silver bullet against poverty but it is true that the percentage of family whors poor are less by a marriedheaded couple. >> if we had the marriage rate that we had in 1970 and we did this by matching people, match n age, race, and location, the

poverty rate would fall 30% without any additional spending. that's one of the reasons i'm attracted to it. i'm also attracted to increasing marriage rates because it's good for kids. kids don't get a vote in this demographic change and continue to not get a vote. a lot of my colleague who was been in the marriage movement for a long time don't want to face up to facts. we're not going to change this in our lifetime. we're not going to change it in god's lifetime and we have years and years and years of this and the consequence, the inevitable consequence is the private sector and public sector has to do more to support female-headed families and day care is a great example but there are others. >> like what? what's the way that we should support female-headed families since that's the way it's going? >> one thing i would like to see, i'd like to obama talk more

about the advantages of families. i know he believes it, because he said it in his book. but he hardly ever talks about it. marriage is the greatest anti-poverty tool. people like obama and people on the city council, the mayors, governors, everybody, we should talk a lot more about it. i think -- >> don't you think he talks more about it than any other president because it's consider sod unusual for black people, particularly black men, to be committed to their marriages, you don't think he talks about it? >> i don't think he talks about marriage in a way that people would say, this is a key to my life. it's key to my children's life. it's the best way to do it. i highly recommend it. that kind of thing. there's a thin line here. >> no, i was going to say, i think we spoke earlier this morning about how no one is against marriage but in some cases it's not a possibility for a variety of reasons. it could be even because of domestic violence, things didn't work out between the partners and it's better to be separated

and just getting married, especially when there's a lot of lower income men who are themselves not financially stable is not going to resolve the problem. i think it's important to encourage stable relationships, it's important to encourage family planning, and in the shriver report itself, in our marriage, motherhood and men chapter, we speak about the importance of family planning. but i do think that to sort of put out there that if we were just to talk more about marriage people would -- >> i didn't say just. that's one part of it. the cultural change here is that the status of marriage has declined greatly. we now accept it, you can co-habit, you don't have to co-habit it's fine to have a baby, there's no pressure not to, even if you can't support the baby, we'll give you public dollars to do it. the whole culture around family and marriage and commitment to children within a married couple family has changed dramatically. i bemoan that but i accept it as the way it's going to be so we

need to find a way around it. i think if we had more of a public commitment and our policies, especially tax policy, were focused on two-parent, married couple families, we could improve somewhat. >> i take it by then you support same-sex marriage? >> yes, i have no problem with that. >> i'm just -- just to clarify you do support same-sex marriage. >> one thing i've been involved in is abused and neglected kids. there are many cases, for many years that same-sex couples, men and women, have adopted kids and taken them out of the child protection system. which is a great thing. i came to this thinking that is a lot better, i know for sure that's a lot better than a kid being in foster care and we have some research on it, it's not great, but it's very difficult to show any harm to children because they're with married parents. that's controversial but i've read the research, i think it's not persuasive.

you could not point to research and say, that screws up kids when they live with two moms or two dads. >> councilmember, you wanted to jump in? >> i think in a lot of plcymakers aren't just looking at family status. sometimes, stream of consciousness doesn't come to my mind as i'm going to make this decision because people are married? i'm going to make the decision because people live in a household together, they have an arrangement, whether it's a committed partnership, two moms, two dad, if there's love in the home that's all i'm concerned about because that's going to be the fuel to get people and really children, our future, to where they need to go. on the other hand though, i think one of the main things we have to look at it is whether it's marriage or not marriage is looking at the income. right. so the color of money, the only color of money in america that mat sers green, as i was told by one of my history professors in

civil rights. i think a lot about that. when you have a dual stream of income reduced to one stream of income, you'll have to make some choices. so when you look at home production versus market production in the home, we have to look at how many hours is someone getting basically subsidized for in their homes to do laundry or folding or could they hire, make a higher wage to get extra help if they don't have a person, significant other in the home to help. got to look at the whole economic structure in that home. so i think that's -- it's just really prnt that we're looking that, it's not just a hetero-normative viewpoint that places priority on one man and one dad. there's so many reasons that's not going to happen. when it does happen, that's great. i hope that eventually we're not even discussing if it's a mom and dad in a home. we're just discussing if two people have enough to put a roof over their heads, keep themselves relatively happy, safe, and that's it. i hope we're talking about other

issues in 20 years. >> why? on the older-- i'm set in the millenials and the younger set in the others, millenials don't give a rip. you've got a boyfriend and you're a guy? i don't care. you got a wife and you're a lady? cool. >> but the whole question of two parents. i feel you. but on this question of it's better to have two parents in the home, whatever their gender is, do you agree with that? >> i absolutely do. in fact there's research, and i'm sorry i don't have it, i'd glad to give it to anybody, but -- in my undergraduate studies, women's studies and economics, which are perfect disciplines together to look at thing but research shows the best outcomes were households with two moms.

and again, that is not something that i would say, ok, well then i'm going to make policy to say everybody should have two moms, no. absolutely not. but it just goes to show that we've put such a tight capital on a heteronormative family and not every research study shows that will provide the best outcome. we need to get beyond one model that we have that has worked really well for so many families and most of us are in this room because of heteronormativity. it's going to be part of our society. but i just don't think it is this cornerstone that we need to build ourselves on. we need to build ourselves on many types of families and the key thing is, what do families need to thrive? >> let's talk about, we started talking about the minimum wage. i would like to talk more about child care. but i'm wondering, is child care the issue or is care giving the issue? that's my question, given what nancy is talking about in terms of where we're headed as a

country. so talk about, what does the world you want to live in look like when it comes to this issue? >> it's both-and. people are caring for older relatives or even for a sick spouse. we were talking about the needs of military families coming home and the caregivers for military families often don't have the support they need as well. it's across different generations. the world again that i want to live in is one that enables women and men, for that matter, to balance those the bread winning and care giving responsibilities. i think the policies in the shriver report which hopefully will help all of us sleep better through the night is public, it's private, and it's personal. it's everybody stepping up and getting the education that they need to earn higher wages. it's companies making sure a lot of these things don't cost

money. the index we put out as part of the report, better benefits and pay cost money. but there's a host of other things employers can do to provide flexible and predictable schedule, to allow care givers to make personal phone calls during the work day to check on things. the vision we lay out is to boost the incomes of breadwinners and to value the role of care givers, including raising the minimum wage, making sure that people have pathways to medium and high-skilled jobs, the information they need to make educational choices and what they need to succeed as a working parent. it means that they have flexible and predictable schedules and the right to request flexibility from their employer without being fired. it means we have comprehensive pre-x and child care proposal. the president outlined one plan. there's bipartisan legislation. this is something that should be bipartisan. in the poll it's bipartisan. bipartisan majority of americans

support it. let's get the boots on the ground and turn it into law. >> this time has gone awfully fast. i knew this was going to go fast but not as fast as this. i would like to give each of you, i'm sorry, we were not offered the opportunity to hear from you in this program. we would like to have, wouldn't we? we would have liked to have heard from everybody. but next time. so in the time we have left, i'd love to hear from each of you about what you'd like to see happen as david said, you can give us a charge, give us the takeaway, one thing you'd like us to be thinking about. >> i think again one of the great challenges we're going to have as a country and as families will be the increasing demands for care giving of young and old and i'd like us to see if we can begin a discussion that you've started here which is about concrete approaches we can take and to recognize that

indeed much of our public policy supports the economic security of older people and that's very important in a family. if you look at 50 to 60-year-olds, about half of them are providing significant economic support toer that kids and grandkids. the whole family economy has changed and we have to recognize that. >> do you want to give us assignments? tell us if there's one thing you want us to do when we leave here. a lot of us are good multitaskers. >> i'd love personally to have you all engage with aarp and work with us on the next step of how we might engage in this conversation, some specific actions we're working in every state and an awful lot of communities. >> i imagine a world a much higher percentage of our kids ive with married parents and that provides emotional and financial security for kids. knowing that's not going to happen, i want us at the state and federal level to provide more support to female-headed

families to do a better job rearing kids. >> give us some homework. what do you want us to do to support that? >> start a local organization that helps single parents, both males and females to help with child care and counseling and whatever other issues they have. >> councilwoman? >> i would draw your attention to the idea of rei'll yhency and everybody has -- of resiliency. everybody has a pivotal moment in their life. use that moment to make your dent on the world. get off your pity pot. as someone told me if you sit on your pity pot too long, you'll get ring around the rear. we can't have that. i want clean buns in this room. the homework is number one invest in yourself. if you're in a place where you think, it's my time to make my dend in the -- dent in the world, invest in yourself, ask for help, ask for what you need. contact me, i would gladly hold

your hand over skype or facetime with anybody in this room. i want to see you invest in yourself. if you don't think you want to be in the spotlight but you want to help other people, ask somebody, how can i invest in you? how can i care about you? so if you see someone running a campaign, definitely give money to that woman. but ask her, can i take you out for snacks and an art craft with your daughter? that's what a friend of mine did, taught me about self-care on that long journey. invest in yourself and invest in others. >> i think what catherine said is beautiful. it contributes to what i want to call people to do, wild you still can, download the shriver report for free. it lists 10 things you can do. i want to emphasize one in particular, vote. and to make your elected official earn the vote. not giving it away. that's something we emphasize to these solutions, holding the

people who are representing us accountable for progress. the final thing is,ic this was represented this morning by the power, is tell your story. if you feel comfortable sharing your story, it can have such an impact by putting faces and voices to the conversations we've been having today. o to theshriverreport.com. and also we have our american story where we kind to deploy these stories in public policy debates. >> thank you all. >> thank you. [applause] >> please welcome to the podium karen skeleton. i'm editor in chief of the shriver report. i'm here on behalf of my coed

tores, olivia, roberta, daniellea, and we're proud to be here on your shoulders, many of you who have been working on the issues we describe in the shriver report, for most of your lives. our goal when we started the shriver report was to ignite a national conversation. to raise awareness about the 42 million women and the 28 million children who depend on them who live on the brink, who work hard every day, who have the same dreams and aspirations as other americans, but are just not able make ends meet. we wanted to bring that conversation to main street for as maria says all the time, our wallct is a combination of street and main street.

we think it's been able to break through the consciousness of this country in the last few day. our approach is a little unusual. we set out to do some ground breaking work around how this project is communicated and that took a combination of components that are unusual. again as maria said, we didn't want this to be a report that sat on the shelf and collected dust. we put on our thinking caps and came up with a number of different elements that when put in combination would help propel this conversation into the national psyche. i'm just going to tell you about a few of them. first of all, you know about the book. it's still available, free for down loading for one more day. i'll tell you the breaking news is that over 25,000 copies have been down loaded since we aunched.

a second component is a comprehensive, bipartisan national polysupported by the aarp that has tested the opinions of women and men across the country. it has got a very lit -- little, small margin of error and we're proud of its findings. we challenged our authors and contributors and partners to come up with solutions that were not run of the mill. things you might not have heard about before that broke the mold of thinking about the issue of women live on the brink. we developed for the first time in this nation's history a modern corps, which is a evolution of the vista corps which maria's dad invented. it will be people who go out and

help men and women who are eligible for government benefits but don't know they exist. it's a program maria starred as first lady of california and is still alive and thriving today. we worked with representatives from the family institute to develop a thrive index for businesses, a checklist of practices and policies that they could turn to to help lift up and strengthen low wage working women in the cubry. we think this is the first of its kind in the nation. andeveloped with ann moseley idea for life education. a modern day look at the old fashioned home ec classes that used to teach you to cook and slow. what people are telling us now of course is that they need to know about financial literacy, about self-esteem, about how to have relation hipps -- relationships. those are the kinds of real life skills and practical skills we hope we can develop for young

girls living on the brink. and men on the bripping. i also think you might have noticed around this stage today the beautiful photo journalism we commissioned for this report, led by barbara kinney, we asked seven female photographers, many of them award win, pulitzer prize winning, who have traveled the country shooting days in the lives of women living on the brink. we're very excited about a classroom initiative that will bring the shriver report into university classrooms across the country. the university of california at berkeley, university of michigan, george washington university, harvard university, wellesley college. u.s.c. and many more universities will have this book taught in their classrooms. take orders from

colleges who want to order a copy, i'm looking for spellman college in particular. of course we have built a historic social media campaign around a policy issue like this. it seems our twitter account was closed down for a little while because we had so many tweets and retweets they couldn't handle more of them. we have increased by 7,000% our reach on facebook just in the last few days. we're up to about 1.5 million eople. we really believe our social community we're building on shriverreport.org is an important part of the power around the project. we have amazing media partners in "the atlantic" and nbc for maria. many of you have appeared for the last couple of days and of course we have this amazing live event.

but one of the sexiest parts of our components and the one everybody really likes to hear about is our documentary, which is why i'm standing here to introduce it. when we first started the report, we knew that the subject of women's economic security and social inability wasn't the topic that most people wanted to talk about and so maria and the center for american progress, we came together and we thought how are we really going to break through on this. and the way we were going to do it is to connect emotionally the real stories of the women you've seen here, the women who are photographed, with the american people. what is their story? so maria went to hbo and talked to the iconic document aaron sheila nevins and said would you make a documentary of our report and hbo put together the best am, the emmy award winning

directors sherry cookson and nick dube, and hay zhoird country and found a 24-7 day care, the chambliss center for children, whose director and some of their workers are here today and they found ka treea gilbert. katrina gilbert is a 30-something-year-old single mother who works as a c.n.a., certified nursing assistant, in an elderly facility. she works hard every day and raises her children. her story tells the story of our report organically. it tells of her desire to be educated, her inability to make ends meet, of her relationship with her boyfriend and her ex-husband and her children and her day care center.

t tells our story beautifully, emotionally, and compellingly. it's going to debut, it's going to air on hbo on march 17, st. patrick's day, so remember that. and with no further adieu, i would like to show you some clips from the film. >> when me and my husband split, i had to do something. i was looking for a job for eight months. >> hi, mr. granger are you done? >> yes, i am. >> you are?

you ate it all. >> yeah. >> lift your feet. here you go. there you go, bud. >> even nurses say, a c.n.a.'s job is the back bone of the nursing field. it can be rewarding. you meet very good people. but you also lose them and it's very hard. >> yeah, john, i'll be back tomorrow. >> $9.49 an hour for what we do. >> what we're going to do is this. ive yourself a big hand. you're remembering what we've been doing. getting ready for the next step,

going to kindergarten. you've got about seven months. it'll be kindergarten ready. guess what? it's going to be pinned on you. the choices you make. we say good choices get you what? >> good results. >> when you treat people right, when you talk to people right, when you do something that's not right you go back and make it right. hat's what makes a good you. >> the kids are learning so much here. so much. if i went to a normal tai care, it would cost me $300 per week for all three of my children. how tissue that's a whole paycheck. you're working to payday care? how are you going to pay your bills? we got to go pay the rent. tell her bye. >> bye. >> have a good weekend. >> please welcome to the stage

ron brown steen and crirsen jill brand. - brownstein and kirsten gillenbrand. >> senator guillen brand, former mber of the house -- gillenbrand, a former member of the house. you were at the brookings institution earlier this week talking about some of the ideas we're going to discuss here in the next few minutes. you said, quote, the key to an american middle class that's built to delive in the 21st century is women. why do you think that? >> because it's one of the greatest untapped potential in our economy for a lot of reasons. first of all, 2/3's of minimum wage earners are women. a lot of those are women with children. if you increase the minimum wage, you increase economic

investment in our communities overnight. something as simple as paid family medical leave would help so many more women stay in the work force, be eligible for more promotions, be able to earn higher wages and put more back into the community if she has those opportunities with the flexibility paid leave would have. something as simple as affordable day care or universal pre-k would allow women to be in the workplace. the woman in the video, her cost was not only her entire paycheck for day care but she didn't have a lot of options. so for a lot of women what happens is they'll stay out of the work force those first few years or they'll use informal kear for their children a lady down the street a lady in the building, a mother, an aunt. and that child may well not get the components of good early childhood education, but also if that caregiver is sick, she'll miss a day of work. she may not have sick days. if she's a low-wage worker, she

may lose propotional opportunities or get fired. her career goes offtrack often because she doesn't have quality, affordable, reliable day care. each of those ideas are about making sure a woman can stay in the work force during her entire working life and achieve her full potential in the work force and because we're not doing that, it means a lot of economic growth isn't happening because literally half the work force is being undervalued. >> that's right where i wanted to ask you. you have five distinct ideas. but what is the common thread? is it what you described? enabling women -- >> it's recognizing that the face of the workplace has changed and all the policies that workplaces utilize are stuck in the 1950's and 1960's. they literally still have the same policies we had in the 1950's and 1960's when in a block of 10 families, 10 homes, eight or seven out of eight of those homes you had a husband going to work and a mom staying

at home. day care and child care were less urgent. today that block looks totally different. out of that block, five homes have two-income parents, three homes have a single mom working and only two homes have one parent that works and one parent at home. but you don't have any of the support that's necessary for working parents within today's workplace. >> talk about the decision to focus on women. you know there is some evidence that women are adapting better than men to the demands of the information age economy. anthony caravalli in his chapter notes that 60% of all post-secondary degrees are women. the economic policy institute shows that wages for men are -- wages are lower for men and higher for women than they were 40 years ago. isn't it that too many men are falling off track? >> that may be an issue. but women make up more than half of the college degrees in this country and more than half of

the advanced degrees in this country but are still enearning 77 cents on the dollar. so the real challenge is that you have this enormously qualified, well educated work force who is not -- either not being paid fairly, not reaching their full potential but also not necessarily being elevated within companies on various industries for many, many reasons but again, your best ideas aren't necessarily coming to the forefront. those small businesses women are starting, they start their businesses with eight times less capital than male-owned small businesses but their success rate is just as high, if not higher. so what you're doing is you are undervaluing 50% of your work force in a way that hampers the economy. so the real idea is, if you want america's economy to grow and to excel and to reach its full potential, you need at least half the work force here that you are undervaluing to be utilized at their full potential. >> this entire project may qualify a a successful

woman-started small business. talk about some of the ideas individually. paid family and medical leave the argument raised against that is the same one raise on the minimum wage, same one raised on the pler mandate on health care. the argument is you are increasing the cost of employment and therefore you will get less of it. what do you think about that? >> well, the place you should start to answer that question is you should ask businesses. any business that has paid leave will tell you it is worth every bit of that investment because what you're gaining is a more loyal work forest, a happier work force, a more efficient work force and one that doesn't have to be constantly retrained. because when you retain that employee, that mom, for example, or a woman who is caring for an aging parent or a dying family member. when you retain that worker you don't have to retrain someone else when she leaves because she has to spend the last few months with her mother before she dies or has to spend a little time at home with the infant she just delivered because this is her

fers child. you have to understand that you're losing some of your best and brightest by not creating flexibility within the work force. that's issue one. issue two, the way we've written this bill, we're making it extremely user friendly. it's piggybacked on the social security program. a small amount of money comes out of every worker's paycheck. an equal crecks from the worker themselves. it's about the cost of a cup of coffee a week. it's a small amount of money. but if every worker provides this to have the flexibility at the moment you need it because your parents are aging or someone, god forbid, in your family is gravely ill. any worker, mel male or female, at any time, part-time or full-time, can take three nths, it's an earned benefit so it carried with you regardless of where you work. small businesses, 60% of small businesses say this is a great idea because it's not a program they have to run, it's automatic but they know they can keep their work force longer and their best workers because of

this flexibility. >> again your agenda, universal pre-k, how would you achieve that? >> there are several bills being written right now but the one i'm working on, it would be a block grant to the state to say you must establish universal pre-k and should do it as part of the public school system. because education is generally handled by the state, to give the incentive to the states to get it done but make it part of the public school system so it's not just for some children, it's for all children. and it becomes part of the normal curriculum. anyone who studied early childhood education an early childhood development knows those first few years are essential for a child to begin to learn about numbers, learn about letters, start reading before he or she get into kindergarten. if they don't have that early childhood education, it's hard to reach their full potential. >> the word you used was must. not providing states an incentive but requiring them to do so while providing resources.

>> correct. >> why must? >> the goal of the bill, it's not mandatory, it's you will only receive this support if you do it but you must provide it to everyone. they can't pick and choose which kids are eligible. >> in the post-health care world, where half the states are refusing a 100% granten medicaid d you worry that allowing states would lead to blue states do it and red states don't? >> this is an idea that doesn't seem partisan. we have some very significant republican leaders and philanthropists who have decided, if i'm going to leave a legacy on my country, it's going to be with early childhood education. there's already a narrative being developed within the conservative community that this is actually the best investment. i think it's something that can be -- can transcend parties and

is mething that everybody ok with. >> what's the best way to do equal pay for equal work? >> the first bill president obama signed was the lilly ledbetter act, saying there was no statute of limitations. that's what happened to lilly ledbetter. she worked her whole career, didn't realize she was being penalized, and when she tried to be compensated for it they said the statute of limitations had passed. what's still difficult, you're not proteched if you ask a male colleague, how much do you get paid? you can be fired for asking that question. what the fair pay bill that barbara mikulski is we incentivize employers to tell what you pay employees, you can't be penalized for asking about a salary, incentivizes

people to publish what different industries are paying their workers so that you actually can figure out am i being paid fairly. it's illegal to be -- it's not illegal to be d -- it's already -- it's focused on transparency. >> i want to ask you about the chatchter in the report that notes that even the women in higher ed tend to clust for the majors that lead toward lower paying jobs. the helping professions in many cases. this pipeline starts early. there's a report that of the approximately 30,000 high school students who took the a.p. computer science exam in 2013, only about 20% were women. is this cultural? can you get at this through law? are there other things you have to do to close the pay gaps an the choices people are making in their own careers? >> we have a goal of trying to incentivize more girls and minorities to go into stem subjects, science, engineer --

science, tech nelling, engineering and math this ebest way to do that is incentivize hands on learning. teaching a third grader to build a robot, teaching a fifth grader to build a robot. explaining to girls if you're the smartest girl in math an science you could help cure your grandma's cancer. inevitably and this is just anecdotal but when i go and see my son who is 5, when he was in his pre-k plass he would be playing with trains and he'd be building the train tracks and trying to create transportation networks. his best friend sadie at the time was putting people along the tracks and telling stories about where the people were going on their journeys. that's not surprising because oftentimes women an girls focus on people,en relationships, on communities, on collaborative activities. it's almost how we're naturally wired more often than not. and boys more often than not are yeared to want to build, to build things that go fast, to

build things that go high. that's what little boys do. and so it's not surprising that a lot of boys will go into math, science, engineering, because those are the tools they need to build. build all the things they dream of flying and riding and driving. so the goal for educators is to coach that young girl, you know, if you're really good at math, if you stick with math or science an engineering, you could figure out how to have clean air, clean water for your community so your cousin's asthma is not as bad. a little girl will say, i would love to do that. because she can then put her mind around solving a problem about a community or person that she loves. and so that's all you have to do to a young girl. any time i go into manufacturing facilities around my state, i tour manufacturing all the time, usually it's about 70% male. i typically will go up to the women i see and say how did you get interested in engineering? they've always had a mentor. oh, my dad was an engineer, he

encouraged me since i was young and i love it or they had a teacher, one teacher who picked them out and said you're really good at math or science and you should stick with it. you do have to make an effort because again we either are naturally wired are avoid it or our teachers don't move us in those directions but if you allow more women and minorities and encourage them to go into these careers it allows them to earn more money. eight out of nine of the fastest growing industries require proficiency in stem. and so unless you get the young stuventes early, when they're in their younger years, to be interested in these topics and give our teachers incentives to do the hands on learning and to get the level of expertise to inspire the kids you're not going to reach your goal. it takes effort, it takes a community commitment and it takes a real education of our teachers to how do you bring out the best in all your students so they are equally as poised to go into higher paid professions.

>> let's go to the audience for a few questions. right there, one right behind you. identify yourself. >> my name is stephanie, i'm representing the ywca national capital area. my full-time work, i work with students who overcome adversity and have financial need and provide scholarships to these students to go on and lead successful careers. my question is pertaining to what you were saying about starting the kids early and getting girls interested in stem early and that's one of the things i have been disappointed about was like race to the top. i don't see that in there about starting kids early and that -- that pre-k through 5 of starting them to get interested in stem. that's not there. that science piece. and what is it that we can do more to encourage that at the -- at that level and working with our teachers to be able to teach that because they have all this -- all their effort is focused

on testing. >> right. you're right. it's not in there. it should be in there. we should urge all our communities and states to focus on. i have a bill that would basically fund hands on early childhood education for k through 12 to get kids interested in stem and give awards and grants to schools that will incentivize the hands on learning to get the girls and minorities focused on the subject. you can ensentiv schools, urge governors to make it part of their goals, i think the more you talk about it, the more the educational community will say, that's a great idea. let's do that. it's about amplifying your message and getting more senators and congresspeople to share that view and fund programs that do it best. >> a question over there. stand up. the microphone will find you. hold on one second. >> hi, my name is gloria brown marshall, i'm a professor but i have a nonprofit and we produced

a report on the status of black women and girls. question deals with the povertyization of women. it's obvious that women could do all these things for the economy and for their families, do you think the fact that it's not happening may be to keep women dependent so that they will city dependent on men somehow, go back to that style of living that you talked about from the 1940's and 1950's that somebody is holding this hope out that, you know, they don't need to be as self-reliant as they are and should go back to the traditional home? that would be very shortsighted because women have a lot of offer. we are smart, we have great business ideas. we help companies perform better. a statistic i lowe, when at least one woman is on a company

board, that company is 40% less likely to have to restate their earnings. in light of their financial collapse, i think every company should want women on their corporate boards. i think there's a recognition that women bring something unique to the workplace. we have a different, often times we have a different management style a different problem lving style, we see growth differently, and this combination of male and female voices together is what creates much better policy, both better public policy from a government perspective and better policy from a corporate perspective. i think that for those who would like women not to participate in the workplace or not participate in our economy, it's undervaluing women and undervaluing what their contributions are and i think that's a mistake because again, why wouldn't you want all of your talent trying to move the u.s. economy forward? any clear thinking person would want that. i think we just have to keep

advocating the reasons why women's voices matter so much, what we do bring to the table, why it's good for our economy, why it's good for our families and urge leaers to make sure we change the workplace rules to reflect who is doing the work. women are ding the work all across america. we should be supporting them. because still, we will take responsibility for 70% of child cair and household work in our home and so we do need that flexibility. we do need to be paid fairly. we do need to make sure that our young children are wellocked -- looked after so we can do our job and stay on track in our careers. >> quick question here. >> hank wallace. to encourage those voices, senator, to sound more authoritative, what can you do to encourage a new generation to say instead of ask, to avoid talk but actually to say declarative statements without a question mark at the end of -- t the end of the sentence?

>> the interesting thing about women is we often are collaborative in nature. we generally prefer to be well liked. we like people around us to be happy. and so women often -- what's wrong with you? >> it's what we do. we are happy people and we like everyone to be happy around us. it's some skills we learn often as being mothers and daughters, we are the ones who feed everybody at the table, we are the ones that make sure our kids are happy and healthy. that's the kind of work we typically do. and so there's this issue of likeability. and so for a lot of young women, they want to be well liked. and so they may often feel insecure that if they're too aggressive, too pushy, or too declarative, they won't be well liked. i encourage the women that work for me to be aauthoritative, to

state their opinions, to hold their ground and if they want to do it in a nice way, god bless them. i prefer to work in a nice way too. ut they have to know that they are responsible for their job, for their opinions, for what they have to do as i try to encourage young women who work for me to add that professional veneer. there's a certain standard of professionalism that is required for success in business in general and so to meet those standards, you do have to be blessed like a young girl and more like a young aspiring woman or professional. just work at it. it's part of our nature and it's not a bad part of our nature, it's just part of our nature. sometimes you have to learn skills to excel in whatever profession you choose so for example, if you are a young lawyer and you're going in front of a judge, there's a certain way you're going to need to dress and speak and perform to be well received and you just need to know what those

parameters are so if you want to be well received you can meet those ideals. and so it's a choice every young woman is going to make about how she wans to be and how she wants to be received. what's most important is to give women the tools they need and knowledge they need about how to be successful and they can make their own decisions. >> and a final question to get us out the door. when you think about the issues you are talking about here, what has more influence, party or gender? when you talk about this agenda, do you feel you get more agreement from male democratic colleagues or female republican olleagues? [laughter] the fair answer is, it depends. there are many female republican colleagues who agree completely on this agenda, i get along very well and we do consensus building and bipartisan legislation.

most of my male colleagues who are democrats fully agree with this agenda. some may hesitate. but that means there's room for growth. so i am eager to talk to them about those issues. thank you.t, [applause] > please welcome to the podium -- >> hi. good afternoon. hi maim is sara j. aruman. my story is that my life changed dramatically on seventh, 2001. in my case there was a restaurant at the top of world trade center tower one called

windows on the world. on that morning, 73 workers died and 250 workers lost their jobs and about 13,000 restaurant workers lost their jobs in the months and weeks following the tragedy. i was asked to start a relief center for those who lost their jobs an survivors after 9/11. roc, the restaurant opportunity center. it's grown into a national movement. we have 13,000 restaurant workers in 32 cities across the country, about 100 employer partners who work with us, providing livable wages and good working conditions and several thousand consumer members. and we've grown so fast -- thank you. why have we grown so fast? we've grown so fast because this industry just continues to explode. the restaurant industry right now is the second largest private sector employer in the united states. one in 12 americans right now works in the restaurant industry. over 10 million workers and yet it happens to be the absolute

lowest paying employer in the united states. every year the department of labor reports the 10 lowest paying jobs in america and every year the seven lowest paying job, seven of the 10 and the two absolute lowest paying jobs are the people who cook and serve our food. why? why? how is it you've got the largest and fastest growing industry proliferating the lowest paying jobs? it's because of the national restaurant association which we call the other n.r.a. which back in 1996 under the leadership of a man named herman cain who you may remember tried to run for president. under the leadership of herman cain they struck a deal with congress where they said we, the other n.r.a., will not oppose an increase in the overall minimum wage as long as the minimum wage for tips workers stays frozen forever. so it's been frozen at $2.134 for the last 22 years.

and who are tips workers? they are not the guy at the fancy fine dining restaurant on the corner of this building. 70% of tipped workers are women. they work at the ihop and the apple bees and the olive garden and red lobster and denny's. they suffer three times the poverty rate of the rest of the u.s. work force and u.s. food stamps at double the rate of the rest of the u.s. work force. the women who put food on our table can't afford to put food on their own family's table. what else does it mean? it means when you live on a peage of $2.13 an hour your wages are so low they go entirely to taxes and you live entirely off our tips. when you live after your tips your rent and bills go up and down -- do not go up and down but your income shifts from day to day, week to week, year to year, month to month, based on the pleasure of a customer and whether you let, as a woman, that customer touch you or look

at you in a certain way. you are entirely reliant on the mercy of those who pay your tips who pay your wages, which by the way, is not your employer. my dream, my dream is that no woman in america should have to live off the mercy of customers. no woman should live my dream is that no woman should have to live off of the mercy of customers. you the customer should pay our wages. my dream is coming true. there is a bill in congress that would finally raise the wage for both tipped and non-tipped workers. there are a number of states and localities where we are moving to eliminate the the were minimum wage for tipped workers altogether. what does that mean for tipped

workers? it is 50-50 male-female. tipped workers are 70% female. this is the only industry that has found a way to engage in legal gender discrimination. making this dream and reality means many things -- a reality means many things. it means women lifted out of poverty. not living at the mercy of tips.ers' [applause] stagease welcome to the our guests. [applause]

>> hi everybody. we have heard from a movement leader, activists, and organizer. before that, we heard from a senator. those were conversations about policies. the idea is to bring it back to the ground level. speak to some of the individual people who might be affected by some of these changes. .ho can tell us our stories what it is like to be an individual human being. a young woman living life in america today. hopefully that will be a valuable perspective. this is a lie fed session -- life ed session. kelsey come and

from the leadership project in new york. we will hopefully have a bit of a conversation -- round-robin style. we will start with the question of what challenges have you gone through? we will start with you, gracie. >> one of the biggest struggles i have had to overcome has been my financial situation with my mother. she is a single mother. my father left around 2006. it has been pretty rough. poverty has always looked like $20,000 below the poverty line for a three person family. allude -- avoid the landlord at 1:00 in the morning. that is what my struggle has been. , that was onunger

top of health struggles. i don't want to say i am over that. i'm in the process of recovering -- overcoming. >> is a process. thank you. [applause] -- what about? you? >> i'm in the process of overcoming my struggle. i live in a single-parent household. my struggle is my dependency on my mother who has a dependency on the government. --'s not making enough money is making enough for one person, but not for the seven people in my household. i am only 17 so i can overcome this myself. i am tried to go to college and get education.

i have a scholarship to a college which i want to attend. but the scholarship does not cover half of the tuition. might problem is trying to get through college. >> thank you. [applause] >> i am kelsey. one of the challenges i have overcome was the language barrier. old, i was one-year occurrence at me to peru to live with my grandparents. because of the economy, they were not stable enough to care a healthy have household. they sent me to peru. when i came back when i was eight, it was hard for me trying

to live without my grand parents and forming a relationship with kids that spoke a different language. i overcame trying to get along with people i really wasn't used to. [applause] >> thank you so much. you are so young and done so much in your lives. what would you say as you go forward? one of the challenges you are facing -- what are the challenges you are facing? >> one thing that has helped me has been a safe space. it is a space where people can

speak and share ideas and be themselves. and exclusive -- inclusive space. it is a support system. i have had to in high school -- two in high school. i have been learning about college since 14. scholarship toht university in indiana. [applause] space -- it is an exclusive space where i could be horrible -- mold herbal -- vulnerabklle. it is hard to say? i am poor. i feel like women, daughters and moms, they need spaces where it

is ok for them to speak. especially in a society where they are told not to speak. share our stories and be ok with telling them and not fear being ted -- judged. that is what we need. spaces where a woman can be vulnerable. but not make it seem like it is bad, it is strength. >> is the strength. how about you? >> to bounce off of what she i find it hard to say you are poor and then find someone who cares and wants to help you. i need money. [laughter] school.a charter i have been part of the cap from fifthip system

grade to 12th raid -- grade. i am certain they don't have enough money to get me through college and everybody else in my school. when i need is money. that's what i need is money. >> i need role models. i feel like the industry i want to go into which is business does not have role models that look like me. i feel like finding people that look like me and do the things that i want to pursue is what i need. >> thank you all three of you. your voices are so powerful. please welcome to the stage steve clemons.

and more guests. >> thank you. going, aget the panel lot of you have jackets next to you. there are people wanting to set -- sit. thatu find a jacket belongs to somebody else, stuffit under the chair. we are going to do fantastic sessions. this front row has been here all morning. they deserve extra credit. [applause] >> we will give you a gold star. >> i am the editor at large of the atlantic. ans has been amazing day -- amazing day.

here is the striver port -- shriver report. it isia shriver said, inspiration for the heart and head. we have a fantastic panel of people who have been doers. a lot of people have been taking individual response ability for themselves and sharing stories they have navigated the most horrible of circumstances. there are others who have set the stage for a lot of what has been going on. practitioners on the policy side. the doing side. we want to start with kiersten. she is the cofounder and chief executive officer. this is an mostly, vice ey.sident -- ann mosl

.nd this is kasim thank you very much. we do every policy area with you, it seems. this is the one that is your favorite. -- this isan d randy. 16 years ago, we started this group. i am interested in the story and what animated you to decide that changing women's opportunities was the way he wants to go. -- you wanted to go. >> the inspiration came out of volunteering in head start. in addition to providing children with exceptional opportunities, we

also needed to be providing support to their parents and families. housing,m find excellent jobs, education for themselves and their children. in the last 15 years, we have helped over 100,000 families move away from -- the key lesson we have learned at lift and what our data supports is that when they put women in the drivers seat of their own journey, we will see the greatest success. when we put them in the driver and map our programs according to their needs, women will be more active participants. it will become better lifelong advocates -- they will become better lifelong advocates. they will rise to their aspirations. example ofgive us an

where you have seen certain patterns -- i think many of us know people who were impacted in dramatic ways by the financial crisis. can you share how you have done -- what youe done have done? >> we pair women and families advocate.icated who works with them to find all the necessary resources and opportunities they need to get ahead. a member right here in d.c. is one example of how a symbol hardship can drive someone. she grew up middle-class. she had a long and extensive work history. -- whenhe came to left she came to lift, she was

demoralized by a health challenge. -- felt the only change choice was a choice between unstable temporary shelter and homelessness. her aspiration was to exit her situation. by working with her and working -- she actually moved to become a homeowner. she has a new lease on life. the facty exemplifies that people end up in or close to poverty for many reasons. that means that everyone needs something different to navigate away from the brink. the only way we can be effective is if we listen first to what people need. and then design programs and services accordingly. >> you deal in a similar area. part of what you have been doing is a two generation strategy.

what does that entail? >> thank you very much. it is great to be here. we have been a year-long partner with the shriver report. one thing we want to put out sometimes we talk about the public private partnership and forget about the people in the me at -- in the middle. i'lloint you just made, use that as a segue. we listened to a range of mothers and also boys and girls in middle and high school about what did the world look like for them. i aming about the needs -- reiterating the themes -- confidence and respect.

college is almost the new high school. the importance of being money and market savvy. the importance of mentors. we talked about how stretched single moms are. also with teachers and coaches who were playing a writable -- vital role. it is soer says, simple mom. when we think about the growing huge spike of women headed families, and the challenges of that >. for us it means education. how do we bring education together a post secondary education. at the aspen institute, lift is lifting off.

we are tracking 100 models across the country. we were tipping our hat to maria. when we go back to the first architecture for the two generation approach, i think it started at the schreiber -- table.hriver kitchen we are working on 2.0 here. it is important for us to be adaptive with how the world has changed.o -- let's take head start. there is an amazing program in intel's --. there is an amazing program and. -- tulsa.

they said, we will give every kid everything we can. every best practice and promising program. when the mother comes, we lose them. they created a program for the mothers and fathers. while the kids were in head start, they found a way to work with them to create a coaching circle. to get them it into also tech tech.- tulsa they found partners and employers. we want to stick with these parents because we know for some of the women on the brink, of youen car, -- a broken car, miss a day at work. let's have a carpool system to

take her to work and get the car fixed. let's double down and get better permanent results. >> is that program in place now? >> yes. it has local and national support. it has a grant with the department of health and human services. it is best when the social contract is working. with parents are designed and involved. >> we have talked a lot in the thatabout the classic role teachers often played in their communities. points of light and leadership. structure. a lot of that has been under attack and eroded. if t has taken on the responsibility -- aft has taken on the responsibility -- tons of households that are women,

single headed households. i would love to get your take on how you see these questions from a leadership perspective and some of the whole family perspective. i am delighted, to be on this panel. i want to tip my hat to maria shriver. talking about women, children, and poverty. that is really cool. [applause] teachers -- let me just say yesterday, in west virginia, before the schools were reopened because of the chemical leak, ahead start teacher -- a head

start teacher who knew that her kids were not getting hot ill for the last three days organize packed75 males -- meals up. she got them to all the families in charleston, west virginia. --the legacy of head start that is the legacy of head start. it simplifies who teachers are. they are the first responders to poverty and families that are on the brink. here both as a teacher and a labor leader. it in terms of these three -- women have fewer benefits. all the issues surrounding kids.

one can be one issue away from the brink. one health-care crisis away from the brink. there are lots of systemic things that we need to do. like paid sick leave. that gets to two of the three issues. if your kids are sick and your employer says you cannot take a day off, you have a problem even though you may have a federal right to take a day off. ironically, when we had more unions, one of the things we would negotiate was paid sick leave. that is part of the benefit structure. it was organized in the way that if you were a teacher, if somebody was a substitute, the other kids do not get it. if you have to take your mom or your child to the doctor.

there is an interplay here but between -- between some of the some of the things we used to have. -- is interesting that the paid sick leave issue has become such a issue. intervention,rect i am very much into the lift program. eigit on adoing sustainable scale. it is a sustaining avenue. there are three things i want to throw out. number --, this notion around schools, wraparound services. take what we are doing in

cincinnati. a lot of the things that this mayor is trying to do and amanda -- in atlanta. immediately have a two generation approach of prewrapped services around schools. programs afterschool that we wraparound in cincinnati. programs for kids who have had kids. there is a beautiful, wonderful pre-k program. it helps parents learn parenting skills. programwo, i direct that actually helps kids with mentoring issues and also in terms of communities.

we have lost this and i would push to have it again. we had it in baltimore and new york and other places. a program of having teacher assistance in schools. jobs re now middle-class if you do the following things. a lot of people who are assistant teachers get the bug to teach. when you have grams and -- moms and grandmoms to get the book to teach, that is amazing. we negotiated to have college paid for and have a career ladder. --t path in new york city

this is an amazing program to actually create real the class jobs. i think there are about 50,000 people in it. the last piece i would raise his other kinds of things like the childcare workers that have come out -- we have been organizing them. have try and make sure we -- create real jobs so we can deal with some of the other issues including the issue of raising raises. -- wages. >> we have three practitioners here who are trying to not away at the 42 million women at or the edge of poverty. you are a mayor so you are blamed for everything. >> i'm so glad. >> be on the blame game --

beyond the blame game, can you share with us your take on this and how you are trying to change the habits of the city and the interaction with women? >> i believe that the biggest thing that you and i could do is to listen to women. [laughter] i'm not try to have a headline -- hit line. the city attorney is a woman. my chief of staff is a woman. i got elected with 84%. [applause] what we should be trying to do is create an ecosystem to take the problems on that maria

shriver has raised and we have talked about. the way you take it honest to have examples that you can point you directly, we live in a world where we like concrete examples and concrete results. atlanta has one of the longest womenions of encouraging entrepreneurship in terms of who we do business with as any major city in america. example.hat up as an were going to have to have more women entrepreneurs. when we talk about the start of culture, we are failing to talk about women entrepreneurs. successfulo take a route and extended to the women's entrepreneurs center.

i was talking to women who live in atlanta. they said when they start businesses, one of the biggest impediments is office space and feeling safe in their environment. when they start up oh is this -- a business, she can't say come by my business or here is my home phone. -- adds thelayer layer to the challenges facing women. i went out to raise private capital. -- blueave a lumen ribbon commission of entrepreneurs. we will select the most talented 15 women. we have office space and support. they get 18 months to chase their dream. we are going to remove the impediment. i heard it from women who had started businesses.

they don't want to go out and have to sign a commercial lease. toy don't want to have operate out of their home. we can continue to give the example after example of what works. we will change our behavior internally. i am ordering another look at the city's equal pay issues. these arethings -- all things that mayors can just do. we will go through our behavior and see if we are paying equal pay. if we are not, we will change it. finally, folks have been talking about the increase in the minimum wage. as soon as it led to got fiscally strong, i made the decision that everybody that works in the city will earn $10 or more. that includes women. i did it and made the decision. cities?ple of other

>> i did it in the south. if you can do it in atlanta, georgia -- >> we are time constrained. steve ratner show these great charts. the area with the least economic mobility is the south. atlantic is becoming an exception. i want to thank you. we don't have a lot of time. two power panels back-to-back. perhaps the question to ask -- when everyone is coming up with such interesting methodologies, the system is stacked against many women. stacked against many men.

it is stacked against a lot of people were trying to get ahead. the system is not as flexible -- we could go the more caring society with more facts ability and it is not there -- with more flexibility in his is not there. i am wondering if you can do your job, can you work around the resource challenges that we have today? >> two points. have fundamentally disconnected our values and our conversation about the economy. if we get back to what is the american dream? ando work in by the rules, you still cannot make it? that is nonsense. we have not had that conversation updated. this is a group of influencers.

there is power to refrain that conversation. when you get to better answers, you have to connect with your values. i don't know whether this is a washington conundrum or across the country. i think there is a lot of money in the world. is the money going to where it can be most effective, we all would like more money. but we have to be smarter about how we are currently using and tracking our money. when we think about the two generation approach -- you have to spend a little to get a little. programs forthese parents and for kids, do they talk to each other? you have to get that are about shy awayrs, but don't from the large conversation that we have let our obsession with the market run wild.

>> apart from the usual spending level conversations, we need to focus on the fact that we have tools that we did not have it years ago when we launched the war on poverty. manage our new year's fitness plans with her smartphones. -- can't reread the ploy redeployed at technology to help families access resources and services that they need? have aes like amazon good out that the biggest prediction of shareholder value is customer satisfaction. >there are things that we can be doing today, even as congress has trouble making decisions. we need both. most of us need a letter --

ladder. you don't just jump to the top rung. you have to walk up the stairs. if you think about the american dream that way, this is the debate that happens all the time. any time we talk about resources, there is a group that thinks we are talking about handouts. -ups to move up the ladder of opportunity. this is very much an american value. the conversation about poverty and income equality has created the the you system again that these are hand-ups. >> the other part we have to do -- you all ship some of your time to cities -- shift some of your time to cities. i know we are in washington.

i would invite you to come and deal with cities. >> what about in atlanta? atlantau are coming to and trying to get a policy shift, you need eight votes on the city council. personluence a 6 million metro area. i couldn't be in the room today without promoting. when you look at our major american cities, are mayors are willing to think about the problems in a different way and take decisive action faster than is being done at the federal and state levels. >> i see a shriver report -- guests.hank our [applause]

i will escort you right this way. thank you so much. --joni's steve clemons joining steve clemons, is welcome maria shriver. [applause] what a day it has been. good to see you. slaughter -- is the former director of policy planning at the state department. she wrote an article that was the atlantic's most read article in our history on why women cannot still have it all. -- maria give her shriver, thank you so much for

anchoring this. i have the report. is heavy but it is worth it. filled with factoids and moments i think that are very important. deepak, it is good to see you again. and youere to talk, don't need me to put much guest on the pedal, but you have had doers and people that set the stage. stories of people that lived this life. we have had powerful women who have changed their lives. i read your piece about the caring society. this is an idea of what we can do to become more compassionate. i want to start with you to come in for a moment and share with us from your powerful piece --

that article encapsulated why we are here today. was the nexus between the heart and head? can choose -- can you share with us what we need to do to step forward and do something that changes the game tomorrow? >> it is great to be here. it is great to see this crowd for this report. the report reflects evolution of my own thinking since the article. i started writing the article from the point where many of us who think of ourselves as feminists have been. it has been a longtime. we have made enormous progress, the world has transformed since i was a girl. are we were stuck -- our stuck. we are not seeing the numbers of

women in congress and is ceo's -- as ceo's. that is the perspective from which i wrote my article. i have focused more on what i see as the deeper problem. is the problem that affects women on the brink. the way i frame it is it is fundamentally a problem not valuing care. we see that if you are a career woman and you take care of your parents, your loved ones. you'll pay a price in terms of your career. as a whole in your resume -- hole in your resume. we don't respect that. at the bottom of the income ladder, it is much worse but the same problem.

if you are a breadwinner and caregiver, if you have to support your children, we say you should have a job. there is no support for the care side. which means the people for the werest are those caregivers and breadwinners together. mostly women, but also single fathers. the women who are making it, even among middle income women, they are often among the brink. -- a society that values competition. also what we call the habits of the heart. is not just about individual striving. is about our relationship with individuals and

the community. we wille value that, not write the balance as a society. in big about that -- in thinking about that, i talked about your commitment to women with a tough time, how is a society did we get there? deepak, how have we got here? we have been around here for i've thousand plus years, yearsng a -- for 5000 building a mail dominated society. i want you to be the conceptualist about the social picture we have and how we got here. view have to take a broad

of how human beings have evolved over five dozen years. -- 5000 years. we started as hunter gatherers before the dawn of civilization. the predominant activity was to kill and conquer. ibal chief went and killed for food. that became a dominant activity for our brain, literally. as we moved through the stages, bear in mind that the previous stageoes not go away -- does not go away. we move to agriculture and then ial age of industr agriculture. this is a male-dominated activity. -- then it moved from

the age of industry to the age of information. it was spearheaded by a male biology.ed -- brained age and a beyond this knowledge-based society. i hope this will be a wisdom-based society. a great mentor of mine said, survival of the fittest is gone. permanently victorious species already. we have destroyed the ecosystem and killed all the other species. we have created weapons of mechanized death, even though we have tribal tendencies. we have destroyed the

environment. 50% of the world lives on less than two dollars a day. women and children are abused all over the world. workingto see it is not -- it is time to see it is not working. if you don't have a new solution , we are done. we might as well go out and have a drink and call it quits. what we said was the next page of solution is survival of the wisest. that should become the criterion for survival and evolution. i do think it is time to unfold what very great spiritual

traditions all over the world, not just in india or china or aged egypt or greece -- ancient egypt or greece said, which is there is the divine feminine. it is embodied in certain motifs and themes. the goddess of power as exemplified in margaret thatcher -- >> we decided hillary clinton. >> the mother energy. nurturing and intuition. athena, wisdom and culture and arts. the healer. , of course weese associate them with the feminine.

cultivatedot been because of the dominant way civilization has progressed up to this point. i think we need to unfold the potential of women leaders. if we heard the disparity between women leaders and then 50% of the women are population, why are they not today percent of the leaders? why aren't 50% of women ceo's? i was talking -- >> the fact that we are having this conversation, that means we have reached the stage of evolution where we have to stop the reactive kind of thinking on the part of women and create a

society where women lead. in man we can relegate to and then, we can relegate them to technology. [laughter] jobs.s would get the tech i think what you have said is powerful. coexistedetypes have with the hunter gatherer. they are there. one of the things that is our job is to look at how can we convert some of our priorities and raise compassion and empower people? this is your report and moment. you have critters of that will have echo effects for generations. compassion in washington?

>> i really do believe we can create a conscious, carrying, compassionate community. it begins with every person in the room. this is a spiritual challenge as much as it is a political challenge. --wouldn't want to imagine if heller clinton was around -- president, we would want everyone to be women around her desk -- one wouldn't want everyone to be women around her desk. we want to find a way to bring men into this discussion. we have to find a way to be compassionate with ourselves and in our homes. how we speak with ourselves. how we raise our children and parents. how we treat the people who take care of our parents. goingltures we create,

out of our homes into the schools. into the larger businesses. it's easy to blame washington. we have more power individually then is on this hill. that however goes the nation culturally, so goes politics. i wrote about my mother who had achieved so much, and i asked if she felt successful. she said, no. i was like, how is that possible? she was raised in a male oriented family. she said, i never ran for office so i never had real power. that taught me a lot.

i believe the powers is with every single person sitting in this room. it is not at power sump is -- summits, it is on main street. if each person viewed themselves as a person with power within, who was capable of changing their own life and the culture hill would behe forced to enact many of the things we're talking about today. these are humanistic things, not partisan. we will try to make fun of the other side. one thing i learned by being a democratic first lady and a republican in administration, which is compensated --, complicated, is a learning experience.

is not true. -- there are good people on both sides of the aisle. it is about finding what we have -- have in common. summit hevidually -- asked a question to nancy pelosi, how many letters would it take to move the hill? she said thousands. but every person in this room has a village of hundreds if not thousands of people. if we believe sick pay is important -- we can start in our own home. there are 10 things in this report that each of us can do. mentoring other person, stressing education, talking

about education before childbirth. pain people that care for our trainer. than we pay a this discrepancy in how we live our lives. this is a moment for all of us, not for me or the shriver report. learned through all the programs we did on nbc is people are responding. this is myying, story and i want to see more of it. i am always been told to crack the foundation. lean in. there's nothing for me to stand on. i want somebody to lean on and talk to. we have all felt invisible in our lives. here's what we can all do.

ing -- start by being see people in our lives. that goes for women. >> this is the open that you wrote. she says, i have never lived on the brink or been in foreclosure. never had to choose between feeding my children and paying the rent. i'm not thrown into crisis mode if i have to pay a parking ticket or if the rent goes up. if my car breaks down, my life does not ascended payoffs -- to send into chaos -- descend into chaos. you are not trying to address these issues. womenon the stage these telling their stories, they were

like deepak clients. they are much more in touch with themselves than i am. >> i'm glad you mentioned story. we heard stories. we know what the story is right now. --eth at the centrism, ethnocentrism, i could go on on and on. we need a new story. that is the big challenge now. what is the story? they cannot come only from issues. it can come if we only unfold

the potential that is inherent in every human being. the word education comes from two were -- roots. enfold --ry has to what is your passion? what gives you meaning and purpose in your life? what are your unique skills? is society helping you unfold those skills? what do relationships mean to you? who are your mentors? what gives you joy? is a time to heal ourselves? participate in this writing, we will only be talking about fragmented issues. -- of societies women society is women.

we have not heard their stories fully. what stories they want right for the future. >> there are two ways to do this. one is to hear other people's stories. -- one of the most fundamental things we do is to recognize each other. we have research on babies. if you do not recognize them or acknowledge them, it throws them rauma. give something to the homeless person, you acknowledge they are there. that is a fundamental way of validating each other. is equally important to challenge the received narratives. i have been big a lot about care and compassion. the emotional side.

first-year law school -- it was all about having that red out of of me.ead out it was learned to shut off human feeling. about a how to talk case in terms of rights and responsibilities and costs and benefits. should not fear human reaction -- shutting off your human reaction. we need to challenge that. in law, medicine, politics. gates writing condolence letters to fallen letters -- soldiers. he tells the story that he was in tears every night. i can tell you the number of times we have set in policy

discussions with no element of humanity. >> we can all play a role in the kind of society we want to create. this report is saying about those are really the headlines. it begins with each and every one of us. an mary talks about care giving and bread winning and we are caught in those multiple roles. i think there is so much power in each person in this room. >> you have so many fascinating -- >> i did that on purpose and we did that on purpose because that's how you break through in a conversation. for lebron james to talk about what it means to have a single mother and the love he got from her. what it means for beyonce to talk about equality. i understand the way the media