Maria Shriver's Report on American Women: After the Cheery Headline, Gloomy Trends

I never watch Meet the Press, but I tuned in to see David Gregory kick off NBC's coverage of "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything." Instigated by Maria Shriver, this year-long study is the centerpiece of a week of programming on NBC and a cover story in Time magazine.

You'd better believe that Shriver's researchers looked for good news -- and found it:

For the first time in our history, half of all U.S. workers are women. Mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. And that changes everything. Not just for women but also for men...

Together, the results of these efforts provide a fascinating window into the changing American landscape. What we heard loud and clear is that the Battle Between the Sexes is over. It was a draw. Now we're engaged in Negotiation Between the Sexes.

A 50/50 nation? Parity between the sexes? The lion lies down with the lamb?

I don't think so. While I respect the research in The Shriver Report -- in a minute, I'll show you how gloomy it really is --- I was uneasy about the NBC/Time hype as soon as I heard about this alliance.

First, some low-hanging fruit -- Gregory's visible enthusiasm for the subject. He said:

This reflects my life. I'm blessed to be married to my wife, Beth, who's a prominent trial lawyer, and so some of these realities I've been living with all the time that I've been married. But these are profound changes.

Sorry. No. I'm willing to believe that David Gregory, father of three, was sincere when he talked about making adjustments in parenting with his wife. I also believe that Gregory (who must earn at least $1 million a year) and his wife (a lawyer who reportedly made about $3 million a year when she was a vice president at Fannie Mae) have a very different idea of what those adjustments are than 99.9% of their fellow citizens.

So Gregory made happy talk. It wasn't until the last minute of the discussion that Shriver put the numbers in perspective:

A very important point is that 70 percent of the job losses this recession have been in male-dominated businesses, and therefore, the women are the primary breadwinners and they make less than the man.

Let me underscore this: Women have half the jobs in America now in large part because so many men have lost theirs. And women make only 70 percent of the salary that men make in the same jobs. Is this not a picture of a country moving...backwards?

Now to the findings.

SEXISM

There's still plenty...Women told me that male co-workers ask them all the time to give pep talks to their daughters, but never to their wives. They marveled, "They want us to inspire their girls to great achievement, but don't you go giving their wives any big ideas!" In fact, the poll shows that a substantial majority of women feel that men resent women who have more power than they do.

HEALTH

The competing demands of work and home often have greater adverse health effects on women than on men. Caregivers, the majority of whom are women, are almost twice as likely to report having chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or arthritis. Women also are more likely to suffer chronic stress that can lead to headaches, sleeplessness, irritability, and depression. Indeed, a recent poll showed that women are more likely than men to feel the psychological effects of the Great Recession and to report physical symptoms of stress.

Domestic violence is the number one cause of injury to women. Once thought of as a purely private matter, intimate violence is now recognized to have far-reaching public health and financial consequences that extend to the workplace. Perpetrators often try to threaten the stability of a survivor's job, in order to further control her and make her more financially dependent on the perpetrator. Domestic violence contributes to a job loss for a quarter to half of all survivors.

MEDIA

Because of the privileged position that rich, successful, or exceptional women now hold in the media, there exists a blackout, however unintended (or not), of how the majority of women, and especially those whose median earnings are about $36,000 a year or less, live their lives.

The most telling case in point: the top five jobs for women in the United States are not surgeon, lawyer, police lieutenant, district attorney or cable news pundit. In fact, the top five jobs for women in 2008 were, in first place, secretaries, followed by registered nurses, elementary and middle school teachers, cashiers and retail salespersons. Further down the list? Maids, child care workers, office clerks, home health aids, and hairdressers.

The media rarely portray women as they really are, as everyday breadwinners and caregivers. Men outnumbered women by a four-to-one ratio on the Sunday-morning talk shows in 2005 and 2006. Of the 35 hosts or co-hosts on the prime-time cable news programs, 29 were white men.

Is the solution to these problems more state-funded childcare? (Gloria Steinem points out that "childcare is still nowhere on the list of priorities in Congress, and we have also become the only industrialized country without any requirement of paid family leave.")

Must employers become more sensitive to family/job conflicts or they'll lose their best workers? (I hadn't realized so many women were willing to lose their company-paid health insurance.)

And what about the "confused" men who don't know how to adjust to new, ever-changing roles? Excuse me, but many of them aren't confused at all. There is a sizable part of this country --- shall we guess 20-25% --- that wants to roll back Roe v. Wade and return women to their "traditional" (that is, second class) status. From the report: "As recently as 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a statement declaring that 'A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.'"

Over at Time, there are more brutal statistics:

Poll after poll finds women even more anxious than men about their family's financial security. While most workers have seen their wages stall or drop, women's earnings fell 2% in 2008, twice as much as men's. Women are 32% more likely than men to have subprime mortgages, leaving them more vulnerable in the housing crisis. The Guttmacher Institute found that the downturn has affected the most basic decisions in family life. Nearly half of women surveyed in households earning less than $75,000 want to delay pregnancy or limit the number of children they have.

Time concludes, "The argument about women working is over."

Translation: Women would rather leave their homes and work than see their children starve.

To buy the Kindle version of "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything", click here.

To read the Time Magazine story, "What Women Want Now", click here.

[cross-posted from HeadButler.com]

 

Comments

[Gemini63]

Young women and girls having babies, especially without the support of emotionally and financially stable male partners (married or unmarried) is the biggest obstacle to keeping women in a second-class status. Having babies one is not ready for means both financial hardship and stress overload for a very, very long period of time.

Having babies diverts their attention from doing other, equally important, things: getting an education, working on a career, saving money, buying a house, etc.

I'd like to see all females (and males) use birth control until they are truly ready to reproduce (not everyone should become a parent, either). Abortion should be strongly encouraged for girls under 18 and for those not ready or unfit (on drugs, etc.) for all ages. I'd happily see my tax dollars pay for free birth control as well as abortions for those who cannot afford them. Society would greatly benefit if we did this.

Let's tell our daughters they need to be mature and truly ready before they become a mother, which will give them the real "leg up" in reaching parity with men in our society.

[AnnMedlock]

Haven't read the TIME piece yet but I will, and I'll be looking for words about women in the military. Yes, they're serving and in substantial numbers. Early resistance to the idea included a concern that they were vulnerable to rape by the enemy. The numbers of servicewomen reporting rape by their fellow Americans should be part of any analysis of how well it's going to integrate women into the services. Misogyny and its consequences may be ever with us.

[HollyP]

Excellent point. Much more attention needs to be devoted to this issue.

[alex61]

A couple of general comments. Men and women are equal. What that means is that they are equally important, equally necessary, and that there is no inherent superiority based on gender. However, being equal does not mean, and never has meant, that men and women are identical. That is a seperate concept. There will always be inherent differences. As groups (though there are countless exceptions) men and women may have different interests that are reflected in career choices and suffer from different medical ailments. Some of that may be inevitible and some may be addressed.

The other thing is the near destruction of the family unit. Somewhere along the line, rights superseeded responsibilities, and it became okay to produce millions of children out of wedlock. The greatest anti-poverty program ever invented-the intact, two-partner family, was brushed aside in favor of one parent households. Of course poverty, and the resulting stresses, increased. This burden has fallen most heavily on women, but it could have been avoided in the first place if society had not chosen to indulge in foolish cultural experiments.

We make choices. We either benefit from those choices or we suffer.

[Dameocrat]

Marriage isn't an antipoverty program. If women end up poor for lack of a GOOD partner, it is because their jobs don't pay well enough. Forcing women to marry UNSUITABLE men, to avoid poverty encourges abuse.

[itolduso]

You left out.... One in five female high school students reports being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner...­....accord­ing to the F.B.I., for homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 91% of female victims were murdered by someone they knew. Is this what they call 'negotiations between the sexes'?

[garyd63]

Exactly right and extremely important, itolduso. Until women of all ages, your grandmothers and your toddler granddaughters, are safe and secure in this society and world, talk about gender equality is so much statistical smoke. No one can put the confidence that comes from feeling safe on a chart or a curve. It doesn't compute. But the violence women face and/or fear is bedrock basic and it continues to be ignored. Have you checked your paper or favorite web site for the daily rape statistics lately? Or noted how this almost casual crime wave is exploited on TV any night of the week?

[betweenextremes]

From what I know about her, Maria Shriver appears to be a highly intelligent and caring person, but she lost some of my respect when she took a backseat and quit her job to accomodate her ego-driven, chauvinistic husband. I hardly regard her as an expert on the subject of women in the workplace.

[PamelaM]

Caregivers are almost twice as likely to have chronic health conditions such as heart disease, cancer, or diabetes. This is a core reason why the American health care, at home and in institutions, is not sustainable.

Unless care of the family/care of the patient includes care of the caregiver, it's just a matter of time before the stresses overwhelm the system.

[tjdestry]

Wait a minute -- you would say to a woman you work with, "I'd like you to have a little pep talk with my wife" and then, what? You come home and say, "Honey, here's a woman I work with who I think has it together better than you ..."

Maybe it's sexist to feel this way, but I'd have no problem saying to my daughter, "There's a woman I work with who you might find interesting," mostly because I'd have likely mentioned it to my wife first, and because I'm sure Mom would have had lots of talks with daughter and this would be a different matter entirely.

But the last thing I'd do is tell my wife that she could take a few tips from a woman I know at the office, unless it were very, very specific -- "You know, honey, a woman I work with was saying that she once had to write a grant for a non-profit operating in Morocco ... I wonder if she could help you with the grant you have to write for that non-profit operating in Algiers?"

[fem56]

Let me expand that concepts to sons and daughters but to talk that way to a wife or husband would be condescending.