The Shriver Report - Employers Must Adapt to the Workforce

Leigh Polk Cole, Esq.

A fascinating report issued last month explores a new social and economic reality that is startling and yet intuitive: women now are 50% of the U.S. workforce.  "The Shriver Report: A Women's Nation Changes Everything" (October 2009) is based on a study by Maria Shriver, a journalist and currently California's First Lady, and the Center for American Progress.  The report is named after Maria Shriver and her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver (1921-2009), both formidable women and role models.   The Shriver Report includes chapters by a variety of authors representing a range of perspectives.  The primary message is that "women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.... Quite simply, women as half of all workers changes everything." (Shriver Report, page 17).  Most men and women in the United States are living with this reality as part of their daily life and recognize that women are primary or co-equal breadwinners in most households.  However the U.S. economy was built on a foundational model that no longer represents the norm: a workforce dominated by single-career families with a caregiver (generally female) who did not work outside the home.  The Report is based on a nationwide poll commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with Time Magazine to explore current attitudes toward the role of women in the workplace (Shriver Report, pp. 7-8).  The poll found that most Americans view the increased role of women in the workplace as a positive change but believe that U.S. employers have not adapted to this new reality.  One important finding is that younger Americans (20s to 30s) accept that women and men have equal roles in the workforce and the home, and expect their employers to accommodate this fact of life.  The Shriver Report is a good read and thought-provoking.  It sheds light on the current role of women in the economy and the family, without proposing specific solutions.  A good start would be for each employer to assess whether its policies and practices are effective for the current workforce or whether they reflect an outdated context.  Do your policies and practices enable employees to serve as both key employees and primary caregivers at home, or perpetuate tensions between these roles?  Do your policies and practices assume that men and women will have equal responsibilities at home and at work, or is your workplace framed around outmoded gender roles?  To attract and retain personnel in the modern economy, employers need to embrace the fact that a gender-balanced work force changes everything for both men and women, both at work and at home.  

Leigh Cole