Shriver Report Says Women Are Half…Are We Surprised?
Posted on | October 20, 2009 |
That’s right, folks. The newly released Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything has found that women are now half of the workforce and that 2/3 of all families have a female breadwinner or co-breadwinner. The report is being hailed as groundbreaking:
For the first time in US history women are about to become the majority of the nation’s paid workers. The recently released Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything is a comprehensive study of this milestone. Today, women are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in 63.3% of American families.
At the same time the report finds that women aren’t being treated equally in media portrayals of career success:
According to the findings of a major report on the status of women by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, not really. We went from Mary Richards to Meredith Grey at top speed, and along the way, forgot about Roseanne Conner, who really represented the female head of household in America.
“Women’s professional success and financial status are significantly overrepresented in the mainstream media, suggesting that women indeed ‘have it all,’” the study says. What we see on television then are characters who “overrepresent how far women have in fact come in the workplace, underrepresent the kind of work most women do, and misrepresent how women can, and do, comport themselves on the job,” according to the report.
In response to the Report, Ms. Magazine has put out a document called “Paycheck Feminism” which, while it hails the report, is quick to point out the trouble with finding that women are half the workforce, but receive less than half of the benefits. Amongst other things, the document urges policymakers to reconsider the barriers to unemployment, insurance and family medical leave. It’s definitely required reading after reading the Shriver Report.
So what do you think? Is the Shriver Report groundbreaking? Or does it tell us what we already know? And where do we go from here?
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Tags: equal opportunity > paycheck fairness > statistics > The Shriver Report > women in the media > women in the workplace > women's rights
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