MARIA SHRIVER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!



 

…Always attractive and smart, Ms. Maria Shriver

 

The former First Lady of California has put together an excellent report on the state of the American woman.

 

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. For families. For bosses. For co-workers. For our society.

But here are the details of those fact as has been described in this latest report from a non-profit media initiative developed by Maria Shriver.

Ms. Shriver, a highly accomplished individual, is an American journalist and author of six best-selling books. She received a Peabody Award, and was a TV reporter for NBC.  As executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project, Shriver earned two Emmy Awards. She was also the First lady of California as the wife and mother of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s children.

She comes by her focus of helping the American Woman, as she follows in the foot-steps of her famous father, Sargent Shriver, who in his efforts for President John F. Kennedy, developed the Peace Corp.  He then went on, after Kennedy’s untimely death, to become the architect of President Johnson’s, War on Poverty.  In that effort, Mr. Shriver started and developed the: Job Corp, Head Start, Vista, Upward Bound and was deeply involved in the Special Olympics.

In this latest and extremely detailed Shriver Report, using her father’s approach, Ms. Shriver shows and defines today’s world of the American Woman, and where things will need to change for the benefit of today’s American families.

In reality, what Ms. Shriver does is present a snapshot of what is going on in all the key areas of today’s American women, and what needs to change.

In this series of bulleted statements, is a small composite of what you can find in much more detail at http://shriverreport.org/ .  It is all very revealing.

·       Motherhood is now a greater predictor of income inequality than gender in the US.

·       When women & moms succeed, the US economy succeeds.

·       50% of the US labor force is women.

·       75% of women in the work force are moms.  ½ of those are the primary breadwinners.

·       Women in the workplace often have to hide the fact that they have children in order to be taken seriously.

·       Mothers experience rampant wage and hiring discrimination.

·       If considered for hiring, mothers are offered lower starting salaries than are the dads.

·       Only 9% of working US women earn more than $75,000 per annum.

·       37% earn between $30,000 and $75,000.

·       177 countries have paid, Family & Medical leave.

·       The US has no paid, Family / Med leave on a national basis.

·       Only 12% of US families are able to cobble together paid Maternity Leave.

·       Many countries have quality, affordable childcare.

·       US childcare is more costly than the cost of the child’s college.

·       The majority of minimum wage earners are women.

·       Some US states with jobs that include tips for their income, their wages are as low as $2.13 per hour.

·       25% of young US families are living in poverty.

·       1 in 5 US children do not get enough to eat.

·       Working women w/o children earn $0.90 to a man’s $1.00 in earnings.

·       Mother’s earn $0.73 to a man’s $1.00 in earnings.

·       Single mothers earn $0.60 to a man’s $1.00 in earnings.

·       Mothers of Color earn as low as $0.54 to a man’s $1.00 in earnings.

o   Women outnumber men on college campuses

o   Women earn more advanced college degrees

o   More women than men are becoming the major breadwinners

o   More women are becoming small business owners than men

o   Women are the drivers of consumer spending

o   Women are outpacing men as homeowners

o   Women are now outpacing men as car buyers

·       But women are more likely to become poor.

·       Women are more likely to become over stressed, overburdened and underpaid.

·       Women are more likely to have children out of wedlock and to be single parents.

·       Working women need AA degree’s compared to a man just out of high school.

·       Women are now cleared for combat.

·       But 33% of women in the military are sexually assaulted.

Basically, in many cases, women are stuck navigating the swamp w/o a boat, a paddle or a map.

There you have it in a nut shell, but I am only scratching the surface of the Shriver Report.

This report is well worth taking the time for reading throughout.

Trust me on this, as a man married to a successful, professional, working woman.

Copyright G.Ater  2014