Dear Monica, According to the newly released Shriver Report, 1 in 3 American women live at or near the brink of poverty. Just as women are becoming the majority of breadwinners in the country, too many are living paycheck to paycheck.[1] Society must catch up to this new economic reality. As long as we continue to ignore the needs of women in the workplace, as The Shriver Report explains, we will continue to limit the potential of everyone in the country. Men and boys included. A fundamental issue, which we will explore in our next two films, The Mask You Live In and The Great American Lie, is our cultures continued glorification of dominance and aggression at the expense of nurturing and caregiving. Its no coincidence that many of the jobs we typically associate with caring - from teaching to nursing - remain largely female occupations. And that they remain largely undervalued. By changing our thinking around caregiving, we could not only increase the likelihood of fairer pay and benefits in the workplace (including universal paid family leave), but we could remove the social stigma associated with men and nurturing. In fact, we might finally see compassion and caregiving as positive qualities for any human to possess. Many men already understand this. NBA superstar Lebron James says this about his mother, Gloria James, in The Shriver Report: Everything I know about being loving and caring, and sacrificing and showing up and being present in my children’s lives—I learned all of that from her example. We need everyone - men and women - to value these traits; not just in others, but in themselves. Share The Shriver Report today and help raise awareness around this critical issue. Take this conversation to work, to school and to the dinner table. Together we can begin to build a stronger and more equitable world! Warmest, Jennifer Siebel Newsom & The Representation Project (formerly MissRepresentation.org)
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 16:09:28 +0000
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