'A Woman's Nation' reveals a workplace transformation

There is no small irony embedded in the subtitle of the Shriver Report on women's inroads into the American workforce: "A woman's nation changes everything." In fact, not nearly enough has changed, even though women now make up half of all U.S. workers, a point that's central to the report, its ironic title, and the five experts who illuminated its findings during a recent Boalt Hall panel discussion put on by the Berkeley Center for Health, Economic and Family Security (CHEFS). Government, corporate and institutional policies — as well as cultural attitudes — on everything from child care to Social Security to family leave to work schedules are mired in the past, as if the typical American family were still the kind where one parent works and the other stays home to take care of the kids, according to both the report and the panel. "I get the impression sometimes that policy makers wish women would just go home," observed panelist Heather Boushey. A senior economist with the Center for American Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based progressive think tank, Boushey was a major contributor to the report, a collaboration between CAP and a team working with Maria Shriver, a longtime journalist who has been California's first lady since 2003. Presenting just a sampling of the report's phalanx of supporting statistics, Boushey made the case that women's increased presence in the workforce over the last 30 years has been "perhaps the greatest transformation of our times." Women now make up 49.9 percent of all workers, a dramatic shift from just one generation ago when just one-third of workers were women.