Jo Swinson Quotes

A mother deserves a day off to care for a sick child or sick parent without running into hardship - and you know what, a father does, too. It's time to do away with workplace policies that belong in a 'Mad Men' episode.

We are still behaving as if a worker really doesn't have a family because the work pattern really was meant for men who really were the financial support but weren't looking after their families. We need to change this, and we can easily do that.

Maternity leave and parental leave is absolutely vital for strengthening families. It's an issue for men and women.

I always supported the women I worked with having time off to go to parent-teacher conferences and doctors' appointments or bringing their infants into the office.

I have tried in my role of being one of the first women at Google, let alone the first woman to have a baby, to really try to set the tone that this is a great place to work for diversity reasons.

I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible.

I think parental leave is enormously important - and it's a personal decision. Part of building a company whose goal is to empower women in all aspects of life is that I've given my team some leeway to determine what parental leave looks like for each of them individually.

As president, my father will change the labor laws put in place when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. He will make childcare affordable and accessible to all. He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this, too, right alongside of him.

I come from Canada, and maternity leave is six months to a year, and they also have paternity leave, and I think that there's something to that. There's also something to making a more comfortable environment for women to breast feed or to bring their kids into work and to have more nurseries in these office buildings.

Family-supportive policies, which enable women to remain and progress in paid employment and encourage men to take their fair share of care work, are crucial to achieving gender equality at work.

A workplace culture where fathers are encouraged to take paternity leave would result in stronger families, a more equal labour market and a better economy.

As a partner in a firm full of women who work outside of the home as well as stay at home mothers, all with plenty of children, gender equality is not a talking point for me. It is an issue I live every day.

You can't be a great mum and work the whole time necessarily; those two things aren't ideal. We have an awful lot to work on and to debate about in relation to our working lives, because it isn't working for a lot of people, particularly for a lot of women.

Young men keep telling me they don't 'have it all' either. And they may have a point. But if you define 'having it all' as the opportunity to have a successful career and a family, I'd say this. When a man tells his coworkers he's going to have a child, no one asks him how he'll manage or if he'll be coming back to work.

Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.

I want every version of a woman and a man to be possible. I want women and men to be able to be full-time parents or full-time working people or any combination of the two.

I think the rules will change and I think more and more young women are going to decide that having a family and taking care of a home is not a bad choice, but how do we subsidize it - not necessarily European-style socialism. It'll have to be a new more creative, dynamic and local solution.

I'm proud to be Secretary of Labor. But I'm even prouder of two more important titles: dad and husband. I've been able to be all three. I want all working people, no matter what their jobs are, to be able to meet their obligations both at work and at home.

I'm particularly fortunate to be in a position where I can bring my child to work and be able to get good child care. Not a lot of women have that.

The only difference between men and women in science is that the women have the babies. This makes it more difficult for women in science but should not be seen as a barrier, for it is merely another challenge to be overcome.

Quite a lot of British women stop working when they have children, and that is rarely the case in Denmark. We have a very flat, structured way of approaching everything. Nobody's the boss. In a sense, we're all equal.

The benefits of feminism for someone like my husband are fantastic. He can stay at home with the kids, he can take them to a park, he does the school run.

It is easy but inaccurate to label any legislation which makes it easier for working families to combine family and work responsibilities 'job killers.'

There's also, I think more so in the music business and especially for women, this ceiling that people put on you if you have children or a family and decide to spend time with them.

There are lots of reasons for that gap between men's and women's wages but to me, the big one is the work-family issue. Trying to juggle children and a job is tough under any circumstances, but especially if you're shooting for the kind of career that involves long hours at work and being on call 24-7.