Cheryl Burke Quotes

There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.

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

Why is it our business whether Sarah Palin returned to her job as governor three days after her son was born, or three months? Is there a right answer?

I vividly remember early on in my career when I was eight months pregnant, working literally around the clock, and worrying that each trip to the restroom or my need to catch the occasional catnap was causing my colleagues to question whether I could keep up.

With women composing nearly half the American workforce and increasingly serving as the primary breadwinner for families, we can't afford to treat pregnant women differently than their counterparts, especially when slight job modifications could help them stay in the workforce at no risk to their health.

If you factor in not just who's doing what at home, but how much more time working fathers are spending on work outside the home, on average they spend two hours more per day outside the home.

I am grateful for the willingness of both Jurgen Klinsmann and Everton manager Roberto Martinez to afford me the opportunity to spend time with my kids.

My mother was a sociologist and an intellectual, and my father was an industrialist with a business in copper and aluminum wire. He was very strict and he wanted me to work in the family business - for him, the worst thing was having a daughter who worked in fashion.

Women need to understand that it is possible to stay in the workforce. A lot of women decide to take a back seat in their professional careers even before they are pregnant or are ready to have children.

One reason the United States is one of three countries in the world that do not have any form of paid maternity leave is that many American business leaders, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, oppose any family-friendly policies. They scare people into thinking maternity leave will be a job killer.

In German science, we have a special problem. We lose talented women at the time they get pregnant. Some of it occurs because they are encouraged - by their husbands, bosses and the government - to take long maternity leaves.

I graduated law school nine months pregnant and didn't take a job.

In college, the guys aren't worrying about whether they'll be able to pursue their career dreams and still have kids.

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.

Even after marriage it is possible for a woman to have a career.

I think it's incredibly important to spend the first year with your child, and it should be made possible for all women.

I think that the female workforce is so valuable. And if we're going to champion women in the workforce, which our economy seems to want to do, we have to deal with the realities, which is that they have children, and they need a way to take care of their children in a supportive work environment.

Paid leave is a not just a mother and child issue, it's a societal issue we have.

In an economy where women now make up half the work force, we're going to have to address the treatment of pregnant employees more systemically. The passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would better protect against the discrimination pregnant job seekers face.

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.

My greatest mistake? I once took a three-day maternity leave. I had my daughter on a Wednesday, and then went back to the office on the Monday to sack a manager.

I think it's been lovely the way people have been really supportive in parliament of my pregnancy.

My mother, oddly enough, really wanted to pursue a career in law, but at the time, she had children and was working as a teacher.

The piece of legislation that I'm so excited and delighted to be doing is shared parental leave.

As Minister for Women and Equalities, I introduced shared parental leave, extended flexible working rights and won government support to bring in gender pay gap reporting. I'm not going to lie: it was a constant battle.