Madeleine M. Kunin Quotes

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

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.

If you want to have high-powered career women who have families, you need to provide options for them in terms of childcare.

Paid family leave, for instance, has strong backing in scientific literature as an effective means of enabling families who want kids to have them.

To create a society that is supportive of child-rearing parents is a role of the government, and we are also working to realize a society where women can shine.

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.

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.

In Sweden, both parents take care of the children.

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.

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.

We need to push for work-family practices and policies that allow individuals to customize their work lives according to their changing individual preferences and family obligations, not just their traditional gender roles.

All working parents should have paid family leave. That's one of many reasons I'm working to elect Hillary Clinton. She has a plan to guarantee workers - men and women - up to 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.

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.

It's embarrassing to be in the only westernized economy that doesn't have paid family leave and flex scheduling, and that disproportionately helps women.

I would be excited if we could reimagine workplaces that start from a premise that women are going to be a central part: Women are going to bear children, people are going to raise those children, and it's not going to be a nuisance - it's actually going to be understood as part of the deal.

We will not achieve gender equality in the workplace until we fix our system of parental leave.

I have proposed maternity leave for mothers whose employers do not provide it.

Employee fathers need to step up to the plate and put their family needs on the table.

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'm fighting to make childcare more affordable for working parents so they can continue working and advancing their careers, closing wage gaps that for too long have held women back from the fair economic opportunities they need.

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.

Working moms, and increasingly working dads, don't want a government handout, but they do need a hand up.

I think obviously we need to work harder at extending the women's movement. How do women who have prepared for careers and have a child get back to the workplace and still fulfill maternal roles?