Gail Collins Quotes

The Shriver Report presents an accurate and detailed portrait of American women and families at this transformational moment in our history.

Women had to deal with the men's response when the women wanted more time out of the home; men now must deal with the women's response as men want more time in.

We have a large pool of talented and educated women, and yet workplaces haven't necessarily changed to accommodate the reality of their lives.

And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

Workplaces still operate like it's 1962 and one person is always at home, and they are not very good at adjusting for the fact that a majority of women work and take care of children.

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.

The influx of women into paid work and her increased power raise a woman's aspirations and hopes for equal treatment at home. Her lower wage and status at work and the threat of divorce reduce what she presses for and actually expects.

Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.

And whether it is equal pay, health care, Social Security, or family leave, this Congress has refused to address issues critical to hard-working American women.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?

I absolutely don't want to suggest that women are unreliable because we're mothers - on the contrary. But the question of who brings up the kids has a material effect on all women's careers.

It has been the great curse of American women that work--work for a living--was considered dishonorable, and only to be resorted to in case of necessity.

Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice. So let's stop arguing about the hard choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices.

Literally, over a weekend, Friday to Monday, I went from a C.I.A. officer to changing diapers and putting the kid in a Bjorn and going to the playground and hanging out with all the nannies. I was the only dad - everyone kind of gave me strange looks because of our sexist society.

Mothers suffer in the workplace. That fact is by now so painfully familiar it even has a name: the motherhood penalty.

We will never achieve equality in the workplace until we have more equality in the home. Our plans for an extra four weeks of parental leave specifically for fathers will help tackle the assumption that parenting is one of the 'girl jobs'.

Our minds are slowly changing and men are taking up larger roles at home, while women are doing the same at the workplace.

I know that family life in America is a minefield, an economic trap for women, a study in disappointment for both sexes.

The "female culture" has shifted more rapidly than the "male culture"; the image of the go-get 'em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let's take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men's underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women's feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.

Most women without children spend much more time than men on housework; with children, they devote more time to both housework andchild care. Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a "leisure gap" between them at home. Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a "second shift" at home.

Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless!

There are women who literally squeeze a baby out of their bodies or get cut open in major surgery, have a human being, the next generation of the human race pulled from their bodies, and within a couple of weeks have to go back to work, because if they don't, they can't pay their bills. Something's wrong with that.

The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.

I remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It became glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men.