Greetings friends: 
Welcome to the Better Life Lab Newsletter!

New America's Breadwinning & Caregiving Program is now the Better Life Lab 

Here are five things you need to know this week to make your life better at work and at home:

What We've Been Writing 

Equal Pay Day is coming up on April 12, and BLL Director Brigid Schulte's op-ed in the Boston Globe made the case that designing transparent and gender-neutral systems can be a mighty weapon in fighting the gender wage gap. Over at TIME, Program Fellow Jay Newton-Small wrote about "How Anita Hill Paved the Way for Women in Government." 

Speaking of Equal Pay...

Last week, five star soccer players for the U.S. Women's National Team filed a federal complaint accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination. Despite winning the team's third World Cup championship last year, the women's players make in some cases as little as 38 percent of what their male counterparts do. They're getting support from men's star Tim Howard, who told the New York Times: "it is a problem, and I feel they should fight for their rights, no matter what." 

And fight is the right word for it, because as Fortune Broadsheet noted, a new Census Bureau study from the National Women's Law Center reveals that based on today's median wage gap, women can expect to lose $430,480 over the course of a 40-year career "compared to what the typical white men makes during the same time period. For African American women, that gap grows to $877,480. Latinas, meanwhile, leave a grand total of more than $1 million on the table."

What's Missing From Our Political Debates

Amidst all the hot and heavy rhetoric in the presidential race, what's missing is discussion of "one of the most serious threats to US economic competitiveness: our nation’s failure to invest in our children," say Riane Eisler and Valerie Young in the Huffington Post.

Good News From East and West 

New York City and San Francisco have both passed groundbreaking laws mandating paid leave. San Francisco employers will now be required to offer six weeks fully paid, and New York City's employees will be eligible for up to twelve weeks of paid time off.

And some more encouraging news, tech edition

Erin Summers and Zainab Ghadiyali, Facebook engineers and cofounders of wogrammer, a site that spotlights female engineers and aims to "change the conversation surrounding women in tech," shared with CNN that "It isn't all horror stories for women in tech." That's good news, since at Harvey Mudd College, the ratio of women in computer science increased from 10 percent to 40 percent in five years. Read how they did it on Backchannel.

Upcoming Better Life Lab Events: Join Us!

TOMORROW at 9 AM: The Power of Parity in the U.S., the D.C. launch of a new report from McKinsey on gender inequality in the United States that zeroes in on laboratories of change in states, cities, companies and nonprofits. Join us for an exclusive discussion about how to move forward on key gender equality issues. Following remarks from U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios, New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, McKinsey Global Institute Director Jonathan Woetzel and McKinsey Partner Kweilin Ellingrud, we’ll explore a range of potential interventions for government, businesses, and other stakeholders. If you can't join us in person, RSVP for the livestream and following the conversation online using #PowerOfParity.

And coming up on Tuesday, April 14 at noon, we have Paid Leave Leapfrogging : Lessons from Other States and Countries. Join us for a discussion with experts from New America, the World Bank, the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, the McKinsey Global Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute about how to translate lessons from abroad (and from successful state efforts) into actionable strategies at the local, state and national levels of government.

That's a wrap for this week! We'll look forward to seeing your inbox again next week, but in the meantime, you can always find us on Twitter @BetterLifeLab. Have a great week! 

Follow us on Twitter @BetterLifeLab - and suggest your best reads on living a better life by tweeting at us!

About New America

New America is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. Our hallmarks are big ideas, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, and creative engagement with broad audiences. Read the rest of our story, or see what we've been doing recently in our latest Annual Report.

About the Better Life Lab

New America’s Breadwinning & Caregiving Program is thrilled to unveil a new name, the Better Life Lab, and an updated agenda to transform policy and culture so that people and families have the opportunity to live their best lives at work and at home. As a “lab,” we are dedicated to disruptive experiments, collaborative work, and innovative thinking.

“Your Life, Better: News From the Better Life Lab” will be our way to keep you in the know, featuring the best of what we’re reading and writing about gender equity, the evolution of work, and social policies that support 21st-century families. We will be a clear signal amid the noise to share what’s fresh and crucial to an inclusive vision of work-life, gender, and income equity issues.

Meet the Better Life Lab Team

Brigid Schulte, Program Director, Director of The Good Life Initiative, award-winning journalist, formerly of The Washington Post, and author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time
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Elizabeth Weingarten, Deputy Director, Director of GGPI
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Liza Mundy, Senior Fellow and author of The Richer Sex
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Jane Carr, American Council of Learned Societies Fellow & Program Fellow
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Katherine Zoepf, Fellow and author of Excellent Daughters
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Jay Newton-Small, National Fellow and author of Broad Influence
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Alieza Durana, Policy Analyst 
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Better Life Lab

Real choices. Real parity. All people.