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:

Read This Now: Broad Influence on the Military and Law Enforcement

Earlier this month, BLL Fellow and Time Washington correspondent Jay Newton-Small’s book, Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works came out to wide praise. Leading voices from the military and law enforcement joined Jay for a lively, candid, and irreverent discussion of how the growing presence of women is changing military and police institutions.

Watch a highlight reel featuring MPD Chief Cathy L. Lanier on kicking ass and taking names (while still having to wear men’s pants) and bonus clips from the DC launch of Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of the Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World by our Fellow Katherine Zoepf.

Policy and Popular Culture: Closing Gaps on Pay Equity, Media Coverage of Reproductive Issues, and Dad 'dos

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to the many gender gap(s) prevalent in our lives. On the seventh anniversary of the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama announced a plan for the EEOC to collect annual pay summary data from companies with 100 employees or more—that will reportedly cover 63 million employees with data broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity. 

Meanwhile, the Women’s Media Center’s Media Watch report on the gender gap in news coverage of reproductive issues is chock-full of food for thought (and action!). As storytellers ourselves, we were particularly struck by this stat on byline disparity: Overall, women wrote just 37 percent of reproductive issues stories, while men wrote 52 percent.

Last but not least, Dad 'dos! We know that fathers play a critical role in their kids' lives, and Pantene made that point abundantly (and adorably) clear in its now-viral Super Bowl ads featuring NFL stars Benjamin Watson, DeAngelo Williams, and Jason Witten styling their young daughters' hair.

Sound Booth: Beyond Happy podcast with Beth Cabrera — So let’s face it: we all know that we need policy change and culture shift when it comes to work-life balance. But how do we cope in the meantime? According to Beth Cabrera, by orienting our goals toward achieving well-being. Listen as Beth gets real with the latest research on how to do it on this podcast with Brigid Schulte.

Less is More is Less: Toward Paid Parental Leave the Way It Should Be — After last week’s announcement from the Pentagon that leave for some branches of the military was shrinking and expanding for others, Brigid Schulte weighed in for the Boston Globe on what we can learn from these changes about how paid parental leave should work for everyone.

Introducing: The Global Gender Parity Initiative and Women’s Unpaid Work — The Global Gender Parity Initiative is a journalistic project at New America headed by BLL Deputy Director Elizabeth Weingarten that will inform public sensibilities, enhance public understanding, and increase public buy-in to the importance of gender parity goals. Currently, the GGPI is running an experimental policy journalism project to highlight the opportunities and challenges that emerge when highlighting women’s unpaid work as part of a country’s GDP. Feast your appetite on the link above and stay tuned for updates in future newsletters!

Last but not least, congratulations to Bridget Fitzgerald, who won a copy of Brigid Schulte’s Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time in a drawing after our recent event on women and work with Anne-Marie Slaughter and Liz Shuler.

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

Better Life Lab
Real choices. Real parity. All people.