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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:

Changing Our Math to Transform Office Culture

The layers of this piece from Susan Dominus in last week's New York Times Magazine deftly illustrate the interconnected fronts in the effort to design and implement the future of work. Whether drawn from groundbreaking academic research or best practices honed in the workplace, culture needs to change so that no matter what form it takes, all employers can get on board to affirm (to quote Dominus): "This company acknowledges your life outside the office and wants to accommodate it."

 
 

Finding History Everywhere

With March being Women's History Month, the significance of women's history was already on our minds when BLL Senior Fellow Liza Mundy spotted this amazing display in the Atlanta airport and snapped a photo. The quotation (arguing the need for day care in 1897!) shows us how far we've come but still have left to go. But the image also introduced us to Selena Sloan Butler: Spelman graduate, founder and first president of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers (forerunner to today's National PTA), and a delegate to the founding convention of the National Association of Colored Women. 

With this reminder that history is everywhere, we're going to feature a snapshot that captures important contributions to women's history in each newsletter this Women's History Month. We hope you'll share some of your own favorites! Tweet them to us @BetterLifeLab with the hashtag #BLLhistory.

 
 
 

Better Life Lab In the News 

From Super Tuesday and its aftermath to the gender wage gap, the BLL team had a lot to say this week. Deputy Director Elizabeth Weingarten spoke to Minnesota Public Radio about the causes and consequences of the gender wage gap. And Fellow Jay Newton-Small weighed in on Trump: why Cruz supporters worry he can't be beaten and the why the Democrats "salivate and shudder" at the prospect of his nomination.

Crowdsourcing Parental Leave Data 

Melissa Sandgren is leading a survey to collect a crowd-sourced paid leave database in the Silicon Valley tech sector. As she points out on Medium, "[t]his data will not tell the whole story, but it is a starting point to highlight one of the many factors influencing people’s ability to participate fully — entry-level to C-suite; tech and non-tech — in the workforce." You can access the survey here

#ShareTheLoad Goes Viral 

This commercial is everywhere and we couldn't be happier about it. #ShareTheLoad, created by the ad agency of BBDO’s Mumbai, has transformed an ad for laundry detergent into a powerful tool to illustrate sexist double standards about work in the home. A woman's father observes how his daughter is living by the same the gender stereotypes she had grown up with and decides to make a change for the better… starting now. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and many others are cheering the ad campaign's approach.

Upcoming Better Life Lab Events

Join us March 14 for “What Works: Gender Equality By Designa lunchtime discussion featuring Harvard behavioral economist Iris Bohnet and Jenny R. Yang, Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that explores how we can use design thinking to move the needle toward eliminating unconscious bias in classrooms and boardrooms, hiring and promotion. You can RSVP to attend in person or watch via livestream here. Later that same week on March 17, Wendy Paris will speak with Naomi Cahn, Linda Delaney, and NBC's Perry Bacon about her book Splitopia: Dispatches from Today's Good Divorce.

 
 

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.