No Images? Click here Greetings, friends! Welcome to our final newsletter of 2016. The Better Life Lab will be on vacation living our best lives until the new year. Happy holidays from our team! Reaffirmation of ValuesAs the tumultuous year 2016 comes to a close, we want to take a moment to reaffirm our vision, core values, and beliefs for our readers, policymakers, leaders, and for the larger cultural debate we are seeking to transform. Regardless of what has happened in the election or in the past year, our vision for an egalitarian future and unconstrained choice for creating lives of meaning for all people remains strong and clear: Real choices. Real parity. All people. Instead of a world of limitation and narrow opportunity circumscribed by gender, class, race, or accident of birth, we are working toward an equitable future where people of all genders are free to make real choices for how to combine their work and lives without penalty. That means that men are not predestined to a life as a distant breadwinner, an artifact of the Industrial Revolution, but can redefine their role to include caregiving. That means that women are not defined solely by private caregiving and motherhood, but can instead or, or in addition to, have a voice and play an important role in the public sphere. That means that all families have the time, opportunity, and security to thrive, and all people and families have real freedom to create lives of meaning and purpose at work, at home, in the important care they provide, and at play. Instead of workplaces that expect total devotion, we are working toward redefining and redesigning work so that it’s healthy, sustainable, fair, and effective. That means work centered on performance, not hours, work that’s flexible across the life cycle as well as throughout the week, work that’s predictable, leaders who recognize the value of healthy, refreshed workers, and systems that reward diverse voices and leadership rather than reinforce unconscious bias. Instead of social policies that are unsupportive, if not cruel and punishing, to families, we are working toward fairer policies that support 21st-century families in all their diversity, bound together by blood, love, time, or choice. We see paid family leave, pregnancy accommodation, pay equity, paid sick days, access to healthcare, and greater public and private investment in a robust, high-quality early care and learning infrastructure and elder care networks as among the key policies that set the foundation for opportunity, real choice, strong families, stable communities, thriving businesses, and a hopeful future. At heart, we seek to show how work-life, gender equity, and family-centered social policy are keys to excellence, healthy economies, and justice. In 1981, economist Gary Becker published his landmark book, A Treatise on the Family, and declared that the most “efficient” and ideal families consisted of one breadwinner operating in the public sphere, and one homemaker in charge of the separate private sphere. Though, when the book was published, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that working mothers “are more the rule than the exception,” with more than half of all children under age 18 parented by working mothers and fathers. That disconnect in the 1980s between ideal and real is still deep and wide today. Now, a record 40 percent of all households with children under 18 are headed by single or married mothers who are the top breadwinners in the public sphere. Yet, time diary data shows, they’re still spending twice as much time bearing the primary responsibility for tending the private sphere, too—rearing children, caring for the sick and elderly, keeping home and hearth and kin ties, and all the mental work it takes to plan and organize it all. And the lack of social support and government policies, as well as workplace cultures, and cultural attitudes still largely reinforce the powerful and limiting vision of Becker’s theory. Women are still stuck in the middle and lower end of the workforce and still earning less than their male counterparts at all levels, caregiving is still invisible at best, or, at worst, considered a career or job-killing nuisance. Family and workplace policies still reinforce gender, racial, and income inequality. And Becker’s theory reinforces conscious and unconscious bias: If a woman seeks to rise in the public sphere, she is seen as a less-than-ideal woman, and a man a less-than-ideal worker if he seeks the flexibility to be more present at home or have a full life in the private sphere. Transforming how we think about how we all live, work, and care is the mission of Better Life Lab. We are reframing the value proposition for change by demonstrating that this broader vision of fairer, flexible systems that recognize the value of all people living whole, authentic lives up and down the socioeconomic ladder is better not just for workers, children and families, but for business productivity and innovation, for economic prosperity, national security, physical and mental health, strong communities, good governance, and, so important after a time of political polarization, social cohesion. Through cutting-edge research and innovative data collection and visualization, big ideas, powerful storytelling across multiple platforms, strategic network building, convenings and policy entrepreneurship, we seek to transform policy, practice, and culture, so that all people—men and women, those with caregiving responsibilities and those with none—have the opportunity to live their best lives, to make real choices without penalty, in the integrated spheres of work and home. Ensuring and enabling all people to live their best lives at work and at home, ensuring all families have time, security, and opportunity are values that transcend party and politics. They are core values. They define who we are as Americans. And they are the broad and inclusive values that continue to drive our mission, our passion, and our purpose at the Better Life Lab. To the vision of Better Lives for all in 2017. The work continues. Join us. Brigid Schulte, Better Life Lab Director Apply for a Reporting Project on Unpaid Work Issues Around the WorldOur Global Gender Parity Initiative is seeking to support experienced international journalists with a fellowship to tell the stories of the often invisible and devalued labor that quietly powers the global economy: unpaid care work. In particular, we are interested in unpaid work as an economic and business issue, including reading about those who figured out how to measure and value it. Check out the full application here, and share with your networks. Application deadline: January 9, 2017. Beyond 2016 2016 has seen important victories in the fight for paid leave, with many companies announcing new paid family leave policies (including Ikea’s rare offer of paid leave for hourly workers). But for many working families, making ends meet, let alone finding work-life balance, is becoming more difficult, not less. Several recently released reports document the barriers that low-income families and young people face today. Though the unemployment rate has recovered since the recession, a large number of people are still doing part-time work when they prefer—or need—to be working full-time, the Economic Policy Institute finds. A report from Oxfam and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research examines low-wage, female-dominated jobs; these types of jobs currently employ 19 million women, with that number expected to grow in the future. Employers still don’t know how to prevent sexual harassment at work. Upward mobility has dropped off precipitously over the past few decades, while economic disparities in stress levels and physical health have grown. But there’s still hope that the kids are all right. After a recent op-ed in Teen Vogue denouncing Donald Trump’s gaslighting of voters garnered shock and praise online, writers in Jezebel, Slate, and the Atlantic argued that Teen Vogue's coverage shouldn’t have come as a surprise: today’s teenage girls are smart, politically aware, and committed to social justice. Gender and securityGender issues shouldn’t be an afterthought — but they’re still treated that way in a critical policy area: national security. Inspired by our Global Gender Parity Initiative’s Not Secondary, but Central report, a special issue of the New America Weekly explores fundamental questions for gender and security. Check out Anne-Marie Slaughter’s introduction, Elizabeth Weingarten’s argument for why gender matters in national security, and articles on media representation, violence against women, a call to action for the next four years, and women in the Trump administration. That's a wrap! We'll look forward to seeing your inbox again soon.Follow us on Twitter and Facebook — and suggest your best reads on living a better life! Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe here! About New AmericaNew 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 LabNew 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. Better Life Lab Real choices. Real parity. All people. |