Having women as half of the workforce changes literally everything because labor issues are life issues. So, this notion of creating work life balance, getting policy that actually supports both women and men to have whole lives is really at the epicenter of what matters in this nation right now.
I'm really invested in looking at how the next generation--Millennials, or Generation Y, whatever you want to call i--is approaching work-life issues. The really exciting thing is that both young women and young men want to have fulfilling work lives and be present parents, you know, be caretakers, have lives outside of work, be invested in their communities, and do art, and all the other things that make life really fulfilling. The question is: how do we bridge that gap between aspiration and implementation?
Many of us had parents who also aspired to those things, both men and women, and often times, the way things sort of evolved, is that women sort of ended up taking on the brunt of domestic work and sometimes letting go of job opportunities. So, I think it's really important to think about how do we reframe this issue so that young men really own it and feel like it's their issue--that it's not a women's issue anymore. And, how do we create both the institutional policy change, sort of that political work, but also the very personal work of defending our rights to have this equal partnership, of kind of realizing our very personal and deeply psychological vision of what we want our families to look like, what we want our lives to look like.