Let the Conversation Begin: The Shriver Report

Posted on | November 18, 2009 | No Comments

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The executive summary of the Shriver Report opens with a powerful statement:

“This report describes how a woman’s nation changes everything about how we live and work today. Now for the first time in our nation’s history, women are half of all U.S. workers and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. This is a dramatic shift from just a generation ago (in 1967 women made up only one-third of all workers). It changes how women spend their days and has a ripple effect that reverberates throughout our nation. It fundamentally changes how we all work and live, not just women but also their families, their co-workers, their bosses, their faith institutions, and their communities.”

This dramatic shift suggests that much has already changed in our world and that many of our institutions, structures and organizations need to address these changes. This report has already spurred much conversation, and will continue to do so.

Oprah Winfrey, in the epilogue of the report, says, “We have the power as women, as families, as a nation to rise to the challenges of our time. To hear each other out. To talk it out. To let the conversation begin. Together, we ought to be able to ‘turn it back, and get it right-side up again!’”

This study is a call for conversation, as Oprah most elegantly states. Conversations need to begin—in our homes, in our schools, in our communities, in our nation and across the globe.

As someone whose work has centered around helping individuals and groups have thoughtful and meaningful conversations, this is a heartening time. It’s a time ripe for meeting the challenges our world faces.

I encourage you to read the report and ask yourself, “What conversation am I called to have?”

Category: work communication
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