 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to equality within our lifetimes, how laws and policies can close or widen gender gaps in economies worldwide, a webinar hosted by New America's Better Life Lab. Well into the 21st century, achieving gender equality in the economy remains unfinished business. Worldwide women's employment income and leadership opportunities lag behind men's building and using a one of a kind database that covers 193 countries. The book equality within our lifetimes systematically analyzes how far we've come and how far we have to go to close these gaps. It's a powerful call to action revealing how gender equality is both feasible and urgently needed to address some of the greatest challenges of our generation. Moderating today's event with researchers Alita Sprig and Jody Hyman is Haley Swenson, a researcher and writer who has been part of the better life lab team for the last six years. She has a PhD in gender studies and her research focuses on the relationship between racial and gender equality at work and at home. Her writing has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Slate as well as dozens of other outlets. Along with Bridget Schulte, she has pioneered the Better Life Lab experiments project, which puts evidence based advice for creating a fairer division of labor at home into the hands of families that need it. Please join me in welcoming everyone to the stage. Thank you so much Julia it's such a pleasure to be here and to be here with not only a wonderful audience, but the two of the authors of the book will be discussing today. Alita and Jody. I want to give a brief introduction to them and then I'm going to kick things over to them actually. This is a very data rich text and I think visuals will really help the audience to wrap their heads around it and and Grock where the arguments they're making are coming from and what the evidence base is for it. I want to give them a chance to present on the book a bit before we dive into discussion. After their presentation, I will shift to a few questions the book raised for me as a long time follower of these questions, and that said, I invite our audience to please share your comments and your questions in the slidle box as we go. I'll be getting kind of a live report of those questions and comments, and I'd love to bring them into our discussion so if you have a question at some point clarity you just want to add something that stands out to you about the data, or you have a provocative discussion question that that our authors might take on, please add it there and, and we'd love for this discussion to be as engaging and interactive as possible, as you can see by this fantastic software that we're using here today. I want to introduce our authors of equality within our lifetimes how laws and policies can close or widen gender gaps in economies worldwide. There are actually three authors on the book, but Amy Robb due to some time zone issues cannot join us today, but we are very fortunate to have Jody Hyman and Alita Spray in joining us so Jody is the founding director of the World Policy Analysis Center at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Hyman leads the largest independent effort to improve the level and quality of comparative policy data available to policymakers, researchers and the public. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and has authored and edited more than 500 publications, including 19 books. And Alita Spray is senior legal analyst for World Policy Analysis Center. Spray is an attorney with over a decade of experience working on social policy and inequality. She has co authored a range of publications, examining how laws and policies shape racial gender and socio economic disparities. So Jody with that said why don't you kick us off and tell us about the book from your perspective. Thank you so much Haley it's a joy to be here with you and joy to be here with everybody who's joining in the audience. So, we started this effort at a time when people were saying it would take over 200 years to reach gender equality in the economy. It would possibly be that we thought as a global community, or as a country that was acceptable, leaving half the world behind half the world without an equal chance. Saying we needed centuries to achieve it and the huge economic loss. The title equality within our lifetimes comes from a profound belief that it is possible we take the steps necessary. The biggest finding from the book is that these huge gaps we have in inequality link completely to loss. It is not to say that loss are the only driver, certainly norms, attitudes, individual actions, beliefs, all affect the inequality. But just as there we lag behind women lag behind men on leadership, we don't have the same protections globally for equality and training or promotions. And that's just one of many examples but I will share a few slides here first, because pictures worth a thousand words so if new American can keep the slides. Okay. So as I mentioned, you know, women make up just about a third of senior managers in the top companies around the world. And just look at where the world is this is percent of countries in terms of protecting from gender discrimination. Well, most of the world has taken some step on gender discrimination, and the biggest area is pay the next biggest is hiring. But when you go to things that matter for advancement in a workforce training, just over half of countries say you can't explicitly you can't discriminate in training. Less than two thirds, even take that first step of putting in the law that promotions can't be discriminatory we all know implementing that has its own set of additional challenges. But the first step is making a commitment to it. Next slide please. The inequality in the workforce has to do with discrimination but it also has to do with an unequal responsibility for caring for everyone from kids to elders. We'll get back to that in a second and what countries can do about it but a lot of times gender discrimination actually comes in the form of caregiving discrimination. And we know this as just one example, because the big pay gap is not between men and women that pay get gap exists, but the much bigger pay gap is what happens, once a woman has a child or other caregiving responsibility. We see when it comes to protecting from discrimination, because your mom and amidst the pandemic, overwhelmingly, those who had care responsibility lost more jobs, and most of all, women of color with caregiving responsibilities lost the most jobs during the pandemic. This shows us that nearly all countries have some kind of protection against gender discrimination, but here to only about have protect against mothers being discriminated against in the workforce. Certainly, because men having equal roles at home is essential to everybody having equal roles in the economy, even fewer protect against fathers being discriminated in the workforce against in the workforce and that becomes an issue with things like uptake of paternity. Next slide please. It's crucial that all women be protected from discrimination for all women to be protected. Most people have multiple aspects of their identity of who they are and different ways that they experience life but also that they are discriminated against. This just shows that in some of those characteristics that people have those intersecting forms of potential discrimination or multiple forms of discrimination. There's a lot of protection right here these are the numbers protecting for multiple discrimination so are you protected on religion and on Jen fewer countries might actually protected the intersection. Well, what we see is for religion, race, disability, these are out of 193 countries, pretty widespread protection, but when you get towards the bottom, how many countries are protecting migrants or women with different nationalities. It's less than half. When you get to sexual orientation and gender identity. While there's been real progress. It's the least of all. Next slide please. Sexual harassment is another form of discrimination of gender discrimination. And while more than five years ago, we saw as the me to movement when global increasing attention to it. That first step of do every does every country have a law prohibiting sexual harassment at work has yet to be achieved. There's no prohibition in this chart. It's 50 countries still have no prohibition at all again sexual harassment at work, and the green the ones that protect from both supervisors and co workers, which becomes especially important for women as they advance in jobs, because the harassment may most commonly come from co workers later on. That's only 32 countries that do bow. Next slide please. Having the law there is the first step, but we need to do more than have a long we need to make sure that companies actually take steps to prevent it, prevent sexual harassment or other forms of discrimination. And that someone who reports sexual harassment can't be retaliated against. And what you can see here is less than a third of countries have both of those basic protections. I just want to pause one minute before I go to caregiving to mention. I know we're presenting a lot of data. It's all freely downloadable so any of this that we go by to fast. You can go to world policy center.org. That's our landing page of our website. You can download the link to getting the book download for free you can get policy briefs if you want it if you want a 30 second map with the number. Those are freely linked there. So, next slide please. Achieving equality in our lifetime takes equality in the workforce. It also takes equality at home. And it takes the ability of people to balance caring with working. One of the fundamental rights that's been recognized for a century is paid leave for moms. So 120 countries around the world guarantee at least 14 weeks 187 guarantee some paid leave. And the audience joining us in the United States you can readily see that one of the few countries in the only high income country without it is the United States. Other countries without it are Papua New Guinea and five small South Pacific island states, every other country has paid maternity leave. Next slide please. In addition to paid maternity leave. If we're going to achieve equality paid paternity leave has huge role to play. When fathers study after study shows when fathers are involved early in life in that first year. Not only is it rewarding to them, but it improves economic outcomes for their spouses partners, and it creates long term engagement in children's lives. There's been dramatic increase in paid paternity leave around the world. Nearly tripling globally. It does remain too short though and that's part of the inequality and that's why you see a lot of red and orange on this map is the number of countries but shortly that having been said, the 45 countries that give man 14 weeks or more show the feasibility of this. Next slide please. One of the things that makes the biggest difference in dads uptake is having either leave reserved for dads, or an incentive to take it to really get over this history of it being disproportionately women, 86 countries do it. Next slide please. People raise the costs of having paid leave and paid leave does cost money. And yet, the amount of money that is left on the table the loss to our economy of not doing it is so much greater. I hope that this just shows if we achieve gender equality in the US economy we would be talking about increasing our GDP by 4.3 trillion with $10 a year. It's a huge amount to have left on the table money that we need for many of the challenges we face. Next slide please. This looks like a super busy slide that looks kind of chaotic, but you really just need to pay attention to one thing. What's happening to that red line. It's going consistently down. This is women's labor force participation rankings of the OECD of our high income country comparators in the OECD. In 2000, we ranked seven. In the most recent data the US ranked 28. This is a result of not taking steps that need to be taken around care. Globally, there are changes that need to happen in the anti discrimination and sexual harassment law. Nationally, the biggest gaps are how we've fallen further and further behind is others have other countries have advanced on supporting care from infancy to old age and I'll stop there for now. Wow, that is a striking figure. Once you wrap your head around all the lines and you follow that red line. That really, really tells us a lot about what's been happening in this country. While things have been changing for the better abroad and I think that's that's really striking at this moment, almost three years into a pandemic that feeling that we were on the cusp of some big changes. People may recall the build back better reconciliation package, which was, you know, I think there was a lot of enthusiasm around. And it just didn't quite have the votes and so here we are continuing on that on that decline it would seem, even as some recovery from the pandemic is happening. So, so many questions come up out of this. I kind of want to take a step back just to start. I have a feeling some in our audience may not be feeling all this data quite as personally as others of us. I will say I am currently 37 weeks pregnant and I'm technically employed as a freelancer so I don't have an employer to offer me paid leave. I live in one of the handful of states that is that has implemented a paid leave program. So, all of this hits really close to home for me and in, and folks who signed on to this event willingly may feel the same way maybe drawn to this issue for similar kinds of reasons, but say they're not, and say they don't feel this quite as personally, or folks are going to be sending the link around to this book to friends and family who may not quite get it. Who may say, you know, there's a lot of problems a lot of forms of inequality in this world. Why should we care so much about gender equality on a global level, why, why is this an issue that we need to be thinking about major policy reforms to solve. So I can kick us off. I think that's a great question and really foundational question. You know, I think there are numerous reasons to care really no matter where you live, no matter where you fall in the political spectrum, whether or not this is really hitting home or it feels more abstract. So I'll just focus on on three to get us started. You know, first and foremost, it is, it is a fundamental right nearly every country around the world has signed on to international treaties and agreements dating back decades that guarantee gender equality in the economy and elsewhere. Most recently, all 193 UN member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which not only call on countries to achieve gender equality by 2030 but also specifically call on them to eliminate all forms of gender discrimination in the law, which is a big focus of this project. But even beyond that gender equality matters to the well being of everyone. You know, there's extensive research when more girls are able to stay in school. Life expectancy increases for women and men alike. Child nutrition improves educational attainment increases not only for those girls but for the next generation. We also see really cross cutting impacts when more women are in leadership so when more women are in parliament countries take stronger action on climate change you know one of the key challenges of our generation. When more women are on boards corporate social responsibility practices increase. And none of this is to, you know, essentialize the nature of women's contributions but the fact is, you know, communities do better and countries do better when women are able to fully participate and when gender doesn't prevent anyone from pursuing their own path in life. And then finally there are these broad economic benefits. You know as Jodi already mentioned, for the US alone closing gender gaps in the economy could add $4 trillion. Globally the estimates around $28 trillion. So, you know, no matter what your vantage point the potential gains are are immense, but actually achieving equality within our lifetimes will require every country taking action to accelerate progress. Jodi did you want to add anything on that question. No, I think I think I couldn't have said it there than everything Alita said. Fantastic. So, um, no I think that's I think those are really, really important answers to this question. And I raise it in part because just at this moment in time with the pandemic it does feel difficult to know where to put our energies. You know, we're facing climate crisis we're facing this ongoing crisis to health care. But as you mentioned, you know there's overlap with this problem of gender equality at every turn when you get there. And I think so many of us felt that during the pandemic that there was suddenly a new, a new gawking of the situation among folks who didn't get it. I mean, I've been covering childcare throughout the pandemic, for example, and the explosion of news interest in who has access to childcare where is it coming from. Why is it so broken in the United States, you know, how are other countries handling it. We haven't really seen that level of interest in that question. It's been a matter to the pandemic for a very long time, you know, since the 1970s, when childcare was really on on the political map for the last time. So I was wondering if you could speak to that you know you're writing this book, as the world is, I mean facing a challenge unlike any had seen in recent years, one that just found its way into every school, every workplace, every home. So how did that color, you're thinking about this book and the way that you thought about tackling these issues. So, I can kick us off on that one because I think I can speak directly some of the childcare pieces and then I'll pass it to Jody since I know we had different experiences over the past few years but you know for me when the pandemic started and we were beginning to draft this book I had a, my first child was six months old, and my parents had been providing childcare, but they were unable to continue doing so as coven really took off. So, you know, as of March 2020, like, millions of other families we were trying to juggle paid work and caregiving day in and day out at home. You know, frankly that was, that was a grind, but you know I was also very fortunate in the big scheme of things. Ultimately I was able to continue to work because for one thing I had a job that could be performed remotely. And second I had access to support my husband actually lost his job due to the pandemic but the silver lining was he was able to step up as our daughter's primary caregiver which was really such a joy to witness and my own workplace allowed me to have some flexibility with my schedule and to take some leave for caregiving as needed so we found a new normal. But you know just thinking about, you know, the connections between my own experience and these broader prospects for gender equality. And, you know, I think obviously the early days of the pandemic were unique circumstances, but they also expose these huge structural gaps that matter all the time. So in the US people didn't have sick leave, they didn't have caregiving leave. Many households like mine had been relying on informal family caregiving to meet essential care needs. Because as you mentioned services like childcare inaccessible unaffordable even before the pandemic. And then when this this crisis layered on top of this really already shaky foundation, you know the immediate consequences for women's employment were just so massive. And even more so for for black and Latina women if you look at the initial employment losses. So I would just say, you know, for me writing this book amidst the pandemic underscored what a critical difference supports both at home and at work can make, but it also reinforced that right now there are deep structural inequities and who has access to those supports and further reinforce that stronger national policies have to be a critical piece of the solution. Yeah, so, so indeed probably like many of your listeners, all of us while we were writing this had different care needs and to your point earlier fairly like why, why care the different people coming to this, I would say it's, it's, they're they're very few Americans who if you look over a 10 year period, don't experience this at some point in their work life. They may not experience it for children they may experience it for a sibling for a parent so who they're experiencing it for can be really wide range. And it may not be every year, but over the course of our work lives. It's almost all of us so my, in my case my father became very sick and had progressive surgeries and, and eventually died during the pandemic and we're extremely close and I feel so fortunate that I was able to have the time with them. But you shouldn't feel fortunate in the United States to be able to care for your parents. Everyone should be able to care for their parents, everyone should be able to care for a member who's seriously ill and just to give it. And that's where the policy comes in. It shouldn't just be I, I was lucky I have a very job I'll just, if we share a couple slides we have a little sense maybe of where the world is on that right now. See that the United States is pretty far behind hoping that New America can bring up this one moment. Sure. And Jodi as you as we get those slides pulled up. One question comes in from the audience from Allison when wondering about how this sort of remote or hybrid work environment may have played a role in some of these various outcomes that you all mentioned for women and those with these caregiving responsibilities I mean, it seems a lot has changed but I think it's important to remember that a lot of that has gone to a privileged few to the lucky few as my colleague Vicki Shabo says, those who won the boss lottery. You know are the ones who are benefiting from those so if you can touch on that that'd be great as well. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think the work from home is mixed for many people right. So those who have jobs that can truly be done from home, who still have childcare that their children go out to, but where it means maybe it's easier for them to live in the same city with their spouse or partner who maybe it means they have less commuting time at the week that can be a real benefit. Many jobs that's not true. And if you live in a small apartment and one bedroom apartment with your children and your children are there during the day. It's practically impossible. So I think it really varies. Now, the other thing that the pandemic really brought out was what happens when a family member gets sick. And states likes not only in terms of paid leave for parents, but you can see it doesn't have any guarantees outside of the temporary ones in the pandemic and 11 states where you can have guaranteed to be able to keep your job and take leave when your child sick. Most of Europe does most, not all, but most OECD countries do. Next slide, please. The Earth world doesn't for serious health needs. You know, all the children in countries who get a terrible, tough diagnosis who get cancer diagnoses who maybe get a chronic disease diagnosis that's really going to take time to adjust to like type one diabetes. Being available is essential. Here, far more countries guarantee that leave for serious health needs. The United States has unpaid leave but unpaid leave is unaffordable to the majority of families and the country isn't even covered by that unpaid leave. Next slide please. When we look globally. And for those listening, most at New America today we're talking more about some of the implications for the United States. But both will talk some today and we have more online and our launch play page at World Policy Center. .org slash equality within our lifetimes, but the world is less far than it needs to be for adult care. We just, we can't forget that people don't end the pandemic was a huge reminder, but we haven't made the progress we need to ensure that people can care for a serious illness in the spouse. If we did this map for spouse or partner, it becomes even more the world read with neither next slide please. I will just say, I guess I didn't have a slide there about elder care, but again, huge gaps and caring for elderly parents. But there is hope. And the hope has to do with progress. Alita is going to talk more about this later though, you know, we leave it here and let, let us pick up on the progress slides later but I don't want to just say their gaps. Because we've been tracking these things and the good news part of the story which really makes it clear we could achieve dramatic changes in the quality within our lifetimes are the parts of the world that have markedly changed what's there to make greater gender equality at work and at home. Yeah, thank you for that and you know I think some may remember that during the pandemic, Congress was able to pass a temporary leave option. The first paid leave, you know federal legislation that has made it through. We've had the FMLA on the books for 30 years now. And that gives some workers access to unpaid leave as you mentioned, many families cannot afford an unpaid leave. But it but during the pandemic there was an emergency leave available to parents who were unable to go to work because of their caregiving needs. And you know I think that program was really limited. It wasn't well publicized, but some of the folks on our team at the Better Life Lab went out seeking folks who used it who knew about it. And one thing they found out about it because HR sent it around, you know, and said, Hey, if you're really struggling to make it work right now here's this option for you. And resoundingly, I mean people were really thrilled with it. There were some folks who took, you know consecutive weeks right away to help their kids with adjust to zoom school before coming back sort of in a more flexible way. So I had a colleague's interview to father who decided to use the leave very strategically so one Friday at a time so essentially cut back to working four day work weeks and you know what those I think especially when dads were taking this what they would say is just that they were their the door opened up to this whole world of caregiving that they weren't getting in their normal jobs, you know, and so, as we're talking about the law, as you say the law doesn't solve everything, but it's so closely connected with norms and values. You know you make a small shift a small temporary shift in the law. And what it actually means for values and norms is is quite enormous for the people that it impacts, and that and that it finds a way into their life. I want to talk some more about this as you're talking about these leave laws about the role of unpaid care in setting the terms of gender inequality worldwide. I think there's in the US but also in the book you cite this kind of common logic that there's a natural reason that women are so burdened let's say with care of course it's not always just a burden there's love involved. There's, you know, pleasure involved in caregiving. There's real genuine desire to give care. But when we look at the statistics, it's so unbalanced worldwide who's providing the unpaid care, and who is engaging in paid work. And it has these enormous consequences. So I wonder just from looking at the, the lay of the land. There are countries who are doing much better than the US but but clearly looking at global numbers. Nobody's quite got that unpaid care work figured out. What is the proper role of government in supporting unpaid care. I think there's a real kind of American response which is, well this is private cares private you know cares for families to figure out the government shouldn't have a role in it. So maybe non discrimination laws are one thing but to actually support invest in help families manage that caregiving. Maybe we don't want the government involved in that. So what's the right balance and how should governments be thinking about how to support caregivers. I'm happy to lead us off. I think one thing is is how we are thinking about caregiving and caregiving is really essential infrastructure, you know caregiving is what supports the rest of the economy what enables the rest of the economy to function. And I guess, you know, whether governments are supporting families to to make their own choices. I think that's an interesting angle on actually what what is happening because right now there's so much inequality embedded in the law that that families don't really have a choice of how they balance care within their own households. I do want to pick up on what Jodi was saying a moment ago though about how there has been really exciting global progress in some key areas that matter to equality and care, and, and matter ultimately to norms as you were mentioning Haley so if we could bring back up the slide that we just had. Great so one of the most striking findings from the data has is how rapidly paid leave for fathers has really begun to expand around the world. I think Jodi mentioned earlier it's it's tripled since 1995 globally it's nearly tripled. And in some regions that progress has actually been even faster. So if you look across African countries the share that have some kind of paid leave for fathers has has quadrupled since 1995. It's easy to see on this graph, you know we most countries with us is a very notable exception have had some kind of paid leave for for mothers for decades if not longer some policies go back a century. But we're finally starting to see that that paid leave for men is is starting to catch up. And that is really exciting, you know when we know that women take leave women are more likely return to their jobs, their earnings increase. They can develop more satisfying relationships with their children they also stay more involved in care and housework after the leave and so it really plays this foundational role in setting patterns of caregiving that have these these much broader implications. I mean, and Jodi mentioned this earlier as well you know that the devil's in the details when it comes to the policy design so in most countries right now, even though there has been an increase in massive increase in the share of countries providing some kind of leave to men, it's generally still far shorter than what's provided to women. So four percent of countries men get less than three weeks, and in many it's just a few days. At the same time only a small number of countries, you know incentivize or encourage men to take leave which has shown a lot of promise and increasing take up rates. Since, you know the reality is men often still face pressure within their workplaces not to take leave when it's available to them there are still, there's still a bit of this, the stigma around paternity leave that we don't see in the same way when we take leave and those are gaps that will really need to be addressed for these benefits to extend more broadly. Another area progress that I just want to highlight unless Jodi did you want to jump in. If we go to the next slide was just on on caregiving discrimination. You mentioned this earlier and it might be a less familiar sort of legal area to people than parental leave but it is critical for both practical reasons and more on the norm side. Practically speaking, you know protections against gender discrimination simply don't always extend to discrimination based on caregiving responsibilities, or even related physical conditions like pregnancy or breastfeeding. We've seen this in case law from a range of countries, and we highlight a bunch of examples in the book. But beyond those you know very practical applied impacts prohibiting discrimination based on family responsibilities matters to these these norms that you're talking about they matters to creating workplace cultures where it's expected and understood that workers of all genders have full lives, and that often means that outside of work there, they're caring for children, they're caring for spouses for partners for aging parents. I think establishing that these, you know, extremely common almost universal responsibilities can't justify discrimination is it's important it's important for ensuring workers, regardless of gender can address the caregiving needs in their lives, without being, you know, passed over for promotion or tracked into a role with less responsibility so. As we can see on this slide you know the shows progress in laws over five years, and even within that short time there has been progress across all these different aspects of discrimination. But there's still, you know substantial gaps between protections based on gender and protections based on caregiving statuses and protections are actually lowest for fathers. Yeah, the one thing I'd add Haley to your to your important question is, you know, here, here we were amidst the pandemic, almost about to pass major paid leave legislation that would have been transformative for the United States major child care legislation, honestly just barely catching up with a lot of our peer countries but huge for the United States. And we didn't and the argument was against it was the cost was that we couldn't afford it with everything else. I don't think we can afford not to. We, we really are at this fork in the road and you saw that with massive decline in where we are in the OECD. I mean, seventh to 28 is just out of 36 countries enormous decline. You see that in the fact that we're leaving four and a half trillion dollars on the table. So, so what are our two path options one, we can just say okay we're going to go along with the partial workforce. And we're going to have to cut all sorts of essentials. And you see that in the arguments for cutting. Some of the most important programs we have from Social Security Medicare to cuts in support for food for families this month and everything else. The second path is to say, let's grow our economy grow it markedly and be able to afford things. The way to make that growth is to ensure that all Americans can contribute that nobody is dropping out of the workforce when they don't want to. To do that, it's a more economically successful strategy and it's a strategy that values every human life, much more deeply. Next thing we got a question as you were speaking from Heather McCullough with the Aspen Institute financial security program, and she was wondering how do we get us policymakers and business leaders to acknowledge that gender equity is an imperative. And I think it's a it's such an important question I mean obviously your book really centers the economy in some interesting ways, you're talking about gender equality in a pretty broad way you know it's civic it's political it's, it's not just about who has the money in the background, but the economy really is quite central to your arguments, and to the way you make your case so if you have anything to add there about how do we get us policymakers to care I mean this seems to be just this issue that is not going away. And then I also think I would add on to that question, you know, it seems like there are some moments when it's easier to make the case right when workplaces are shutting down when schools are shutting down you say hey, without women's without caregivers labor, this country just ceases to work, but then you have inflation you have a tightening economy of things are just getting harder for workers. And then it becomes a lot harder to say hey gender equality really matters. You know there's, it's more clamoring for good jobs, and people feel maybe a little bit of fear in the workplace about how their activism or their education maybe may be regarded so I you know I do want to close off this conversation by thinking more about solutions and what we do about this so maybe we just start here like what is the case that we need to make. Maybe you've seen some global examples of this so if you have you know some inspiration I know a lot of folks in the US who are sort of in the room with us right now would love some inspiration and some insight there. I mean, I'll take a first go at this and then pass it to lead I want to say something about the US and then then something globally on the US. The good news is that if you ask Americans across political party. There's wide agreement about a lot of foundational aspects, such as should parents be able to afford to take leave to be with their infant. Yes, you hear that across parties. When you ask people should you be able to take leave to care for a sick family member and it's appropriate to pay. Have that be paid leave again the answer is yes. If you ask across parties to people want to be able to care for a sick parent. Yes. So I think we have that to build on so what are some things we don't have that we need. I do think that we need Congress to start looking at the long term benefits of policies, as well as their short term costs. So companies do this, this is how they do investment. They don't not invest in R&D. They don't not invest in infrastructure, because they'll make a ton of money later but it costs something now as a country we have to do that. And the care infrastructure is is a big part of that's one of the biggest examples of where that early investment will yield later. And we do need our private sector leaders, who right now those their number of companies, providing these benefits, but they're, they're paying for the benefits as opposed to social insurance, and those who aren't providing the benefits are paying losing employees by turnover so we do need more of our private sector leaders to come forward and say we need to pass this essential infrastructure so a hopeful story I'll just, I'll just give one for time and example. It's a group in Jordan that got childcare implemented it was actually a case where there was worse posed to be childcare guarantees they started by two women who found this old law it wasn't being implemented. But what did they do with this gets to my example they built public awareness. They built coalitions across the government civil society and companies that showed it could be done and they would make more money doing it. I'll give one more example for people who might be listening from South Africa for people might be listening who are like well what can I do as an individual. There was a father in South Africa had premature twins was aware he got the lead, but most he could afford to take time but most South Africans couldn't called every single member of parliament. All of this we inspired coalitions that got built across unions and civil society a group called Sonke pass paternity leave they're now working on paid elder care leave. Because he wouldn't give up into the left other people give up. I'll stop there. That's beautiful. Alita I want to I want to hear some inspiration from you to that you take away from the book. That's a fantastic case. We do have another question actually Jodi you touched on this about labor unions, because you know I think we often think of sort of workplace labor activism as separate in some ways from from government action from policy action. But it seems like they're really linked together and of course in the US we have really low rates of union membership but is there a link between what you see in other countries in terms of activist unions unions taking on caregiver issues sort of as their own, and the ability to pass some of the policies you're talking about here today. Either either of you. If you're starting them then pass it to Alita, you know I just want to say, you know, unions, unions have done two things in different settings both within countries and across countries. One is, do the important work of advocating for change in their workplace. That doesn't necessarily change policy. The other thing they've done, which has played a crucial role in changing policies is, in addition, see as a core role advocating for policy change. And I think they're the collective voice that brings together the experience of millions of workers is so important to that. I think the African example I gave Koseito the coalition of South African trade unions was played a central role in ensuring that parental leave was passed but we, we see this in Europe we see this in other settings so I think it's very powerful. The collective voice brings a voice to policy makers, as well as to workplaces. Alita anything dad. Just one quick thing I would add you know Jodi's mentioning this, a couple of the case studies that we included in the book. We have one one chapter that really goes into detail about how change has happened on a variety of policy areas across countries. We actually also put up the videos of interviews with some of the key stakeholders and key change makers in these processes, including in Jordan in South Africa, Uganda, a few other places so if you want to, you know, hear about these processes of changing policy and in the words of people who really move to them that's also available on our launch page at world policy and elsewhere world policy center dot org slash equality within our lifetimes. I know we only have a couple more minutes so I don't want to take up all the time the last pieces that I was going to highlight just in terms of hope and progress or a few other areas of law where we have seen progress over the past five years even if it's been incremental even if there are gaps we are seeing changes in law, new laws being passed so maybe I'll just go through really quickly just a couple more slides and then close it out unless. Yeah, I'll go really fast. That's great. Farooz Kabir I had written in also asking about what stands in the way of more of these gender based anti discrimination provisions so I hope you'll touch on that as well. Sure, so I just want to just start looking again at them. I'm sorry we actually go to the. The next slide please. I'm referring to what you raised at the beginning about these disparities and protections across different different aspects of work. Again protections are lowest in access to training and promotions these gaps that really matter to advancement, but there has been change across all areas, even just from 2016 to 2021. As you can see on this slide. If we go to the next one, which looks at multiple discrimination. Again among women we know there are vast inequalities at work based on race migration status disability other aspects of identity so just prohibiting discrimination on gender is insufficient to reach much of the discrimination women face at work. But here too you can see that protections are rising without exception across countries. Just as one example, Jodi mentioned earlier, there's been a lot of progress around sexual orientation and gender identity in the law, even though those receive the lowest protection globally. But from 2016 to 2021, six countries pass new laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation 10 countries did so for gender identity so we are seeing notable movement even in a short time period. Let's go back to the next slide just one final quick example before I pass it back. So, looking at sexual harassment laws so since me to went global in 2016. We've seen 11 countries pass their first workplace sexual harassment law, as Jodi mentioned, you know, there's still a quarter of countries that have nothing, and that's a huge gap and a huge problem. But these 11 past laws for the first time, others closed gaps in their laws. So we're seeing progress that that matters, and we just have to take action to to accelerate that progress if we're actually going to have a shot at achieving equality in the in the short term. Thank you. I mean what I really love about the book is that it takes something that I think a lot of us, you know, care about, maybe getting the weeds on get drawn into conversations about, you know, are the origins of gender inequality when it comes to change and you know as the the cases you provide show, there's like no, no one place to start or, you know, when it comes to creating change you start from wherever you're at, and whether it's in your workplace or your community, your civic organizations, you know you you agitate for these policies from from wherever that standpoint is and I think it just gives a really good sense of hope to see this progress that's been happening internationally and and there's just no reason really why it shouldn't happen in the US and we're not so exceptional right, and I do take, I do take a lot of hope from groups like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, nurses unions that have been fighting really hard for, for better conditions during this pandemic. The railroad workers, you know, a hugely male profession who's been shining the spotlight on a lack of paid time off during this pandemic, and, like I said, there's just like no, there's no bad place to start getting involved in in this work. And I wonder if you can just say, you know one thing that I also love about the book as you're making it freely available to the public which is just incredible. So, folks if you see there's a link on the bottom right hand of your screen if you click it, you should be in seconds able to read this full book for yourself and access all of this data. I want to give you the last word maybe Jodi. Why was that so important to you, and what do you hope to accomplish by by making this book so widely available. We believe it really takes all of us to make this change happen in each of our countries, and we do think it's within our reach. So that was absolutely the goal the book we're delighted through University of California press is freely downloadable. And if you don't have time to read it to go to the website. The briefs are brief maps are brief, and then make sure you have time to reach out with your group, whether that's a civil society group, a union group. I heard from the Aspen Institute, wherever you're based, if we're all working together we can make these things happen and reach out to us if we can help in any way because we're, we believe this is a journey that we're on together and we need to accelerate how fast we get there. Thank you so much. It's been a joy speaking with you both today. Congratulations on the book launch, and I hope everybody here in the audience find some time to look through it. Reach out to the authors as they said they couldn't be more generous with their time and their expertise, and I wish everybody a safe healthy and fantastic day. Thank you so much.