 I'm Liza Mundy, I'm Director of our Bread, Winning and Caregiving Program here at New America. Thank you so much for coming and thank you so much for staying for our panel. The discussion of this panel is going to pick up on a question that was actually raised earlier in that how do you push change in workplaces that have historically been inflexible and or resistant to moving women to the top. I think those two things are related and how do you bring change to workplaces that in some cases for new reasons are creating work life challenges for workers at all income levels including lower income and middle income workers in sectors that are changing and evolving. It's my hope that we'll have a robust discussion, I'm perfectly prepared to moderate an argument if it turns into a polite argument and so for that purpose I'm going to introduce everybody now with the hope that people feel like they can chime in when somebody responds. I do have specific questions for everybody here but feel free to jump in even before I address you or ask a specific question. So Barbara Byrne is a vice chairman in the banking division at Barclays which recently celebrated its 325th birthday I think you told me earlier. She is responsible for leading the firm to global relationships with multinational corporate clients. Barbara has over 30 years of financial services experience. For the past four years she was ranked by American banker as one of the 25 most powerful women in finance. She also told me earlier that she's had two days off this year. And she is a member of the bread winning and caregiving programs advisory council and we're very grateful for that and we're very grateful to you for coming down to Washington today. She has four phenomenal kids. Yeah let's just do it. Since this is a panel. Right. And we have a husband. Yes. Yes. That's right. Maria Simon is a partner at the Geller Group and specializes in business law and litigation. She also spearheads the firm's wills and trust practice and it's divorce and family law practice areas of the law that go hand in hand protecting families during stressful times. Your firm was the was the focus of a really interesting New York Times article about innovative ways in which you're changing the workplace and the practice of law and we'll talk about that at length hopefully. Carol Joyner is the director for the labor project for working families in partnership with family values at work and works to evolve workplace standards in collective bargaining and public policy. Carol is also the founding director of the 1199 SEIU employer child care fund and past president of the child care corporation. And I think it's fair to say Emory that you need no introduction at this point but thank you so much for being on the panel and actually before we get into the question of institutional change and how we bring about changes in both specific corporations and firms but also fields. One of the things I noticed in the past panel is that the phrase having it all comes up a lot now in conversation and I happen to know that you're hoping in your book and the conversation that follows your book to actually get away from the phrase having it all and I thought I might at least give you the chance to say why. Thank you. Yes. So as many of you know my article I wrote in the Atlantic in 2012 was called why women still can't have it all. And it was not my choice of title and I actually wanted to call it why women can't have it all dot dot dot yet because my point was here are the changes we still need to make. The Atlantic thought that that sounded too much like the end of men and they'd already pointed they had already had an article on the end of men and anyway. So we ended up with this title which now means pretty much wherever I go I'm often introduced as this is Ann Marie Slaughter who thinks women can't have it all which is exactly the opposite of what I think I stand for but there it is. But more importantly having it all comes from Helen Gurley Brown the editor of Cosmo who wrote Memoir in the early 80s about having it all and it was a kind of self consciously elite wealthy you can have it all you know if you think about Cosmo the sort of the perfect woman I didn't know that I grew up with the idea that having it all meant you had a career in a family too it was that women could have what men had which was a career in a family too but I have since been convinced a that it has no legitimate feminist pedigree but more importantly that it it is exclusive in all the ways we've just heard that the idea of having it all for people who have barely enough to either feed themselves or maintain their families or hold on to their jobs that frame is exactly counter to the conversation we're trying to have here point one and point two it's just too easy to caricature right and so people are always in that the other thing that happens when I get introduced is this is Ann Marie Slaughter and they go through the many blessings that I do have and say and she says women can't have it all well she looks pretty good to me it's just too easy to caricature as a kind of selfish you know grabby thing which is particularly bad for women right I mean that that is not where we want to go so I think it we really ought to be moving away from the term it is not in my book except to explain why I don't like it it is nowhere near the title and I do think we could happily consign it to Helen Gurley Brown's history great okay so thanks editors right now that I think that will have thanks have my writers great okay that's that's wonderful and and so Barbara let's start talking about the field of finance I've been really curious to know what thoughts have been going through your head as you listen to our conversations so far finance is a field that has traditionally been tough for women at the top it's a very very high-powered competitive field and I just wonder whether you think it's whether you think it's naive for for us to be talking about bringing work-life balance and flexible schedules and relax and peace and happiness and everything to workers in the finance industry or whether there are changes that I would say flexibility is essential so it's it's interesting as I listen to this conversation it mirrors what I see in the industry yes I'm in finance I've actually been an investment banker for 35 years I am frontline the reason why I haven't had much time this year is I do mergers and acquisitions and in case you haven't noticed it happens to be everybody seems to be buying everybody else very quickly it's a lot like being an emergency room physician when the patient shows up you have to deal with it so it comes in waves the when you talk about our industry in particular we care a lot about the habit of flex because the burn rate is so high it's like being an athlete that you've got to be able to have downtime so even though you might think of finance is not being flexible I sit here before you as someone who in 1991 after I had my second child was told you know we really need to make sure this was by a very progressive God of the name of Tom Hill who's now at a Blackstone has been there for a while who said you know my wife was at Sally after our second child she's got burnt out how about you work from home on Fridays I'll set you up you'll be done Princeton so you've got the ability I trust you note that word trust because this was being done back in those days on an individual basis oh we trust you Barbara you know you can work from home on Fridays my view quite frankly was if the guys could be on a golf course I could be anywhere at least I'd have a phone they didn't have cell phones back then they also the other thing is I got the first paid maternity leave ever I was at Lehman Brothers a firm you may have heard of and it is and so at Lehman Brothers and in 1987 my first child Megan you know Megan was born was I was pregnant with her and they had just said to me well we don't have the turning lead we have six weeks disability pay and we don't have that and I go well wait a minute Ralph Schloss Dine who by the way is CEO of Evercore is and was a classmate of mine I said Ralph's just been out I said he was on a client junket and he had you know hepatitis he was up like he was yellow for three months and and and I am producing a future taxpayer it really seems to me that I should have maternity so they created a three-month policy to go to four-month policy let's flash forward to where we are now I now work for British Bank which by the way European companies are far more progressive on these issues is they're interesting we have four months maternity leave in the United States but we have up to a year off in the UK right and it's done at a different your job you don't get full pay that whole time but the government picks up some policy as well and then you come back but because you have this real sincere interest in creating that flexibility and technology has enabled it you can really push the discussion forward we have just started something several about two months ago called dynamic working it's a dynamic working campaign you can sign up to be an ambassador for them what does that mean and we've encouraged the creativity of how to have dynamic working and that can include gosh I'm in the Army and I need to be outset we've done I've hired I've gone out and hired people who are actually in our OTC my phone but it'll stop it's and bringing those folks in whether you need time to time off to care for parents all of those things that dynamic working is important you're still though in a really competitive industry and you have to fight it almost every single day and you have to call it out and woman bring if they can survive through the periods of you know by having this flexibility in their career in their 30s and 40s they really emerge as a voice of wisdom in the room oftentimes I am the only woman in the room and it people are quite intense they're very competitive people who individually on the room wouldn't be that way we get them in a group it's really interesting it's like boys in a sandbox when they're four and you so you have to sort of call out rules and I do think now's the time to be asking for these things and you don't get penalized for it I was not penalized for it you know people say well how could you have done that I went well I was a I asked for it I got it I was trusted you know how do you create institutional trust in your people and you have a great gift right now we haven't spoken a lot about it today of the millennial generation I consider them a gift they are a gift because they think differently and they don't accept no for an answer and and quite frankly in a competitive environment don't take no for an answer it's the only thing that's respected is the no for an answer they want the tension they want the fights I don't accept that we need something different something better and the only the other thing of everything I've heard challenge today that I would challenge is be careful with the word privileged it's turned into this sort of catch work of privilege what is privileged we're all privileged we're here in the United States having been over in Zambia and other places so I just think be careful with that word and I say that as somebody who actually grew up in a single parent family my dad died when I was young my mother never went to high school and I started work when I was 10 there's never been a woman in my family who has not worked and worked in factories or on farms so I see I think it's really careful if you really careful about how you think about what that word is in the sense that you think that people are too defensive that I think people use it as a catch-all to other eyes people it's like the word 1% there's always a 1% it's math the issue is you know how was that mean you know should we demonize people how do we get the lift how do we make sure that those you know I have too big it unrelated to this two big issues I care a lot about reforming prisons with too many people that are imprisoned I care a friend's not about that we actually doing a program with that for education and I care an awful lot about a student loans which is in the finance sector and how do you make sure that then I was a full scholarship student how do you make sure that next generation is there and then the other somebody actually talked about one last thing is hiring people without four-year degrees we're doing that and we started an apprenticeship program and how do you think about bringing in unconventional talent the technology industry does it all the time but they're bringing a very high-end kind of capability how do you bring in people out of the local community colleges and get them to a point and then help pay for their education moving further we started an apprenticeship program in the government it's it's interesting they they have a lot of restrictions on us what we can and cannot do and it's a whole separate subject but we are on that great well we'll come back to all of these issues Carol I wonder if you would just comment on you know we talked a little bit about changes in the economy that this is a big year for mergers and acquisitions and the way in which putting out those fires or responding to those emergencies has affected your your schedule what are you seeing in terms of the the workplace communities who you represent or pay attention to there was a piece in the post today actually about the fact that companies more and more in lieu of offering wage increases are offering a couple of days of you know paid family leave and I was really thinking wondering how to feel about that I mean does it have to be bread-winning or caregiving like you can have both okay sure sure yeah that was at the point of the economic meltdown and and I think that what it's done for the society is to say that we've sort of uncovered that there is a significant economic inequity in this country and while we don't why I think it's a mistake to create a catch-all term that after a while is meaningless I think that focusing on a population of people who have the the a significant amount of wealth and being able to save well compared to this bottom 30% you have 1% earning almost the same as the bottom 30% in this country is an important conversation that drives the policy conversation that drives the work family conversation that helps us to you know the the woman who was speaking just before this talk about well you know what happens to those people who can't get jobs who can't ramp on to our society and is there an inequity it gave meaning to that conversation and I don't think it was I don't know and I maybe for many people was intended to find the bad person right or the group of people causing the problems in America but I think the conversation was more about we have many problems in America our economic problems are around inequality and how do we begin to talk about that so having just to say that in response and I'd love to you know what what you think about that as a frame for at least identifying where our weaknesses are as an economy you know an economy where everyone should have what they need to get by I don't know about having it all I agree with you but certainly we don't want a situation where people are losing it all either right so to your question about you know what I see with the people that I represent and who I work with as as was said earlier I'm with the labor project for working families and we work in partnership with family values at work the labor project is a 20-year-old organization based originally in California that worked to sort of address working family issues and we looked particularly at unions because they had for many many years negotiated and pushed forward fair work practices through their contract negotiations and through their organizing but we also knew that some of those wonderful things like it in eight hour a day a living wage you know some of those policies were slipping away from the average American and we wanted to figure out how to have a conversation and think about the policies that unions had worked on and bring those to the broader public so what came out of the work that we did and when I was actually not at the labor project at that point I was on the board of the labor project but when the work that we did that was really important was the first paid family leave bill in California got passed because of the labor project for working families and it's close tie to the California State Federation of Labor and from then we began to look at other ways of using public policy and collective bargaining to you know sort of give people a chance a fair shot at putting food on the table having a job that they can return to even if their child was sick the next day the earlier day and being able to really make things happen for people who for whom you know nothing was happening they couldn't move up in the job they couldn't take off a day of work where we are now and then meanwhile while we were doing that work under the labor project for working families family values at work got developed as a way to say there are different organizations and groups around the country trying to do the same thing how do we pull resources how do we pull get economies of scale so that we can do this for more people and so family values at work is a network of 21 state coalitions working on paid leave paid sick days and supporting the efforts around fair scheduling that was mentioned earlier and pregnancy accommodation and now we're really really keen and focused on this overtime regulations change that was introduced about a few weeks ago and so the idea of it was that somewhere we know we look at Europe you mentioned you know the the year off in Britain the three years if both couples both partners or parents take the time off in Sweden and many other countries that are able to offer these services and offer these benefits to workers and then we look at the United States and and the lack of support that we've had what we've done in terms of winning paid sick days campaigns and working with the diverse and broad coalitions around the country is that three years ago there were there were only a handful of people subject to the employers when who had paid sick days right handful of corporations were providing it the percentages below over the last three years since the your article was written 10 million people now have access to paid sick days who didn't have it before who have who can actually you know say to their employer well I'm not feeling well today I need to take the day off and they can actually return to their job they're not being fired we're expecting numbers to come out I think any day maybe they came out yesterday on how the percentage of people with access to paid sick days is going up because of some of these efforts one of the stories I like to tell it's just a compared sort of the experiences that there is a woman in Maryland who you know she's three kids working on a target you know she woke up scratchy throat one of the children had been sick so she figured well you know that feeling I've got it now too and she wanted to call into work but she realized that she had no time available whatsoever they don't have paid sick days at her job and she couldn't like risk again calling in because she was probably going to lose her job she had to call a boss anyway because her child had to stay home and and they actually cried on the phone together because it was nothing that he could do to help her as the manager because she was out of time and there was nothing that she could do because she knew that probably when she went back to work the next time she would be fired by HR and I mean that's that's a situation you compare that to Aaron in Oregon in Portland Oregon who woke up feeling the same way not feeling well feeling like God I think I need to call in and then she dawned on her we have paid sick days in the state you know she called her employer she said I'm not feeling well today I can't come in turned over two days later she was back at work she was fine and I think we need to get to a higher standard of how we treat employees what we expect from our society about this work as a result and I don't want to go too too long because I know there are other other issues to talk about but when I first started doing this work with family values at work and the labor project more directly five years ago we had about 700 coalition partners around the country now we have more than 2000 just under the family values at work umbrella and the labor project umbrella and at the same time we also have a significant number of other organizations that are gravitating their interest to this work to paid leave paid sick days scheduling pregnancy accommodation because they see that we've got to figure out how to address caregiving and working in America it doesn't have to be either or and it shouldn't just be for people who you know our middle class or upper middle class and have jobs that you know they're considered essential it should be for everyone I'm going to stop right there and just to pick up on one of the things that you said about California for I think this is what you're talking about California is one of the few states still one of the few states that has a paid family program where if you're becoming a parent male if your male or female or somebody in your family needs caregiving workers in the state pay money into into a fund and are entitled to get paid family leave it doesn't come from their workplace it doesn't come from their employer it comes from the money that they've paid into the state fund similar to disability or unemployment uh and I think one of the questions of the moving into this so-called gig economy where apparently everybody's going to be an uber driver someday is whether whether that whether that sort of change in our workforce and the way that people work whether we're moving into this gig economy whether that will create pressure for more and more states or even the federal government to create something like this where your where your benefits are not dependent on whether you work for Barclays or whether you work for Lehman Brothers or whether you work for Macy's but will will come from someplace other than your than your employer and we could talk about whether or not we are moving into that world Maria I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about the the really interesting I mean we talked about finance the law is a really interesting field right now because there are so many changes taking place in the law anyway if you can talk about some of the truly innovative practices that you brought to your firm and how and the reaction you've gotten since the times did peace on it yeah absolutely um we met on twitter we've met on twitter right um thank you again for having me what we've tried to do at the Geller law group is to put into place all the technology or harness all of the technology that we have available to us and because we trust as we talked about before trust our employees to do good work um to utilize that to emphasize the philosophy of work life balance I know that is such a catchphrase this work life balance but how can we really have interesting careers and still be there for you know birthday celebrations at school without feeling the um that pull of I should be at the office I need to have this space time I know at my previous I mean lawyers have it so that part of our our entire billowing structure is billable hours that is it this is our revenue this is how we generate it it is totally based on how many hours you are working so it's actually while there has been this component that you have to be in the office you have to be visible by the senior partner by removing that face time component we've set that structure um in its old form completely into a new category because what we've done is we've said all right we can do a billable hour requirement still we're still based on this billing generating revenue but we're trusting our employees to get it done from home or wherever else they need to be I know I paralegal is here today I mean we it's not just for lawyers it's for our admin staff as well so that we can have that kind of flexibility throughout throughout our staff and so there is actually no physical there is no physical workplace what we do is we utilize a virtual office and we have a base we happen to be based out in Fairfax I live in the district it's a great commute let me tell you love it and I go out there probably about two days a week and then we can utilize based on the way we've structure or at least we can utilize a space in DC and I'm there probably one to two days a week as well because I have a lot of clients in the district and then I get to work from home so you know this week is a great example of the fact that not having to go into an office is wonderful my son does not have any child care this week so none um so by you know some good summer right yeah it's summer this is the one week that nothing nothing could get scheduled so you know he's been at a friend's house for a few days thank you yeah uh yesterday we had he was with me I somehow billed nine hours yesterday but he was with me how was it four I actually my whole shoulder is covered in snot right now because he decided that why couldn't we hang out again today we went to the zoo yesterday why did I have to go to work today right the more the more you give the more credit for what you did yesterday why can't we do today what you do exactly I was like well we can do it again tomorrow because that's how I've set up the week and he's like no what anyway I'm it's good I'm wearing a jacket but this and this is just part of our daily life I mean we are my law partner and I we're both in our mid-30s we're in the slog of it we know that if we can put our heads down and we'll really focus on our careers we can make this wonderful law practice that can be sustainable into our old age and that's we have a lot of these pep talks between the two of us over g-chat about you know okay we can do it alright this is what's going on okay this is what the revenues come in I mean we have these kind of pep talks between ourselves we know that this is what we need to do but we also recognize that we all have young children my entire firm actually just happens to be comprised of women that's not a not a thing that we were purposely trying it just so happens who we've hired and all of the women who do have children they're all under the age of five I mean I mentioned my paralegal crystal who's here her son was out for the last few weeks or she was out because he had 104 fever I mean I don't want to penalize crystal at all because I know that what the work that did need to get done she got done when he was napping or later at night because I trust her to do the job and I trust all of my staff and that's something that I think has to we have to implement in some way and I realized that we're very fortunate because we are lawyers and we were able to create our own business model in this and so but unfortunately we shouldn't be novel and we shouldn't be interesting enough that the New York Times is following me around for the day which by the way was kind of an interesting process and they left right as my dog started to vomit and that's what I thought alright now you really right yeah they were with me for 12 hours they're like well what do you do now to get your son to calm down for the day I was like I need you to leave that's what I need you to do you have been with me so but is there a trade-off mean you mentioned the fact that you're that it's all women at your office are there are there men for example who don't necessarily who would like to come into an office or women who would like to come into an office would like that sort of formal face time and and absolutely and I think that it works for us because we are all very type A and motivated to do good work in a short time I don't think it would work I don't you know I don't try to say that this needs to work for everybody but I think it has to be an option for the type of worker who it can really capitalize on it because it should not be a one-fits all structure if you don't need it to be again I realize that we've that this does not fit for every single type of job that we've created this kind of we've created a work environment to let it happen so one thing that you said that is really interesting you don't have any base right any because here obviously I work I work from planes trains multi-dimensional but I'm not I mean I'm in I'm in this office on a good week two and a half days and many weeks I'm you know on a trip and then one day at home and one but one of the things we've discovered and this goes back to class issues and income issues is if you put in place you can work from wherever and you have a physical base what that means is the people who are the equivalent of the lawyers or the partners the non-admin staff work from wherever because their job is wherever their computer is the our wonderful receptionists can't really do that right the desk is sitting there and if you're in HR part of being in HR is people need to be able to come and see you and then if you're in finance and so then you get a two-tiered system and that has been that's really been an issue and one that that is very much part of this discussion where I my instinct is always to say yes of course if you can work from home absolutely and then I find there's still some physically anchored jobs and not only that those jobs those the people who are there are more resentful and it's also lonelier right on a friday when everybody decides they'll work from home who is there so there's also you can't have everybody in my industry working for home your traders have to be on the trading desk you're supervising risk so you you know we would have want to see the world blow up try that and so it is so what you need to be able to do is to give flexibility in other ways so you know perhaps we'll do a job share for a period of time where somebody works monday through wednesday we do this a lot monday through wednesday someone else works wednesday through friday so we create we can create you know that that period of time you talked earlier about amary about you know people who take time off how do they get back in the biggest problem isn't in the staff positions people can move in and out of staff even if they've been off for a couple of years it's the line positions and the line is where the power is because it's where the money is made it's the revenue to be in the line position you're effectively thinking about as being his sales or either in sales or your trader you're the person who actually is responsible for the relationships that generates the revenue so you know it is people say to me is there discrimination there i'm like no if you're a two foot tall purple midget you bring in a hundred million they'll build a statue to you in the lobby and bow to it every day say come in it is that there is it's really about commercial how do you go about doing that and to become that officer you know that's the hardest thing to take if i have young women they'll go offline they're really phenomenal they're 10 years in the business about to make managing director they've had their second child they have one right now i need her to go back into the line function in two or three years i have to get her into a position right now that staff but close enough to the line so i can get her back in because if i get her too far back i can't get her back in so it's and you know so i can move her up and in order to change the industry such as i'm in you need to have woman you at the top of the organization who said we need to do this now we need to make these changes and i insist upon it and that woman has to be a woman who's front line who has revenue impact because she's because that is what it's like being in the nfl you're going to have to be a player on the field so you want those women out there as really strong advocates and pushing for it you're beginning to see pieces of that if you look at these organizations they're changing in some ways in some ways they feel like it's 1962 but in others it it is it is changing the type of flexibility and the questions that you can raise half the reason i'm still doing this and i'll be 61 in three weeks is i'm not leaving until we get it the way that it needs to be i have three daughters one son it's for all of them that you sort of say i i have the voice i have the ability i can i can get to effective change because all these guys have wives and daughters and they all care about the same thing so they really do so you just have to put it out there and i have the ability to do it so i do it well and then someone in her mid-30 this is a conversation that i have on a daily basis with my friends i mean this is where we are whether it be male female we are all in this kind of slug and i have friends males who might their wives are ideally educated lawyers who have taken a step back and now they're sent you know the husband is going on he's like i can see partner it's right there like if i put my head down for two years i've got it and the wife is like it is just as brilliant as him or even more so usually and she's taken some time off there's two kids and she's like how do i get back into it now um and so it's that's just where we are and i can understand it's so great to hear other people saying that we're there to help because i know that i felt like there was no one there for me to follow in many ways the crisis of oh eight uh caused a lot of the programs that were put in place in oh four four oh six which are on ramps and off ramps creating the ability to get back in away those are coming back right now because the shortage of talent is the economy you may not be stealing it yet but you should be that the economy is beginning to take off the number of jobs that are available in the shortage of skills you it's when you get to that environment you go okay where are we going to get the next generation how do we think outside the box about where we find these people and a big piece of that will be going back to very much those women those people in their mid-30s because my argument has always been let's take somebody back at 45 they'll give us a good 20 years you know and uh as opposed to somebody who comes for two you know and or three so it's and i think you'll see that coming back and we actually don't have it just for women it's because there are many men who have to go off and take care of parents and situations like that i mean i think i think all of that is extremely important and what i would say the people that we're building policy structures for the women and men who are beginning to show leadership and develop inside of communities to move public policy and to move workplace standards for themselves who don't have um you know who really are not part of the conversation what i would say is that um that there's the we talked about the person at the desk and the receptionist and the HR person there are people working at mcdonald's and in home care industry um you know on farms and they don't they literally have to show up every single day there's not even a discussion about trying to figure out how do we make work more flexible for you how do we create a greater work-life balance for you there's there's no conversation happening in that realm and they're also it's also harder to do for some of the reasons we already talked about because if you're working like the women i mentioned in target she's at that register you know and unless we plan to automate every single thing you literally need to have people who are hands-on doing work if you are home health aid you have to be there you have to be there to show up and um and then so i don't think though that we have been creative enough in this society to say well how do we create structures for all workers that afford them a modicum of work-life balance and maybe it's about um you know hiring more people than you actually need instead of fewer which is the trend more people than you actually need so that people can do more job sharing people can actually be able to um you know look at their schedule across a week with two or three one or two other people and say well how do we get our needs met and get benefits and be able to put food on the table and bring home a decent wage um and i you know i just i we need we need like the brain power that's happening on wall street around making change happen and building it um and mergers and acquisitions we need that brain power to come into the conversation and help us think through how we how everyone in this country can have a sense of you know stability in their families and and productivity and stability on the job um and so while we have a growing movement people working on all sorts of work and family policies paid leave paid sick days fair scheduling pregnancy accommodation we've gotten quite a few uh lawyers involved in a conversation especially around pregnancy accommodation because of recent high-profile lawsuits and because of some of the issues related to the legal issues related to that but what we don't have is the um the group of people that matches the polling so the polling data says that for the most part regardless of part of regardless of party identity regardless of socioeconomic background regardless of you know class or whatever that most people in this country with like 70 80 percent of the people in this country feel that we should have access to paid family leave and paid sick days and and that they vote for a candidate who talked about these issues i mean there's enough polling data to suggest that however on the ground we don't really see the reality of that we don't see those policies coming to fruition fast enough we don't see um you know the the business sector engaging in these policies for everyone as opposed to just for themselves and so my my i guess my challenge today to everybody in this room is to while we have we're making progress significant progress we're changing the frame from you know an individual problem to a societal problem we have worked on changing that frame around these work family issues what we really need to see is sort of the the power in this country begin to really look at these issues and take them on in a strategic thoughtful way that affects both culture as was mentioned earlier and policy yeah so one so thank you for that and and i agree one one way i know to sort of creative that it has is i think macy's does this and at least one other large kind of more retail oriented does this which is um it allows self scheduling right where here's your number of hours a week and of course most people want a certain number right but you can schedule it when you want to do it by using that same software that allows Starbucks is using right now that yeah you can use it to either minimize people's hours or you can let them step in for each other so it's informal job sharing right it's saying i have to be out on wednesday because i need to go to the doctor because my kid you know has is in a school play because whatever it is you can you fill in for me then and so you create either people who know each other or people who don't know each other if you can do this with uber you can do this with people's hours i'll and and from the employer's point of view what they just need are the hours covered so that's just as one example i think where you can set it and you say this is how many hours you decide when you're going to work it and and and get the software solution um that's one point a second point and this just builds on something Barbara said about millennials are really helping because millennials want i tell the story in my book and i don't know hannah's here but if she is i'll embarrass her again but uh you know i hired her when she was 22 and she's right out of college and she started working for me and she left at six o'clock even when i was still sitting there i'm like uh i'm still here right and i don't and she would leave and she plays rugby and her rugby practice was at 6 30 and so at six o'clock she'd put it in days where she'd leave and i i kept thinking this is really something and after a while first place she always got her work done right there's no question she always got her work done she was online very soon after i never had played and after a while i started thinking what is the matter with me that i'm still sitting here at six o'clock like how come she can go work out and i can't like why am i not managing my time efficiently enough so millennials i think are pushing the other thing that is pushing our elders right but in barba and my generation we're the baby boom generation and we are becoming the elder boom right i mean same number of people obviously some of us have died along the way but but overall it's we're still here it's a big bold and what you're seeing most of those most of those people cannot afford to retire this again they you know we move from defined benefit to defined contribution along the way that even those of us who have the money and should know better are not putting enough away much less the people who don't have the money or or the advantage of counseling as people get older they're going to want and whether it's in lawyering or banking or in any level they're going to start saying i want to work more flexibly right i want to work a fewer hours so you're seeing a push from younger people and older people for the sort of things that parents or caregivers i just want to add to that and from men yes because men regardless you know mainly pushed by millennials but also men are starting to say um all over the world i i should be part of this caregiving and society has kept me out of it and it's really important for me to be a part of it so i would add them as another group and just the last thing i would i totally agree and the last thing i would just say on this sort of question we've been talking about i think there there are two concepts i've found helpful one is as sort of an as an individual thinking about your career so this is the i mean if you're in your mid 30s the people you're counseling is to think about your career in terms of interval training right so if you're an athlete you know that going really hard and then slowing down and going really hard again is how you get into peak condition i think the same is true for your work life uh over a career in other words there are periods you know i came out of college and uh i worked really hard for a while that i went started as a law professor i had to get tenure i pulled plenty of all-nighters right and i was not yet married and i didn't have kids uh and you know basically i would work all week and i would see my then-boyfriend now husband on weekends and then of course you hit this i hit the next five years where i spent five years trying to have children uh and succeeded and so that period you know i wasn't writing as many articles right it just was no way i was from the work point of view i was slowing down and then i became a dean and i really went at it and then i pulled back again if you're talking about long careers and careers in multiple jobs which is what we're talking about certainly for millennials thinking about it just as Barbara said like this woman you're talking to she can pull back she can't pull back forever right forget that she can't pull back and she may not even be able to pull back for five years but three she can probably pull back the other thing to think about and this is how i did it because i've always asked is to build teams really loyal teams of people so and you have to and then the word that people will flow through everything we're talking about is trust you build trusted teams of people you bring them with you you support them i pay them handsomely okay people ask me how did i raise four kids you ought to see my nanny and housekeeper they are well paid um and it is with benefits with full benefits time warp you need it i give you free miles go on vacation go to Europe do what you need to do it is because not you know a lot of people are buying fancy antiques i thought you know i'd think i'd rather have my children better cared for and they can eat off of a folding table it is it didn't matter but you have to think about the teams of people you put in place you have teams at home you have teams at the office you have teams you care about this young woman is a member of my team i am going to take care of her she's going to make it right if i have to knock some people over and i'm not afraid of doing that and it is so but i think you have to think about much broader than just yourself and bring those people with you and when you stumble which you will because i do it every day um they're gonna be there for you they're gonna pick you up and so they're and they're gonna pull you pull you through when you have those times and that's how you get through all of it and the the peak conditioning at least from where i sit in my perspective i was just intrigued by your team is you and your partner coaching each other through every day which i think is is really interesting also and we also have a staff i mean i have three associates under me that i'm supervising but bringing along and one of the best things in my one of my associates has ever said to me is that she knows that she can be at this job forever she does not have to think about well what will be the step when i want to have children she's a new she's a newlywed i know that it's on her mind i know that's on her mind because she talks to me way too much about strollers um but it's something i want to see her succeed i want to see these people succeed because it's it benefits me in the long run it benefits them there's there's no reason to try to push someone down right so let me open it up to questions yeah oh and try to keep them short and make them questions because so everybody can get to it yeah i'm valeri young with momentum issues of care are fundamentally all economic issues and they occur in every life and in every demographic group and in every sector of the workforce things that really worry me are that us women's labor force participation has been flat for 20 years and it's significantly lower than in most or many other countries specifically europe and other places and that we invest so little in early childhood education and that's where you have the real economic gains in your human capacity how can we hope to hold on to our position in the world if we have allowed so many other countries to outpace us so significantly in terms of making being able to mobilize half of their population in the workforce and understanding that investment in care is economic development who wants to take that i'll start off fine we i'm a district resident we have universal preschool for three-year-olds that has been at like a phenomenal boon to me my son is in school and except for right now this week um all year round actually at the charter school that he goes to in the district which is phenomenal how many how many hours is that he can go i mean free of charge from eight fifteen to three forty five every day and then there's aftercare or before care which is extremely nominal i've had the full-time nanny who left and he was part of my team and he was paid very very handsomely but now we're doing aftercare and it's very affordable and if you can't afford it then it's free i'm gladly willing to pay for it because i have the means to do so but if it's helpful like that it's those kind of things where i see the parents dropping off of all different socioeconomic means because it's a free school it's a public school in dc and the fact that we know that there is a child care are a good place to leave your child that they're getting a great education is something and it's unfortunate that it's not earlier because it's you know but for zero to three is what i mean not earlier but like for younger students not six a not six a but but that's something it's the care and so you can see parents going back to work when their child hits that because they have the ability to be there and your point i think that there are pockets of model situations in this country communities that have figured out caregiving and early childhood education and then a good ramp on to kindergarten through high school but the majority of the communities in this country have not and and really are struggling with having to you know have both the sandwich generation figuring out elder care and child care and i think that you're right that it it does need to have a conversation it creates a tremendous economic risk factor for us if we don't take care of that part and the impact on our children um to your point earlier um around parents having to work two to three jobs and not be available to their kids after school to help with homework to give the structure that children always need is really a big problem and and they're all related and we need to have a broader conversation and think about it as an investment in our families and in our children and not something that i can get because you know i live in this community um i feel fortunate too i mean i'm from dc i have a family my kids were raised here and in brooklyn new york and we always had basically what we needed to more than get by more than what we needed to get by but i also always knew that there were many many people who were being left out from a business perspective you know businesses can do is can they can have on-site child care for emergency situations like we actually have that uh it's actually in our building so your son would be in daycare and you could pop them off and pick them up and go down and see him we have that we did that pre-08 crisis right so those things exist that's when you'll see that again now as people are competing to get more people the bigger issue is how do you get that into public policy issues when education is so locally controlled and locally funded by property taxes a picking of new jersey in particular and also when you have limited income resources and you have competing interest as to where those funds are going to go i mean that's the daily battle right and what is it a thorough and efficient education is what is supposed to be provided but it doesn't say at what age that that starts so i think those are public policy but the the other thing to recognize is where's the money coming from right that's less of a corporate issue than that is really a public policy issue good afternoon my name is norea cal and i'm actually a captain in the army um so the miss slaughter you spoke about um men and their role in the broader movement and barbara i found it interesting that you mentioned the necessity for women at the top to push women down on the line and ensure that they are afforded those positions and given the mentorship that they need and the reason i mentioned my military background is that there are a lot of changes happening with regard to women in the military but it's being driven by our male white male leadership and so um and this is by no means a criticism of your panel today but there was one man here and there were no white men and so i wonder how do we engage that demographic which really is the demographic at the top to um convince them that this is an important issue because they're really the ones that have the influence let me let me just start because i was going to say this in response to the earlier question that uh first just a comment on the military and then i'll turn to your question but the military gets this more than most people the military understands better than anyone else that if we do not invest in children zero to five we will not have the people necessary to defend the country with the kinds of weapons they're going to need to be able to use for the combat of the future and so the military pays its early ed teachers the same amount as its k through 12 teachers it provides on bases basically the kinds of care things we need and of course the military is deploying women as well as men and if they're deploying women then it's men at home if assuming it's a heterosexual couple and so they're they're thinking about this from the point of view of men more than women so just as a general i'm not going to say everything's perfect in our military but i do think in response to how we frame this i often say early education is a national security issue it's an economic issue and it's a national security issue and then we need to talk about it that way not a women's issue but not just a social issue because that's broad and often code for women uh it is a national security issue it's a bit it's a business issue uh so with with that point i do think i mean it we may not have had white men here we have white men in the room i'm looking at one of them who would laugh heartily when you ask that question uh in the back there but um you know for one thing i barbers said something important which i think is also true that uh men who are fathers husbands too but particularly fathers of you know women that they have invested in as fathers but they've also they're incredibly proud of their accomplishments and they see it they're all their talent and lo and behold their daughter you know has a child has a second child and whoa suddenly she's knocked out and well why can't you continue on that track well you know my partner my firm my whatever won't let me do it i that that's a very powerful progressive force in addition to the many white men feminist i would not be where i am but for men two professors in particular both of whom had working wives in the 70s and 80s particularly in the 70s and who really pushed women in in the way uh many many men did so i i do think that's a very important constituency what i'd like to see though are many men of all colors and all income but saying what you just said which is we've liberated women in the sense that women can play both roles they can be breadwinners and they can be caregivers and they can combine it and i think it's just as my role as a mother is every bit as important to me as my role as a ceo and that they're equal i don't want to have to trade them off men don't have that those set of choices i think you can use men's very competitive instincts which is to to to define the game differently so what i did and i was mentored by men some fabulous men is and there will be extort you will find it but you got to be at the very top you got to get to the ceo's or the guys the first level report to the ceo to to get change in your organization because in the muddy middle people are still competing way too much to get to where they think they're going to get to and they know they can do maybe one or two but they're still believing right men between the ages 35 and 42 are particularly in competitive industries at a vulnerable i call it dangerous phase but it is for any number of reasons but anyway so that in that perspective you get them older wiser wanting to make an impact you can change things but you turn it into a competition shouldn't we beat x y z company and so we should be more progressive in our policies we can get the woman back let's go beat so and so they're going to take our side if you use the language of the competition you can actually unleash it and bring it forward that's how we've made most of the changes is on a competitive and so i it's the same thing as when you're selling if you're selling a product or you're selling a service you want you want to speak read every speech the person has made that you're selling to use their language so you're mirroring what they're doing and you will find that they will buy and that's what you're doing just a response also to i agree with all of that um in response also to the comment about males white men in particular where we've seen the most movement is inside of small businesses and medium-sized businesses so the main street alliance which is a organization that pulls together small business owners across the country and american sustainable businesses is another one that in those organizations you see a lot of men who are business owners realizing that these are for competitive advantage sometimes but also because they just think it's the right thing to do that these are policies that they need to have inside of their businesses and it's a part of their model for succeeding um and and i think that the more they talk and the more that they bring other people on when seattle past eight sick day seattle washington it was a um an african-american woman um restaurant owner who pulled together councils of business leaders throughout seattle to talk about the bill and why it would be in their best interest to pass paid sick days in seattle um it reduces turnover of staff and for all the reasons we know and if you're a restaurant it's really a good business practice to be able to let people stay home if they're sick because you don't want them serving food so i mean she pulled these groups together many of them were the majority of them were white men um and but the part of the conversation i completely agree with you because we need to continue to have that conversation we use that the same energy and we also need to talk to that band of black men and of all men in the middle that that you refer to the 35 42 year olds who are really striving for their careers but also feel threatened enough in this economy because look that's the population of people who are voting at like who are saying 40 percent of the time or 30 percent of the time yeah these policies are really good for people as opposed to 80 or 90 percent of the time which is where women are and people of color so i think that we need to have a conversation with men um recently there was a publication of a document state of the men's the world's fathers i don't know if anyone stayed up yep yes state of the world's fathers that talked about men from all over the globe who were thinking about these issues in terms of culture change and public policy and i think the more i think we're going to see change on that front over the years but we need to begin having those conversations and particularly with white men who are working class well it's uh do you want one more question or yeah okay one more question it's um so i this brings um the idea of work life balance is one that i work on every day um and i have thought a lot about this a close friend of mine um worked at an organization that had very progressive work life balance issues i mean work life balance policies and when she was starting out she often said that she wasn't getting recognition for the extra hours of work that she was in the office for because it was common for people to just you know leave at five because they were mothers or fathers but as we sort of you know research shows that people are having children later and later in life so is there sort of a and as millennials i think we and i i say this for myself but i've realized with my friends that we're still sort of straddling the traditional notions of what helps to get you to a successful point in your career versus utilizing these new evolving um conceptions of what makes a happier or better worker workplace so with that said is there sort of a negative um downside to increase flexibility and does that sort of change how we define success if you think that working extra hours will get you ahead when nobody recognizes it is that going to change how we view our career trajectories so it's a good question so the first my first answer would be as i said you know i try to judge people on results and so if you stay longer and work longer and do more as a result uh that may advance you faster but that's your choice in other words it's a that's my point about intervals right you don't have to think that you know i want to hit my peak at 50 my view my view has always been i hope i'm working time 75 or 80 i like working i don't want to burn out but i also still want to have challenges right i still want to be thinking about the next the next thing so the ideal to me seems to me you can go as fast as you want if you want to really you know there are people who want to work like crazy and hit a certain point by 10 years in there may be others who prefer to you know have a have a more balanced life and progress more slowly but critically still be eligible for for advancing whether at their current workplace uh or or others um i would say though that that if you're in a culture that really says you know look uh get your work done but have a life outside of it uh you you know you're kind of a sucker if you're putting in work and nobody else and nobody's recognizing it then you're probably that's probably not a great fit you may need to apply to barbara's uh uh you could be on the beach doing it well thank you so much for coming thank you so much a great panel uh thank you all for taking time out of your day to continue the conversation it's a pleasure to meet you