MinnLawyer Blog

The Shriver Report has recently been issued by the Center for American Progress and says, “A woman’ s nation changes everything.” It posits that the battle of the sexes is over, that women are a permanent part of the workforce, and the American family has been fundamentally transformed. But many of our institutions haven’t.

The preface to the report says:

“Women becoming primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners changed everything. But, even though we were all witness to this phenomenon’s slow emergence over many years, these changes seem somehow to have snuck up on us. As a result, our policy landscape remains stuck in an idealized past, where the typical family was composed of a married-for-life couple with a full-time breadwinner and full-time homemaker who raised the children herself.

“Government policies and laws continue to rely on an outdated model of the American family. And, despite the existence of innovative practices in corporate America, most employers fail to acknowledge or accommodate the daily juggling act their workers perform, they are oblivious to the fact that their employees are now more likely to be women, and they ignore the fact that men now share in domestic duties.”

Interestingly, the report coincides with next week’s CLE, “Gender Fairness in the Courts: A 20 Year Retrospective” which will commemorate the release of the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force for Gender Fairness in the Courts.” Although innumerable strides have been taken in the areas addressed by the study–family law, domestic abuse, criminal practice and courtroom environment—there is still, as Justice Lorie Gildea recently said, progress we have yet to make. Are law firms and legal departments up to speed with the transformation of the family and the workplace? Is the legal workplace flexible and employee-supportive? As Shriver recently said on television, this isn’t a woman’s issue any more.