When I was a young person, I began my careeras an actress. Whenever my mother wasn’t free to driveme into Manhattan for auditions, I would take the train from suburban New Jersey and meetmy father — who would have left his desk at the law office where he worked — andwe would meet under the Upper Platform Arrivals and Departures sign in Penn Station. We would then get onto the subway togetherand, when we surfaced, he would ask me “Which way is north?" I wasn’t very good at finding North at thebeginning, but I auditioned fair amount and so my Dad kept asking “Which way is north?" Over time, I got better at finding it. I was struck by that memory yesterday whileboarding the plane to come here.
Not just by how far my life has come sincethen, but by how meaningful that seemingly small lesson has been. When I was still a child, my father developedmy sense of direction and now, as an adult, I trust my ability to navigate space. My father helped give me the confidence toguide myself through the world. In late March, last year, 2016, I became aparent for the first time. I remember the indescribable—and as I understanda pretty universal — experience of holding my week-old son and feeling my prioritieschange on a cellular level. I remember I experienced a shift in consciousnessthat gave me the ability to maintain my love of career and cherish something else, someoneelse, so much, much more. Like so many parents, I wondered how I wasgoing to balance my work with my new role as a parent, and in that moment, I rememberthat the statistic for the US’s policy on maternity leave flashed in my mind. American women are currently entitled to 12weeks’ unpaid leave. American men are entitled to nothing. That information landed differently for mewhen, one week after my son’s birth I could barely walk. That information landed different when I wasgetting to know a human who was completely dependent on my husband and I for everything,when I was dependent on my husband for most things, when we were relearning everythingwe thought we knew about our family and relationship. It landed differently. Somehow, we and every American parent wereexpected to be “back to normal” in under three months. Without income. I remember thinking to myself, “If the practicalreality of pregnancy is another mouth to feed in your home and America is a country wheremost people are living paycheck to paycheck, how does 12 weeks unpaid leave economicallywork?” The truth is, for too many people it doesn’t. One in four American women go back to worktwo weeks after giving birth because they can’t afford to take any more time off thanthat. That’s 25 per cent of American women. Equally disturbing, women who can afford totake the full 12 weeks often don’t because it will mean incurring a “motherhood penalty”—meaning they will be perceived as less dedicated to their job and will be passed over for promotionsand other career advancement. In my own household, my mother had to choosebetween a career and raising three children - a choice that left her unpaid and underappreciatedas a homemaker - because there just wasn’t support for both paths. The memory of being in the city with my Dadis a particularly meaningful one since he was the sole breadwinner in our house, andmy brothers and my time with him was always limited by how much he had to work. And we were an incredibly privileged family— our hardships were the stuff of other family’s dreams. The deeper into the issue of paid parentalleave I go, the clearer I see the connection between persisting barriers to women’s fullequality and empowerment, and the need to redefine and in some cases, destigmatize men’srole as caregivers. In other words, in order to liberate women,we need to liberate men. The assumption and common practice that womenand girls look after the home and the family is a stubborn and very real stereotype thatnot only discriminates against women, but limits men’s participation and connectionwithin the family and society. These limitations have broad-ranging and significanteffects, for them and for children. We know this. So why do we continue to undervalue fathersand overburden mothers? Paid parental leave is not about taking daysoff work; it is about creating freedom to define roles, to choose how to invest time,and to establish new, positive cycles of behavior. Companies that have offered paid parentalleave for employees have reported improved employee retention, reduced absenteeism andtraining costs, and boosted productivity and morale. Far from not being able to afford to havepaid parental leave, it seems we can't afford not to. In fact, a study in Sweden showed that everymonth fathers took paternity leave, the mothers’ income increased by 6.7 per cent. That’s 6.7 per cent more economic freedomfor the whole family. Data from the International Men and GenderEquality Survey shows that most fathers report that they would work less if it meant thatthey could spend more time with their children. And picking up on the thread that the primeminister mentioned I'd like to ask: How many of us here today saw our Dads enough growingup? How many of you Dads here see your kids enoughnow? We need to help each other if we are goingto grow. Along with UN Women, I am issuing a call toaction for countries, companies and institutions globally to step-up and become champions forpaid parental leave. In 2013, provisions for parental leave werein only 66 countries out of 190 UN member states. I look forward to beginning with the UN itselfwhich has not yet achieved parity and who's paid parental leave policies are currentlyup for review. All you're going to see a lot of me. Let us lead by example in creating a worldin which women and men are not economically punished for wanting to be parents. I don't mean to imply that you need to havechildren to care about and benefit from this issue — whether or not you have — or wantkids, you will benefit by living in a more evolved world with policies not based on gender. We all benefit from living in a more compassionatetime where our needs do not make us weak, they make us fully human. Maternity leave, or any workplace policy basedon gender, can—at this moment in history—only ever be a gilded cage. Though it was created to make life easierfor women, we now know it creates a perception of women as being inconvenient to the workplace. We now know it chains men to an emotionallylimited path. And it cannot, by definition, serve the realityof a world in which there is more than one type of family. Because in the modern world, some familieshave two daddies. How exactly does maternity leave serve them? Today, on International Women’s Day, I wouldlike to thank all those who went before in creating our current policies—let us honourthem and build upon what they started by shifting our language - and therefore our consciousness—awayfrom gender and towards opportunity. Let us honor our own parents sacrifice bycreating a path for a more fair, farther the reaching truth to define all of our lives,especially the lives our children. Because paid parental leave does more thangive more time for parents to spend with their kids. It changes the story of what children observe,and will from themselves imagine possible. I see cause for hope. In my own country, the United States—currentlythe only high-income country in the world without paid maternity let alone parentalleave—great work has begun in the states of New York, California, New Jersey, RhodeIsland and Washington which are currently implementing paid parental leave programs. First Lady Charlene McCray and Mayor Billde Blasio have granted paid parental leave to over 20,000 government employees in NYC. We can do this. Bringing about change cannot just be the responsibilityof those who need it most; we must have the support of those at the highest levels ofpower if we are ever to achieve parity. That is why it is such an honor to recognizeand congratulate pioneers of paid parental leave like the global company Danone. Today I am proud to announce Danone GlobalCEO, Emmanuel Faber as our inaugural HeForShe Thematic Champion for Paid Parental Leave. As part of this announcement, Danone willimplement a global 18 weeks gender-neutral paid parental leave policy for the company’s100,000 employees by the year 2020. Monsieur Faber, when Ambassador Emma Watsondelivered her now iconic HeForShe speech and stated that if we live in a world where menoccupy a majority of positions of power, we need men to believe in the necessity of change,I believe she was speaking about visionaries like you. Merci. Imagine what the world could look like onegeneration from now if a policy like Danone's becomes the new standard. If 100,000 people become 100 million. A billion. More. Every generation must find their north. When women around the world demanded the rightto vote, we took a fundamental step toward equality. North. When the same sex marriage was passed in theUS, we put an end to a discriminatory law. North. When millions of men and boys when millionsof men and boys and prime ministers and deputy directors of the UN, sorry, the presidentof the General Assembly. That's what happens when I go out of the script. When men like the men in this room and aroundthe world. The ones we cannot see. The ones who support us in ways we cannotknow but we feel. When they answered Emma Watson’s call tobe HeForShe, the world grew. North. We must ask ourselves, how will we be moretomorrow than we are today? The whole world grows when people like youand me take a stand because we know that beyond the idea of how women and men are different,there is a deeper truth that love is love, and parents are parents. Thank you.
Not just by how far my life has come sincethen, but by how meaningful that seemingly small lesson has been. When I was still a child, my father developedmy sense of direction and now, as an adult, I trust my ability to navigate space. My father helped give me the confidence toguide myself through the world. In late March, last year, 2016, I became aparent for the first time. I remember the indescribable—and as I understanda pretty universal — experience of holding my week-old son and feeling my prioritieschange on a cellular level. I remember I experienced a shift in consciousnessthat gave me the ability to maintain my love of career and cherish something else, someoneelse, so much, much more. Like so many parents, I wondered how I wasgoing to balance my work with my new role as a parent, and in that moment, I rememberthat the statistic for the US’s policy on maternity leave flashed in my mind. American women are currently entitled to 12weeks’ unpaid leave. American men are entitled to nothing. That information landed differently for mewhen, one week after my son’s birth I could barely walk. That information landed different when I wasgetting to know a human who was completely dependent on my husband and I for everything,when I was dependent on my husband for most things, when we were relearning everythingwe thought we knew about our family and relationship. It landed differently. Somehow, we and every American parent wereexpected to be “back to normal” in under three months. Without income. I remember thinking to myself, “If the practicalreality of pregnancy is another mouth to feed in your home and America is a country wheremost people are living paycheck to paycheck, how does 12 weeks unpaid leave economicallywork?” The truth is, for too many people it doesn’t. One in four American women go back to worktwo weeks after giving birth because they can’t afford to take any more time off thanthat. That’s 25 per cent of American women. Equally disturbing, women who can afford totake the full 12 weeks often don’t because it will mean incurring a “motherhood penalty”—meaning they will be perceived as less dedicated to their job and will be passed over for promotionsand other career advancement. In my own household, my mother had to choosebetween a career and raising three children - a choice that left her unpaid and underappreciatedas a homemaker - because there just wasn’t support for both paths. The memory of being in the city with my Dadis a particularly meaningful one since he was the sole breadwinner in our house, andmy brothers and my time with him was always limited by how much he had to work. And we were an incredibly privileged family— our hardships were the stuff of other family’s dreams. The deeper into the issue of paid parentalleave I go, the clearer I see the connection between persisting barriers to women’s fullequality and empowerment, and the need to redefine and in some cases, destigmatize men’srole as caregivers. In other words, in order to liberate women,we need to liberate men. The assumption and common practice that womenand girls look after the home and the family is a stubborn and very real stereotype thatnot only discriminates against women, but limits men’s participation and connectionwithin the family and society. These limitations have broad-ranging and significanteffects, for them and for children. We know this. So why do we continue to undervalue fathersand overburden mothers? Paid parental leave is not about taking daysoff work; it is about creating freedom to define roles, to choose how to invest time,and to establish new, positive cycles of behavior. Companies that have offered paid parentalleave for employees have reported improved employee retention, reduced absenteeism andtraining costs, and boosted productivity and morale. Far from not being able to afford to havepaid parental leave, it seems we can't afford not to. In fact, a study in Sweden showed that everymonth fathers took paternity leave, the mothers’ income increased by 6.7 per cent. That’s 6.7 per cent more economic freedomfor the whole family. Data from the International Men and GenderEquality Survey shows that most fathers report that they would work less if it meant thatthey could spend more time with their children. And picking up on the thread that the primeminister mentioned I'd like to ask: How many of us here today saw our Dads enough growingup? How many of you Dads here see your kids enoughnow? We need to help each other if we are goingto grow. Along with UN Women, I am issuing a call toaction for countries, companies and institutions globally to step-up and become champions forpaid parental leave. In 2013, provisions for parental leave werein only 66 countries out of 190 UN member states. I look forward to beginning with the UN itselfwhich has not yet achieved parity and who's paid parental leave policies are currentlyup for review. All you're going to see a lot of me. Let us lead by example in creating a worldin which women and men are not economically punished for wanting to be parents. I don't mean to imply that you need to havechildren to care about and benefit from this issue — whether or not you have — or wantkids, you will benefit by living in a more evolved world with policies not based on gender. We all benefit from living in a more compassionatetime where our needs do not make us weak, they make us fully human. Maternity leave, or any workplace policy basedon gender, can—at this moment in history—only ever be a gilded cage. Though it was created to make life easierfor women, we now know it creates a perception of women as being inconvenient to the workplace. We now know it chains men to an emotionallylimited path. And it cannot, by definition, serve the realityof a world in which there is more than one type of family. Because in the modern world, some familieshave two daddies. How exactly does maternity leave serve them? Today, on International Women’s Day, I wouldlike to thank all those who went before in creating our current policies—let us honourthem and build upon what they started by shifting our language - and therefore our consciousness—awayfrom gender and towards opportunity. Let us honor our own parents sacrifice bycreating a path for a more fair, farther the reaching truth to define all of our lives,especially the lives our children. Because paid parental leave does more thangive more time for parents to spend with their kids. It changes the story of what children observe,and will from themselves imagine possible. I see cause for hope. In my own country, the United States—currentlythe only high-income country in the world without paid maternity let alone parentalleave—great work has begun in the states of New York, California, New Jersey, RhodeIsland and Washington which are currently implementing paid parental leave programs. First Lady Charlene McCray and Mayor Billde Blasio have granted paid parental leave to over 20,000 government employees in NYC. We can do this. Bringing about change cannot just be the responsibilityof those who need it most; we must have the support of those at the highest levels ofpower if we are ever to achieve parity. That is why it is such an honor to recognizeand congratulate pioneers of paid parental leave like the global company Danone. Today I am proud to announce Danone GlobalCEO, Emmanuel Faber as our inaugural HeForShe Thematic Champion for Paid Parental Leave. As part of this announcement, Danone willimplement a global 18 weeks gender-neutral paid parental leave policy for the company’s100,000 employees by the year 2020. Monsieur Faber, when Ambassador Emma Watsondelivered her now iconic HeForShe speech and stated that if we live in a world where menoccupy a majority of positions of power, we need men to believe in the necessity of change,I believe she was speaking about visionaries like you. Merci. Imagine what the world could look like onegeneration from now if a policy like Danone's becomes the new standard. If 100,000 people become 100 million. A billion. More. Every generation must find their north. When women around the world demanded the rightto vote, we took a fundamental step toward equality. North. When the same sex marriage was passed in theUS, we put an end to a discriminatory law. North. When millions of men and boys when millionsof men and boys and prime ministers and deputy directors of the UN, sorry, the presidentof the General Assembly. That's what happens when I go out of the script. When men like the men in this room and aroundthe world. The ones we cannot see. The ones who support us in ways we cannotknow but we feel. When they answered Emma Watson’s call tobe HeForShe, the world grew. North. We must ask ourselves, how will we be moretomorrow than we are today? The whole world grows when people like youand me take a stand because we know that beyond the idea of how women and men are different,there is a deeper truth that love is love, and parents are parents. Thank you.
