If you’ve been watching MSNBC over the past week or so, you know that Maria Shriver has done a large report on American women, women’s-issue politics, women’s economic power and poverty. They’re calling it The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, and you can read some of the articles here. The Shriver Report focuses a lot on the economic power of women, women in the workplace, and how political and financial institutions are hurting women short-term and long-term. There’s a lot of interesting (and sometimes obvious) observations and data in the report, like: working women would love for their employers to offer paid leave and a living wage. See? It’s not like these findings are going to shock people – we know what needs to be done to change our economy and improve the lives of millions of women, it’s just a matter of getting it done.
Anyway, for whatever reason, The Shriver Report also includes an essay from Beyonce. Yeah, I’m not sure what this is about either. I’m guessing that Maria Shriver thought that if she included Beyonce somehow, then maybe celebrity/gossip sites would give the report more coverage? If that was the goal, then Shriver achieved it because look at what we’re doing. Anyway, here’s Beyonce’s essay, titled “Gender Equality Is a Myth!” (the exclamation point is Beyonce’s, not mine).
We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.
Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible.
We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together. Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities.
[Beyonce’s essay, from The Shriver Report]
On one side, I’m kind of insulted by Beyonce’s argument – I mean, it seems like she’s saying that the only way women are going to get equal pay is if women raise boys who grow up to be women-respecting men who then “give” women equal pay, because God help us if we encourage women to become more active in political and financial institutions so we can empower ourselves, right? The other part of me kind of thinks, “Yeah, let’s try that. It couldn’t hurt.” Because seriously, it’s insane that it’s 2014 and women are still getting paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes FOR THE SAME JOB.
Other celebrities have contributed too – Jennifer Garner wrote about poverty, Eva Longoria wrote about Latinas, and LeBron James wrote about single mothers.
Photos courtesy of Beyonce’s Tumblr, WENN.
