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when i was a very young person
i began my career as an actress whenever
my mother wasn't free to drive me into
manhattan for auditions
i would take the train from suburban new
jersey and meet my father
who would have left his desk at the law
office where he worked
and we would meet under the upper
platform arrival and departure sign in
penn station
we would then get on the subway together
and when we surfaced he would ask me
which way is north
i wasn't very good at finding north in
the beginning but i auditioned a fair
amount
and so my dad kept asking me which way
is north
over time i got better at finding it
i was struck by that memory yesterday
while boarding the plane to come here
not just by how far my life has come
since then but
by how meaningful that seemingly small
lesson has been
when i was still a child my father
developed my sense of direction
and now as an adult i trust my ability
to navigate space
my father helped give me the confidence
to guide myself through the world
in late march last year 2016
i became a parent for the first time i
remember the indescribable
and as i understand it pretty universal
experience of holding my
weak old son and feeling my priorities
change on a cellular level
i remember i experienced a shift in
consciousness
that gave me the ability to maintain my
love of career
and also cherish something else someone
else
so much much more like so many parents i
wondered how i was going to balance my
work with my new role as parent and in
that moment i remember
that the statistic for the us's policy
and maternity leave
flashed in my mind american women are
currently entitled to 12 weeks
unpaid leave american men are entitled
to nothing
that information landed differently for
me when one
week after my son's birth i could barely
walk
that information landed differently when
i was getting 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
and when we were relearning everything
we thought we knew about our family and
our relationship
it landed differently somehow
we and every american parent were
expected to be back to normal in under
three months
without income i remember thinking to
myself if
the practical reality of pregnancy is
another mouth to feed in your home
and america is a country where most
people are living paycheck to paycheck
how does 12 weeks unpaid leave
economically work
the truth is for too many people it
doesn't one in four
american women go back to work two weeks
after giving birth because they can't
afford to take off any more time than
that
that's 25 of american women equally
disturbing women who can afford to take
a full
12 weeks often don't because it'll mean
incurring a motherhood penalty
meaning they will be perceived as less
dedicated to their job
and will be passed over for promotions
and other career advancement
in my own household my mother had to
choose between a career
and raising three children a choice that
left her unpaid
and under appreciated as a homemaker
because there just wasn't support for
both paths
the memory of being in the city with my
dad is a particularly meaningful one
since he was the sole breadwinner in our
house and my 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
families dreams
the deeper into the issue of paid
parental leave i go
the clearer i see the connection between
persisting barriers to women's full
equality and empowerment
and the need to redefine and in some
cases destigmatize men's roles
as caregivers in other words
thank you
in other words in order to liberate
women we need to liberate
men the assumption and common practice
that women and girls
look after the home and the family is a
stubborn
and very real stereotype that not only
discriminates against women
but limits men's participation and
connection within the family and society
these limitations have broad-ranging and
significant effects
for them and for the children we know
this
so why do we continue to undervalue
fathers and overburden mothers
paid parental leave is not about taking
days off work
it's about creating the freedom to
define roles to choose
how to invest time and to establish new
positive cycles of behavior companies
that have offered paid parental leave
for employees have reported improved
employee relate retention
reduced absenteeism and training costs
and boosted productivity and morale
far from not being able to afford to
have paid parental leave
it seems we can't afford not to
in fact a study in sweden showed that
for every month fathers took paternity
leave
the mother's income increased by 6.7
percent
that's 6.7 percent more economic freedom
for the whole family
data from the international men and
gender equality survey shows
that most fathers report that they would
work less
if it meant that they could spend more
time with their children
and picking up on the thread that the
prime minister mentioned i'd like to ask
how many of us here today saw our dads
enough growing up
how many of you dads here see your kids
enough
now we need to help each other
if we are going to grow
along with un women i am issuing a call
to action for countries
companies and institutions globally to
step up
and become champions for paid parental
leave in 2013
provisions for paid parental leave were
in only 66 countries out of 190 u.n
member states
i look forward to beginning with the u.n
itself which has not yet achieved paris
parity and whose paid parental leave
policies are currently up for review
oh you're going to see a lot of me let
us lead by example in creating a world
in which
women and men are not economically
punished for wanting to be parents
i don't mean to imply that you need to
have children to care about and benefit
from this issue
whether or not you have or want kids
you will benefit by living in a more
evolved world with policies
not based on gender we all benefit
from living in a more compassionate time
where our needs do not make us weak
they make us fully human maternity leave
or any workplace policy based on gender
can at this moment in history
only ever be a gilded cage though it was
created to make life easier for women
we now know it creates a perception of
women as being
inconvenient to the workplace we now
know
it chains men to an emotionally limited
path
and it cannot by definition serve the
reality of a world in which there is
more than one type of family
because in the modern world some
families have two daddies
how exactly does maternity leave serve
them
today on international women's day i
would like to thank
all of those who went before in creating
our current policies
let us honor them and build upon what
they started by shifting our language
and therefore our consciousness away
from gender
and towards opportunity let us honor our
own
parent sacrifice by creating a path for
a more fair
farther reaching truth to define all of
our lives
especially the lives of our children
because paid parental leave does more
than give 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
currently the only high-income country
in the world without paid maternity
let alone parental leave great work
has begun in the states of new york
california
new jersey rhode island and washington
which are currently all implementing
paid parental leave programs
first lady sherlane mcrae and mayor bill
de blasio have granted paid parental
leave to over twenty thousand government
employees in new york city
we can do this bringing about change
cannot just be the responsibility of
those who need it most
we must have the support of those in the
highest levels of power if we are ever
to achieve parity
that is why it's such an honor to
recognize and congratulate pioneers of
paid parental leave
like the global company da non today i
am proud to announce the non-global ceo
emanuel faber
as our inaugural he for the he for she
thematic champion for paid parental
leave
as part of this announcement de non will
implement
a global 18 weeks gender
neutral paid parental leave policy for
the company's one
hundred thousand employees by the year
2020
monsieur fiber when ambassador emma
watson delivered her now iconic he for
she
speech and stated that if we live in a
world where men
occupy 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
one generation from now if a policy like
the gnomes 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
right to vote we took a fundamental step
towards equality
north when same-sex marriage
was passed in the u.s we put an end to a
discriminatory law
north when millions of men and boys
and prime ministers and and deputy
directors of the un
sorry the president of the general
assembly that's what happens when i go
off script
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when men like the men in this room and
around the world the ones we cannot see
the ones who support us in ways we
cannot know but we
feel when they answered emma watson's
call to be he for she
the world grew north
we must ask ourselves how will we be
more tomorrow
than we are today the whole world grows
when people like you
and me take a stand because we know
that beyond the idea of how men and
women are different
there is a deeper truth that love is
love
and parents are parents thank you
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so
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you