Learn English Anne Hathaway To liberate women we must liberate men with BIG subtitles

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 serviced 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 a

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 USS 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

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 percent of American women

equally disturbing women who can’t

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

households my mother had to choose

between a career and raising three

children a choice that left her unpaid

and underappreciated 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 for 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 D stigmatize

men’s roles as caregivers in other words

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 father’s and overburdened

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

employer 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 six point seven percent

that’s six point seven 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

[Applause]

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 a

hundred and ninety UN member states I

look forward to beginning with the UN

itself which has not yet achieved parity

parity and whose paid parental leave

policies are currently up for review oh

you’re gonna 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 parents 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 chirlane McCray and

Mayor Bill DeBlasio have granted paid

parental leave to over 20,000 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 denim

today I am proud to announce the known

global CEO Emmanuel Quebec as our

inaugural he for the he for she the

magic champion for paid parental leave

as part of this announcement Danone will

implement a global 18 weeks

gender-neutral paid parental leave

policy for the company’s 100,000

employees by the year 2020

miss Yoko bear 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 now see imagine

what the world could look like one

generation from now if a policy like the

nones 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 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 called 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

[Applause]