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]