The Shriver Report: Maria Shriver Looks at How Women Have Changed America

This week, MSNBC and Maria Shriver, are running a series of news specials based on her report, The Shriver Report: A Women's Nation. This comprehensive report takes a look at how women have changed the face of our nation and the problems they still face in America. Read it for some eye-opening facts. It's long, 454 pages long! I downloaded it, and have been poking my way through it.

Like everything else in our country and world right now, we're in flux on the role of women in our nation. And like everything else, we're a divided country on that role and how women can find peace, happiness, fulfillment while supporting their families, a job or career and taking care of their homes. Women are being pulled in opposing directions and the stress they deal with every day is going to impact their health and our world.

Women were silenced for so many generations, not allowed in their own homes to express their honest thoughts or beliefs. For hundreds of years, women were property and treated as such. If they were fortunate enough to marry a husband who respected them and their opinions, often they still couldn't own land or property, vote or be involved in matters in their communities. Brave women fought for many years to change those conditions here in the United States.

I wouldn't consider my voice to be historic, but I remember them. And so should we all. We forget so easily how things used to be for women. It was progressive women like Sojourner Truth, Abigal Adams, Susan B. Anthony, and so many other brave women who labored tirelessly to bring us to this place in history where our rights are just as important as any man in the land.

That doesn't mean we hate men or don't respect them. How silly to label the desire for equal rights as the enemy. I am the proud mother of three sons, who love and respect women. They learned that from their father, a strong man, who always respected their mother and now they are married to strong women and the saga goes on.

I have two daughters and I hope that I have instilled in them the knowledge that they can achieve their dreams and that no man should ever prevent them from attaining them. I hope that when they marry they choose someone just like their father and brothers who will work with them to achieve their goals.

But for today, there are many women in our country who still believe that a man must be in charge of them and some of them claim that is God's will. I'm not going to argue religion in this essay, but I could. Because they are wrong. The battle to capture women can't be distilled into you do this, and you're right; or do this, and you're wrong. Most women I know don't want to rule the roost; they just want support, encouragement and an equal place at the table-whether it's the kitchen table or the conference table!

The future direction of our country may be charted by women, who have finally achieved a status and power that will allow them to make significant changes in how we do business, school, work, and even home life. Their problems are American problems and together, men and women, we have to solve them.

It's about time. Abigal Adams would be proud and, perhaps even her hubby, John.

Resources

http://promo.simonandschuster.com/shriverreportbook/?mcd=z_091020_CLP_Shriver-Report_SEM

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/mary-kate-cary/2009/10/19/shriver-report-skips-frustrating-family-issue-of-the-school-year.html