Anne Hathaway:
Thank you so much for those words. Well, President of
the General Assembly United Nation, UN Deputy Secretary General, Executive
Director UN Women, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
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 service 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 stuck by that memory yesterday while
boarding the plane to come here, not just by how far my life has come since
then, but buy 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
would trust my ability to navigate space. My father helped me give the
confidence to guide myself through the world.
In late March
last year in 2016 I became a parent for the first time. I remember the
indescribeable and as I understand a pretty universal experience holding my
week old son and feeling my priorities change on a cellular level. I remember I
experienced a shift in consciousness that gave me ability to maintain my love
of career and also cherish something else, someone else so much much more. Like
so many parents I wonder how I was going to balance my work with my new role as
parents. 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 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’s
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 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 pay check to pay check, 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’s 25 percent of American
women. Equally disturbing women who can’t afford to take a full 12 weeks often
don’t. Because it will mean incurring a motherhood penalty, meaning the will be
perceived as less dedicated to their job and will be passed over the promotions
and other career advancement. In my household, my mother had to choose between
a career and raising three children. A choice that left her unpaid and
underappreciated as a homemaker. Because it just wasn’t support for both paths.
The memory of being in the city with my dad is a
particularly a 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 incredibly privileged
family. Our hardships for the stuffs 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 be stigmatized men’s roles as caregivers. (applause)
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 family is a stubborn and very real stereotype. And not only
discriminates against women’s but limits men’s participation and connection
within the family and society. These limitations have broad ranging and
significant effect for them and for the children, we know this. So why do we
continue to undervalue father’s and overburdened mother’s? Paid parental leave
is not about taking days off work, it’s about creating the freedom to the fine
roles to choose how to invest time and to establish new positive cycle of
behaviour. 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 show that for every month
fathers took paternity leave, the mother’s income increased by 6.7%. That’s 6.7%
more economic freedom for the whole family. Data from 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 your help each other if we are going to grow.
(applause)
Along with the 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 UN member states. I look forward to beginning with
the UN itself which has not yet achieved parity, and who’s paid parental leave
policies are currently up to review. (applause). Oh you’re going to see a lot
of me. Let us lead by the 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 s more
evolved world with policies not based on gender. We all benefit for living in a
more compassionate time where our needs do not make us weak. They make us only
human. Maternity leave or any workplace policy based on gender can, at this
moment of history, only ever be a gilded cage. Though it was created to make
life easier for women, we now know it creates perception of women of being
inconvenient to the workplace. We now know, it changed 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 serve them? (applause)
Today, on International Women’s Day, I would like to
thank all of those who went before creating our current policies. Let us honour
them and build upon what they started by shifting our language and therefore
our consciousness away from gender and towards opportunity. Let us honour our
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 hopes 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 currently all
implementing paid parental leave programs. (applause)
First lady, Chirlaine 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
achieve parity. That is why it’s such an honour to recognize and congratulate
pioneers of paid parental leave like the global company general.
Today, I am proud to announce the known global CEO
Emmanuel Faber as our inaugural HeForShe fanatic champion for paid parental
leave. As part of this announcement, Danone will implement the global 18 weeks
gender-neutral paid parental leave policy for the company’s 100.000 employees
by the year 2020. (applause)
Nishioka there when Ambassador Emma Watson delivered
her now iconic HeForShe 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 the policy like Danone’s 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 US we put an end to a discriminatory law,
North. When millions of men and boys and Prime Ministers 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 Watsons’s called to be HeForShe, the world
grew, North. We must ask ourselves, “How will we be 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 was a
deeper truth, that love is love and parents are parents. Thank you. (applause)
Transcribed by Adinda Prasty Ascalonicawati
Oct 15, 2018
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