Welcome to the new ShriverReport.org, the go-to place for insightful, informative and impactful reporting from the front lines of women’s lives.  → Read More

There could not be a more cruel moment in life. That day you send your first grade child off to elementary school. That split second you find out that your child was killed in their classroom. Your life is now divided – the days before this cruel moment and all the days that will follow. After months of trying to absorb that cruelty, you decide you want to do something about what happened. You want to protect your surviving children and all children in schools. You want to honor your innocent child who went off to first grade hoping for a day of friends, new learnings and instead was killed. But the safety of children in school cannot wait for politics. You want your children, all of our children, safe in school now.And that is exactly what Michele Gay and Alissa Parker did after the death of their children in the Sandy Hook massacre that occurred one year ago on Dec. 14th. They became friends after the death of Michele’s seven-year-old daughter, Joey, and Alissa’s six-year-old daughter, Emilie, and formed Safe and Sound: A Sandy Hook Initiative.  → Read More

December is a great time. Who doesn’t look forward to giving gifts, parties, and general festivity? But it’s also a time of lying and major financial anxiety, according to a new survey by McGraw-Hill Federal Credit Union. Egg nog, mistletoe, and lying to your significant other? Happy Holidays!  → Read More

This is how it was told to me by my mother.
She walked from the bathroom, down the hallway into their bedroom. She stood next to the bed and starred down at him, a tattered diaphragm dangling from her finger. “Damnit, Ruben! I’m pregnant!” “Damn you!” My mother shouted.
Nine months later, I was born – another girl. It was 1951. It was a horrific time for women when “Father Knows Best,” and “My Three Sons,” was portraying domestic paradises while women led lives of oppression, isolation, and cultural suffocation. My mother, a psychology major with a minor in chemistry, was restricted to a career as a secretary under the dominating authority of a white male boss. It was still a time when the white male hierarchy reigned.
Stellarella did not just come to me; Stellarella grew within me over a lifetime marked by subjugation and oppression. Stellarella developed out of my personal experience of growing up as a girl, becoming a woman, and finally being ordained in the Episcopal Church, a historical institution constructed to reinforce the authority of a male dominant society.  → Read More

My husband and I were friends before we started dating. At one point, during a retelling of a weekend of weird Match.com coffee dates and awkward singles events, he asked me what I was really looking for in a husband. I told him that was the problem. I wasn’t looking for a husband; I wanted a partner. We each had a failed marriage behind us, and those initial conversations blossomed into a dating relationship.As we were talking about a work problem one day, we came upon the idea of treating our relationship more like a performance contract between partners, one where you can choose to renew, renegotiate, or cancel on an annual basis. We weren’t sure if we were brilliant or insane.  → Read More

Most of us are aware that the changes and shifts in women’s lives don’t happen in a vacuum, and therefor also directly impact men’s lives. But exactly how that impact is felt, and what it translates to, is something that only men can aptly explain themselves. So we decided to ask men some of the questions that are often directed at women, everything from “how do you do it all?” to “what keeps you up at night?” Their answers illuminate how the changes in our modern America are shifting men’s realities, along with women’s.  → Read More

Today’s powerful and accomplished women in business have undoubtedly raised the stakes. Despite justifiable concerns for women aspiring to high-paying career opportunities, industry clout, and far-reaching influence, it’s easy to overlook what women have accomplished in business, even with highly visible examples. I’ve benefited enormously from the way women sense and respond to opportunity, engage with others, and nurture relationships. It made me wonder; What would a group of successful businessmen – entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and professionals — say about their experiences with, and lessons learned by observing women in business? As I explored this proposition with men in business, three big ideas emerged.  → Read More

This week, Maria Shriver took to The TODAY Show to ask women around the country a simple question that our readers are certainly familiar with: what does #DoingItAll mean to you?  → Read More

When you’re trying to squeeze a little extra productivity out of your day, do you sacrifice sleep? If you forgo sleep in favor of getting more done you’re not alone. As tempting as it may be to stretch the length of your day by limiting your sleep, this practice can actually be detrimental to your productivity, your focus and attention, your emotional well-being, and your overall health. And there are a number of simple steps you can take to improve the quality of your sleep and ensure you’re getting enough sleep on a regular basis.  → Read More

Not only does traditional masculinity oppress women but it also severely restricts the agency of men (a topic, I’ve written about in the past in the context of straight man love and hip-hop), often in simple, taken-for-granted ways. Straight men go to extreme lengths to perform masculinity. They avoid a wide variety of activities that they arbitrarily deem feminine or “gay” without analyzing the detrimental effects of this type of gender policing. Often mundane, seemingly inconsequential activities are heavily policed, inhibiting men’s ability to live freely day-to-day. While it’s also important to show men the macro level benefits of feminism and disavowing traditional masculinity, I thought it would be fun to reveal the little ways that my life changed when I stopped trying to perform traditional, patriarchal masculinity. So here it is: the 5 MOST Mundane Ways Disavowing Masculinity Changed My Life.  → Read More