The "battle of the sexes is over" claims the much-heralded Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything on American work and family life. Unless, of course, you're among the millions of women for whom it isn't.

The "battle of the sexes is over" claims the

much-heralded Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything on

American work and family life. Go ahead, take a victory lap.

Unless, of course, you’re among the millions of women who

still earn 23 percent less on average in wages, pay 38 percent more for

gender-rated health insurance or fear losing their jobs while trying to juggle

disproportionate family responsibilities without flexible work schedules and

reasonable family-leave policies.

The year-long study initiated by California First Lady and

former NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver and published by the Center for

American Progress , has generated celebratory headlines in the media about

women’s advances in the workplace while ignoring the many stark realities in the report.

And what is all too true of complex and contradictory

issues, the joint investigation is being whittled down by the media both to factoids lacking in

context and to emotional anecdotes, though many of the statistics

packed into the 454-page report are hair-raising.

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Women spend 68 percent more on their health care than men during their prime

childbearing years.

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Women who suffer domestic abuse spend 42 percent more on their health care than

non-abused women.

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Employers lose 3 billion to 5 billion dollars annually from the lost worker productivity

of domestic violence survivors, perpetrators and colleagues.

•

One in five women delay seeking medical care because they can’t get time off

from work.

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53 percent of college graduates breastfeed their babies, while only 29 percent

of high school graduates do so.

One citation not likely to see the light of the day on your

favorite morning show is the third rail of women’s health issues — the effects

of class and race discrimination on childbearing:

"Popular

culture tends to blame women for “selfishly” focusing on their careers when

they delay having children, but a complex set of incentives pressures white,

affluent women to reproduce more and work less—among them the “opt-out” myth,

the “mommy wars” debate, and the

celebration of multiple births by white, married women—while pressuring low-

and middle-income women and women of color to reproduce less and work more.

Women

of color in particular are concentrated in low-wage occupations at the bottom

end of the labor market that intensify the work-family tension. The low-skilled

jobs most commonly occupied by women offer few benefits, irregular hours, and

minimal time off, rendering them the least conducive for care giving."

Shriver gets credit for being willing to make such an

unabashedly frank statement on an enormously controversial issue in the report.

But that and its equally important findings on health disparities are

undermined by several breezy and unsupported claims that "the gender

war" is over and women’s equality has magically been achieved merely by

reaching 50 percent parity to the number of men in the workforce. This notion is being happily parroted by a sound bite-driven news media to the exclusion of

other relevant data.

That’s not to say that there isn’t good news in the study.

An exclusive public opinion poll conducted by TIME magazine

and the Rockefeller Foundation offers an encouraging glimpse of historically

more enlightened personal views on gender relations.

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77 percent of Americans believe the rise of women in the workforce is a net

positive for society

•

Women who have children are just as committed to their jobs as women who do not

have children, 83 percent of women and 73 percent of men agreed, respectively.

•

85 percent of women and 79 percent of men said that compared to previous

generations, it is now more acceptable for men to be stay-at-home dads.

•

78 percent of women agreed that it is possible for a single woman to have a

fulfilling life, while two-thirds of men said so.

•

89 percent of men and women are comfortable with women earning more money than men

in a household.

Unfortunately, few of these modern work-life perspectives

have penetrated either the private workplace or the public institutions which continue to

perpetuate unfair work practices, advance multitudes of other disparities that

create barriers to true equality between men and women and seriously compromise

women’s health.

For all of the fanfare arising from Shriver’s recent media

blitz, starting with a plum appearance on the venerable political show,

"Meet the Press" as part of NBC News’ week-long series of feature

stories, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the practical

realities of transforming outdated workplace and public policies, especially on

the hottest topic in the nation right now — health care reform.

The study details the usual workplace barriers to obtaining

affordable health insurance, routine policies of charging women higher premium

costs and rationing coverage, and chemical and toxic hazards in the workplace

that can affect reproductive health, fertility and fetal development.

The American Association of University Women takes a stab at

making a broad range of health care, workplace and educational policy

suggestions to complement the report.

Of particular note are AAUW’s calls to ban gender-rated

health insurance premiums, increase Title X funding for reproductive health

care, expand prescription drug coverage for contraception services and end

ineffective abstinence-only sex education programs.

But while the ongoing health insurance reform debate in

Congress is at the forefront of the public’s mind, the complete media blackout

on women’s health disparities in the report is troubling.

Print and broadcast news gleefully reported the enormously

ignorant statements about maternal health , abortion funding and end-of-life care that nearly derailed the recent U.S. Senate discussion on

health care reform.

But not one major news outlet has covered the Shriver

Report’s section on reproductive health disparities, since its Oct. 16 release,

with the exception of TIME, which made a passing mention in its most

recent issue.

All the while, the American

public remains in the dark about the stark new realities of health care —

women, as a greater proportion of primary breadwinners, have difficulty

securing insurance, their workplace risks are largely unaddressed and their

medical care is overtly politicized.

But one thing is certain, the remaining

publicity tour over the course of this week will either elevate the Shriver

Report as a critical tipping point in history to help pass needed health care

reforms or, as Gloria Steinem notes in her essay at the Women’s Media

Center, it will meet "the dusty fate of so many other reports and opinion

polls."



