Speaker 1: Surprise, we're back a week early, and this time we're
Speaker 1: doing something a little different. I'm talking about a special
Speaker 1: takeover episode from the Longest Shortest Time. That's another show
Speaker 1: in the Stitcher family, all about parenting. I was a
Speaker 1: guest on the show last year. I talked with Hillary Frank,
Speaker 1: who is the host, all about being a single mom
Speaker 1: after my husband Jay died almost twenty years ago. Now
Speaker 1: Hillary and her team are out with a new series
Speaker 1: all about workplace discrimination against working moms, and that's the
Speaker 1: subject I cared deeply about since much of my career
Speaker 1: was spent as a working mom. And today we're bringing
Speaker 1: you the first episode in the series. You'll hear from
Speaker 1: former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift. Did you know she's the
Speaker 1: first American governor to give birth while in office, which,
Speaker 1: frankly kind of surprised me. But anyway, she talks about
Speaker 1: her experience with workplace discrimination, and you'll also be hearing
Speaker 1: from listeners talking about what happened to them. So let's
Speaker 1: get to it. When Jane Swift was twenty five, she
Speaker 1: did something most women her age don't do. She ran
Speaker 1: for state Senate. This was back in western Massachusetts. One
Speaker 1: day before the election, she went to a small town
Speaker 1: in her district to talk to a newspaper reporter. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit of an older guy, and we
Speaker 1: sat down and we started going through the typical biographical data. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, how old was I? Where was I from?
Speaker 1: Progressed too? Was I married? Jane was used to that question.
Speaker 1: Her answer was no. This is when it started to
Speaker 1: get a little odd. Uh. This reporter said to me,
Speaker 1: did I have a boyfriend? Um? At this point I
Speaker 1: felt a little bit like my mother may have called
Speaker 1: him because this was a big concern of hers as well. UM.
Speaker 1: I was actually pretty proud of myself because for the
Speaker 1: first time in many years I was able to answer yes. Um.
Speaker 1: But his next question was really my first clue to
Speaker 1: just how strange my future would become as a young
Speaker 1: woman candidate seeking office, because when I told him yes,
Speaker 1: rather than going on to talk about taxes and my
Speaker 1: plans for local aid and improving public education, he asked
Speaker 1: me how serious my relationship was. Jane was like, why
Speaker 1: does he care that? I said, well, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but if you want to call and ask him and
Speaker 1: let me know, that would be great. Uh. It did
Speaker 1: not dissuade him. Uh. He said to me, Well, at
Speaker 1: some point, I assume you're going to get married, and
Speaker 1: if you get married and start a family, what will
Speaker 1: that mean for your constituents in your career in the
Speaker 1: state Senate. I was twenty five years old, and I
Speaker 1: was probably for one of the first times in my life,
Speaker 1: rendered speechless. I had not actually thought about that question
Speaker 1: all that much, and I couldn't believe he was asking me.
Speaker 1: But as the Google search that you may have done
Speaker 1: on me will prove, that was a question that would
Speaker 1: become pretty consistently asked of me and become a reality,
Speaker 1: uh in my political life. But that was the first clue,
Speaker 1: the first clue that Jane would face discrimination as a
Speaker 1: working mom. Except back then she wasn't even a mom yet.
Speaker 1: Let me say that again. Jane was getting questioned about
Speaker 1: her ability to do her job well as a mother
Speaker 1: before she even knew she'd be a mother. This is
Speaker 1: the longest shortest time. I'm Hilary Frank and this episode
Speaker 1: is the first in a super exciting series or launching
Speaker 1: right here right now about discrimination against working mom. It's
Speaker 1: a real mother. Yeah, that's commentary on my part, but
Speaker 1: it's also what we're calling the series It's a Real Mother.
Speaker 1: We're going to spend four whole episodes looking at this problem,
Speaker 1: figuring out why it exists and what we can do
Speaker 1: to solve it. In this episode, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a look at what discrimination against working moms actually is,
Speaker 1: how people get away with it, and what happens when
Speaker 1: it's not behind closed doors but in plain view. That's
Speaker 1: what Jane Swift's story is all about. Her story is
Speaker 1: groundbreaking and it's got some serious surprises. But to really
Speaker 1: get this series started, first we need to set the stage,
Speaker 1: and so my producer, Abigail Keel is here to help
Speaker 1: me break down what's really going on in the world
Speaker 1: of working moms. Hey Abigail, Hey Hillary, So, Abigail, isn't
Speaker 1: discrimination at Lee Goal, Like, why are we even talking
Speaker 1: about this? Why are we even doing this series? Right?
Speaker 1: Are there laws to protect you? The good news is
Speaker 1: there are laws. One of those lawses Title nine, which
Speaker 1: you've probably heard of, and that law broadly protects against
Speaker 1: all kinds of discrimination based on sex, and specifically, there's
Speaker 1: an amendment within Title nine called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act,
Speaker 1: which makes it illegal to not hire somebody based only
Speaker 1: on the fact that they're pregnant. And if you do
Speaker 1: hire somebody and they become pregnant, you have to provide
Speaker 1: them with accommodations if they can no longer perform the
Speaker 1: duties of their job. Um, so light duty, some stuff
Speaker 1: like that. There's also a law that applies to breastfeeding
Speaker 1: in the workplace, So this is another area where discrimination
Speaker 1: can happen. And actually, thanks to the Affordable Care Act,
Speaker 1: now employers must provide a space and break for new
Speaker 1: moms to express breast milk if they choose to do
Speaker 1: that when they come back to work. So it's not
Speaker 1: just a room. Not just a room they have to provide.
Speaker 1: They also have to give the time right exactly, and
Speaker 1: it has to be a space that locks. It's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be in the bathroom. Um. But one kind
Speaker 1: of caveat to this law is that it only applies
Speaker 1: to companies that have more than fifty employees, So a
Speaker 1: small company or if you work for a company in
Speaker 1: like some sort of capacity where you're a private contractor
Speaker 1: or something like that, this law wouldn't protect you. Okay,
Speaker 1: what else, So the other area that kind of comes
Speaker 1: into play here is UH paid leave an unpaid leave,
Speaker 1: And the law that we have nationally that applies here
Speaker 1: is f m l A, the Family and Medical Leave Act,
Speaker 1: which we've all heard about, UM, and this law entitles
Speaker 1: employees to unpaid leave, so that could be used for
Speaker 1: like maternity leave, if you've been an employee for at
Speaker 1: least twelve months and worked at least fifty hours in
Speaker 1: that year, which is about five hours per week. And
Speaker 1: that's only for companies with fifty or more employees. So
Speaker 1: if you come in and you were hired when you
Speaker 1: were pregnant, and you come back to work, then you're
Speaker 1: not entitled to any paid leave or any unpaid leave legally. Federally,
Speaker 1: a lot of companies have their own maternity leave policies,
Speaker 1: their own sickly policies, family leave UM. Some states have
Speaker 1: different policies, but according to our government, UM, this would
Speaker 1: not apply to you. Got it. And you know the
Speaker 1: other thing is that there's a lot of research about
Speaker 1: discrimination against moms in the workplace that shows that the
Speaker 1: ways mothers are discriminated against are really hard to pin down,
Speaker 1: So they can be things like they're just not promoted
Speaker 1: as often, they're not paid to the same level that
Speaker 1: men are paid to. But you know, there are ways
Speaker 1: that companies can defend those decisions and say, well, we
Speaker 1: just thought, you know, this other person was a better employee.
Speaker 1: And so this kind of discrimination really quickly becomes very
Speaker 1: insidious and very hard to really understand when it's happening
Speaker 1: inside of a workplace culture that just doesn't value mothers
Speaker 1: as highly as it might value other employees. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into a lot of that research actually in
Speaker 1: our next episode, but just know it's there, right, And
Speaker 1: we've also had a lot of listeners right into us
Speaker 1: for years, right, they've been telling us stories of workplace discrimination,
Speaker 1: and we also put out a call recently asking for
Speaker 1: more stories. So what have we heard? So thank you
Speaker 1: to everybody who reached out, and also we are sorry
Speaker 1: that this has happened to you. But um, we heard
Speaker 1: from people across the whole country, so you know, Florida, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: West coast, East coast, small towns, big towns. We even
Speaker 1: had some international listeners chime in. And you know, these
Speaker 1: are people who work in a whole myriad of jobs,
Speaker 1: so teachers, people who work in offices. We heard from
Speaker 1: someone in a factory, we heard from some academics. These
Speaker 1: were full time jobs, part time jobs atthing in between.
Speaker 1: So you brought a couple of cases to tell me
Speaker 1: about today, right, that's right? So who are we going
Speaker 1: to hear about? So I want to start by walking
Speaker 1: through a couple of stories that I think illustrate really
Speaker 1: well some key aspects of discrimination and how it can
Speaker 1: feel when it happens to you. First, as a woman
Speaker 1: named Jessica. She lives here in New York, and before
Speaker 1: she had her baby, she and her wife decided that
Speaker 1: they both go back to work. Jessica worked at a bank.
Speaker 1: She didn't have her college degree, but she did really
Speaker 1: like her job and her team. Two days after coming
Speaker 1: back from maternity leave, Jessica was laid off. Her boss,
Speaker 1: who was female and child list told her that they
Speaker 1: eliminated her position. But Jessica thinks being a mom had
Speaker 1: something to do with it. I think this because she
Speaker 1: said on several occasions, Oh, won't it be better now
Speaker 1: for you though? Because now you can spend so much
Speaker 1: more time with your baby, and being a mom is
Speaker 1: so hard and it takes up at least a third
Speaker 1: of your life. You don't want to miss all of
Speaker 1: those great things that your kid is going to do
Speaker 1: and blah blah, blah blah. So Jessica's company offered her
Speaker 1: a severance package, which she decided to take, and she
Speaker 1: used the money to pay for a babysitter for the
Speaker 1: first few months of her daughter's life. And with that time,
Speaker 1: Jessica finished her degree and she started applying for new jobs.
Speaker 1: But almost a year later, she still hasn't found anything,
Speaker 1: and now that all that severance money is used up,
Speaker 1: Jessica is taking care of her daughter at home. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how hard it's been to have a
Speaker 1: baby and then also lose your livelihood and your sense
Speaker 1: of professional identity. Um. And I felt really strange about
Speaker 1: taking the severance. I really struggled with that decision of
Speaker 1: whether to do that or whether to fight it legally
Speaker 1: or I felt like it was selling out and I
Speaker 1: still kind of do. And of course we should just
Speaker 1: say that obviously every kind of mom is great, working
Speaker 1: at home, working out an office, stay at home mom.
Speaker 1: We're not judging, but it seems like for Jessica what
Speaker 1: she wanted was to be a working mom. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, Jessica actually had enough information in this
Speaker 1: situation that she could have probably brought a case against
Speaker 1: her employer, but she said that the reason she decided
Speaker 1: not to were Actually, there's a couple of reasons. One
Speaker 1: was that she kind of needed this money from her severance.
Speaker 1: She had just lost her job, um. But the other
Speaker 1: was that she felt really overwhelmed. She had just had
Speaker 1: a baby, she had just lost her job, she was
Speaker 1: dealing with a lot of transitions, and the thought of
Speaker 1: launching into a lawsuit that could last for who knows
Speaker 1: how long, cost who knows how much, all of that
Speaker 1: was just too much for her to think, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and really, the only way to prove that something discriminatory
Speaker 1: happened to you is to take it to court, which
Speaker 1: is a big castle. Yes, this is a part of
Speaker 1: the equation when we wonder why more people don't step
Speaker 1: forward with these kinds of accusations. It's not that the
Speaker 1: discrimination isn't happening, it's just that it's not being recorded,
Speaker 1: right right, Okay, So um, let's hear about another mom. Alright.
Speaker 1: So this next mom is a mom in Oregon. Her
Speaker 1: name is Elizabeth, and she is a lawyer. She landed
Speaker 1: a job at a really big law firm that she'd
Speaker 1: been trying to get into for a long time, and
Speaker 1: shortly after she found out that she was pregnant. When
Speaker 1: she told one of the partners at this law firm
Speaker 1: about it, he said, oh, that's going to be hard
Speaker 1: on your career, which was upsetting to hear, as he
Speaker 1: was an owner and therefore essentially responsible for whether or
Speaker 1: not it would be hard on my career. And I
Speaker 1: told the managing partner what he had said, and he
Speaker 1: tried to reashare me that that's not exactly what he
Speaker 1: had meant, and that you know, he would talk to
Speaker 1: him and take care of it, and that was inappropriate,
Speaker 1: but then proceeded to ask me if I was intending
Speaker 1: to turn to work at all, and I just, um,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm in trouble. But Elizabeth did come back
Speaker 1: to work, and she worked really hard. She put in FaceTime.
Speaker 1: She ended up being the first chair in a big trial,
Speaker 1: which meant she was just in charge of that case.
Speaker 1: And at that trial she decided to ask the judge
Speaker 1: for pumping brakes, which she was granted once the trial
Speaker 1: actually started. I got that break the very first day.
Speaker 1: Um for the first break, and then never again for
Speaker 1: the full amount of time that I had asked for.
Speaker 1: The judge always gave me twenty minutes or less, um,
Speaker 1: and at one point resumed the jury trial without me. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure she did it with the okay of
Speaker 1: my co counsel. Um. But you know, to walk into
Speaker 1: a room after rushing through the pumping process in a
Speaker 1: different room in the courthouse and racing back to my courtroom,
Speaker 1: and to walk in and see a room full of
Speaker 1: pep who have proceeded without me, it made me feel
Speaker 1: as though perhaps there really isn't room for working mothers
Speaker 1: in the law. So Elizabeth actually left litigation after that. Um.
Speaker 1: She's still a lawyer, but she works in a different
Speaker 1: field where she has a more family friendly workplace. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting, like at a law firm, you would
Speaker 1: think that lawyers would know better than to discriminate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's unfortunately ironic. Um. The thing that I take away
Speaker 1: from Elizabeth's story is that you know, she she left
Speaker 1: like she got out of that situation, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the moms that I heard from
Speaker 1: ended up leaving the situations where they were discriminated against,
Speaker 1: mostly on their own accord. But the sad part about
Speaker 1: that is that those jobs in those workplaces still exist
Speaker 1: and they're just open for the next person to come
Speaker 1: in and be discriminated against. Those employers aren't being punished,
Speaker 1: they're not being told that what they did was wrong,
Speaker 1: and that is it. I think we need to kind
Speaker 1: of figure out how to deal with And we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about like a lot of this stuff in
Speaker 1: the rest of the series. Right right now, you brought
Speaker 1: a collection of voices for us to just hear kind
Speaker 1: of the variety of the types of discrimination that that
Speaker 1: mother's face. That's right. So, without further ado, I was
Speaker 1: just dropping a note to talk about being a working
Speaker 1: mom and oh goodness, is it a daily challenge. I
Speaker 1: found out I was pregnant with my second child. I
Speaker 1: show my pregnancies very early on. It was winter. I
Speaker 1: walked into the head of school's office with my coat on.
Speaker 1: I could see the contract laying on the table. It
Speaker 1: was very clear that I was to be given an offer.
Speaker 1: I took my coat off to have a seat at
Speaker 1: the table, and I could see both the head of
Speaker 1: school and his assistant audibly gasp because they noticed my stomach.
Speaker 1: You know, sometime I wanted you to work an extra
Speaker 1: hour too, and you're stuck between trying to figure out
Speaker 1: should you stay or should you go? Or am I
Speaker 1: going to be on the verge of losing a job
Speaker 1: just because I have a child. I found out that
Speaker 1: there was another girl interviewing for the same position that
Speaker 1: I was. She was a few months pregnant at the time,
Speaker 1: and a couple of people told me that I was
Speaker 1: definitely going to get the position over her, even though
Speaker 1: she was more qualified on paper than I was, because
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, which was kind of funny because no
Speaker 1: one knew that I was pregnant. Um. You know, I
Speaker 1: got the job with a lot of guilt. Um Before
Speaker 1: I got pregnant, I was getting the grants, the publications.
Speaker 1: Everyone I met, from my advisers to people at conferences
Speaker 1: told me they were expecting a lot from me, wanted
Speaker 1: to collaborate, We're interested in future work. Once I got pregnant, though,
Speaker 1: and once the new spread, these alphas began to dry up,
Speaker 1: I'm currently in a situation at a small startup. They
Speaker 1: talk a big game, you know, newly decorated mother's room,
Speaker 1: flexible hours, maternity leave, But when it comes to salary review.
Speaker 1: I feel as though my flexibility is being held against me.
Speaker 1: I have been promised a job and told after I
Speaker 1: had um our little girl that they didn't want me
Speaker 1: to have to divide my attention between being a new
Speaker 1: mom and having a different position. And it wasn't something
Speaker 1: that was up for discussion. It was just told where
Speaker 1: in this nature center am I going to pump? My office,
Speaker 1: which was about fifteen space shared with four other people.
Speaker 1: There was the staff bathroom in the musty basement, a
Speaker 1: freezer room with freezers full of dead animals. Um. It
Speaker 1: took every thing in me not to scream when the
Speaker 1: first suggestion was the bathroom. The area that I was
Speaker 1: provided to pump was actually the bathroom, and my company
Speaker 1: had purchased a ping pong table and placed it right
Speaker 1: outside said bathroom. So when I returned from my first
Speaker 1: maternity leave, um, my manager was very hard on me.
Speaker 1: She had actually taken over my role when I was
Speaker 1: gone and then pretty much refused to give it back
Speaker 1: to me and just made me feel like the fact
Speaker 1: that I was a mother and working was something that
Speaker 1: was taking away from my ability to work. And what
Speaker 1: I was told, uh in a closed door meeting with
Speaker 1: HR was maybe I should move on. I was able
Speaker 1: to leave my job because I have a partner who
Speaker 1: supports me. Um. And yet at the same time, my
Speaker 1: partner has never had to answer for whether he's still
Speaker 1: as good an employee as a parent, and he's never
Speaker 1: had anybody question that I've had to reevaluate my entire
Speaker 1: self worth. Um. You know, there's a lot to be done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be done right, But there's also
Speaker 1: a lot you can do right, Abigail, And that's what
Speaker 1: we've discovered in doing this series. And over the course
Speaker 1: of the next few episodes, we're going to talk to
Speaker 1: a work expert. We're going to visit a workplace where
Speaker 1: they're getting things right. We're going to get an international perspective,
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk to a mom in
Speaker 1: a low wage job. So we've got a lot we're
Speaker 1: going to cover. But first today we're going to pick
Speaker 1: up with Jane swift story. She's a woman we heard
Speaker 1: from at the top of the show, UM, and I
Speaker 1: think her story is really informative because it's not about
Speaker 1: employers discriminating against an employee. It's about how kind of
Speaker 1: we as a society discriminate against working moms. We will
Speaker 1: be back with that story in just a minute. Stay
Speaker 1: with us. We are back with the story that we
Speaker 1: began at the top of the show today about a
Speaker 1: politician named Jane Swift, which is, you've got to admit,
Speaker 1: just the perfect politician name, and what would you like
Speaker 1: me to call you in this show? I would prefer
Speaker 1: for you to call me Jane, although I do understand
Speaker 1: that governor is a title that I'm very proud of
Speaker 1: and that I earned. But Jane is preferable. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: I also answered a mom, but that's not preferable. That
Speaker 1: would be inappropriate for me to call you. Yes, in
Speaker 1: a little weird that's right, Governor. Jane won that state
Speaker 1: senence heat back, and a decade later she had worked
Speaker 1: her way up to running the state of Massachusetts. She
Speaker 1: was the first woman to hold that office and yes,
Speaker 1: the first mom to do it. And you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta say I was totally surprised by how open Jane
Speaker 1: was when I interviewed her. I mean, she's a politician,
Speaker 1: so I expected her to give me like politician answers,
Speaker 1: but she didn't, and I think that's because she's still
Speaker 1: upset about how she was treated. She wants to talk
Speaker 1: about it so that maybe workplace discrimination against moms can change.
Speaker 1: Jane's path to political stardom began in college when she
Speaker 1: was an intern working for the state senator in her district,
Speaker 1: Peter Webber. Shortly after she graduated, he hired her as
Speaker 1: his legislative aid. She helped him develop his positions on
Speaker 1: important bills. She met with constituents and local officials. She
Speaker 1: was basically the glue between Senator Webber and the people
Speaker 1: he was representing. Jane loved it, and Senator Webber took notice.
Speaker 1: He sought me out and told me that he had
Speaker 1: decided not to run for family reasons, and he thought
Speaker 1: that I would be a great successor so. I know.
Speaker 1: Politicians say family reasons as a cover a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, but apparently Senator Webber's family reasons were real.
Speaker 1: He wanted to spend more time with his young children,
Speaker 1: and him choosing Jane I was also exceptional. Research shows
Speaker 1: that women rarely get this kind of shoulder tap from
Speaker 1: men in politics. They don't get invited to the party.
Speaker 1: Jane enthusiastically said yes, and little did we know would
Speaker 1: start a path for some historic accomplishments. But I have
Speaker 1: to say that had I known at the time uh
Speaker 1: the gender barriers and the degree to which people would
Speaker 1: find it odd that a young woman would have an
Speaker 1: ambition to serve in an elected political office, or how
Speaker 1: difficult it was perceived to be, I may not have
Speaker 1: done it. And so the real gift that Senator Weber
Speaker 1: gave me, beyond his terrific support and some great advice,
Speaker 1: was he made it seem like a normal thing to
Speaker 1: do for a twenty five year old woman to run
Speaker 1: for the first political office, to be the state senator
Speaker 1: from my hometown. Jane won that election as a Republican,
Speaker 1: she got right to work on her main issues, family
Speaker 1: and education. She focused on improving Massachusetts public education system,
Speaker 1: helping small businesses, and promoting environmental protection for the part
Speaker 1: of the state that she represented. And along the way,
Speaker 1: Jane met a guy, a different guy from the boyfriend
Speaker 1: the reporter had grilled her about. This new guy was
Speaker 1: a dairy farmer named Chuck, And for all you nosey
Speaker 1: reporters wondering how serious this relationship was, they did get
Speaker 1: married in the middle of Jane's second term in the
Speaker 1: state Senate. You know. When I was little, I was
Speaker 1: the you know, have ten kids and um, have a
Speaker 1: big family. I outgrew that, luckily, um pretty quickly. But UM,
Speaker 1: I always assumed that I was going to be a mother,
Speaker 1: And I guess I probably assumed i'd be a mother
Speaker 1: like my mom, who stayed at home, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: was the girl Scout leader, was the uber volunteer. But
Speaker 1: when I got into politics, I realized I was good
Speaker 1: at politics and it began to be a realistic career.
Speaker 1: And by the time my husband and I started to
Speaker 1: think about having a family, UM, my career was starting
Speaker 1: to take off. Jane had her eye on a congressional seat.
Speaker 1: She lost that race, but kept moving up the political
Speaker 1: ladder in appointed jobs. Things were good. Jane was in
Speaker 1: her early thirties and she decided it was time to
Speaker 1: start trying to conceive. But right around when she started trying,
Speaker 1: Jane got a phone call. It was from the Governor
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts, Paul Salucci. He was running for re election
Speaker 1: and he wondered if Jane might want to be his
Speaker 1: running mate. And I told Governor Salucci that I was
Speaker 1: potentially pregnant, but I wouldn't know obviously for a little while. Um,
Speaker 1: but that starting a family I didn't feel like was
Speaker 1: something I could delay, certainly not for another four years. Now.
Speaker 1: Jane had not even taken a pregnancy test yet. Some
Speaker 1: people don't even tell their partners this early that they
Speaker 1: might be pregnant. But Jane told the governor it was
Speaker 1: a ballsy move. Well you know what I mean. He
Speaker 1: didn't bat an eye. He said, you know, lots of
Speaker 1: women are having babies while they work, and we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out. You did you get the impression that he
Speaker 1: saw it as a plus? I truly believed, and I
Speaker 1: believed this throughout our partnership. He saw me as a
Speaker 1: person and braced Uh, you know, a young woman in everything,
Speaker 1: all the complexities of that running for office, and it
Speaker 1: turned out that you were pregnant, And so how did
Speaker 1: you feel about it? Wasn't an easy choice for you
Speaker 1: to decide to run? Yeah, because I was so stupid,
Speaker 1: I you know, just assumed, oh, I'm pregnant, no big deal,
Speaker 1: as only somebody who's never been pregnant before it can be.
Speaker 1: How hard could it be? The famous last words from
Speaker 1: a woman who proceeded within about eight days of that
Speaker 1: to throw up every single night for almost the rest
Speaker 1: of my pregnancy. So so yeah, pretty hard. So first,
Speaker 1: let me say I was very healthy. I just threw
Speaker 1: up every night. Um. I also had a gluten intolerance,
Speaker 1: which sounds so incredibly normal sitting here in Seen, But
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, there was not a McDonald's on
Speaker 1: the planet who could serve a hamburger without a bun
Speaker 1: without having to consult like supervisors three stores away. Um.
Speaker 1: So traveling around Massachusetts pregnant, trying to eat food that
Speaker 1: didn't have gluten in it, being sick, tear stomach, and
Speaker 1: not being able to chew on saltines wasn't easy. Um.
Speaker 1: A funny story that before anybody knew I was pregnant,
Speaker 1: this nice nurse suggested to me that because I couldn't
Speaker 1: chew on saltines, that if I cut fresh lemon wedges
Speaker 1: and just dabbed them on my tongue, Um, that that
Speaker 1: might actually keep me from throwing up on people and
Speaker 1: parking lots. And UM, I was at some event with
Speaker 1: the governor, you know, sneaking back to my car and
Speaker 1: like just licking the crap out of a lemon, and
Speaker 1: this woman came up to me and she's like you're pregnant,
Speaker 1: and I got this awful look on my face because
Speaker 1: it was too soon to tell anybody. Um, and I'm
Speaker 1: like how, She's like, nobody licks lemons unless there pregnant.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, nobody licks lemons when they are
Speaker 1: pregnant except for me. And I'm not admitting to anything.
Speaker 1: And then there was a St. Patrick's Day parade in
Speaker 1: Holyoke where I almost lost us the election because in
Speaker 1: the gathering beforehand, in this smoke filled bar with the
Speaker 1: Firefighters Union, I almost blew the endorsement because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: drink a beer, both because I had a gluten intolerance
Speaker 1: and because I was pregnant. When did the public find
Speaker 1: out that you were pregnant? Uh? Write it about three
Speaker 1: and a half months, and I expected it to be
Speaker 1: the biggest non event of all times. I was married, Um,
Speaker 1: I was thirty four years old. Um, and my husband
Speaker 1: and I were having our first child. Right, nice little story. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that wasn't how it played out. Instead, it became national
Speaker 1: news headlines read birth of a campaign and pregnant candidate
Speaker 1: discovers she's an issue, And so it had become a
Speaker 1: pretty major question. You know, should I still run. Um,
Speaker 1: Was this a good idea? Was it going to hurt
Speaker 1: Governor Saluci? Was it going to help Governor Salucci? It
Speaker 1: was also if you were doing the math earlier. One
Speaker 1: of the issues was I was actually do right around
Speaker 1: the election day. Um, so that complicated matters a little bit.
Speaker 1: Jane quickly found she was caught in the middle of
Speaker 1: a war. Passions ran crazy high. I remember this one
Speaker 1: woman in particular who called my her words, selfish decision
Speaker 1: to decide to continue to run. She categorized it as
Speaker 1: our generation's Vietnam. So those who would choose to serve
Speaker 1: by meaning that stay home with their young children, and
Speaker 1: those like me who would shure are sponsibilities. That one
Speaker 1: was from a conservative female activist. Jane was shocked. You know,
Speaker 1: I was a Title nine generation kid, right. We got
Speaker 1: the same uniforms in high school as the boys got.
Speaker 1: We didn't get the same crowds. But um, I believed
Speaker 1: if I worked hard enough, I could do pretty much
Speaker 1: anything I wanted to. I hadn't hit a glass ceiling
Speaker 1: yet because I hadn't risen high enough, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, all of those things that I believed, um,
Speaker 1: and frankly a lot of debates like the mommy wars
Speaker 1: that I had not paid any attention to. I was
Speaker 1: right in the middle of and totally unprepared. Jane gave
Speaker 1: birth to her daughter, Elizabeth, just a few weeks before
Speaker 1: the election. Since she was campaigning, she wasn't actually employed,
Speaker 1: so her maternity leave, if you can call it that,
Speaker 1: consisted of a two week break during which she recovered
Speaker 1: from her C section. Jane was now officially the thing
Speaker 1: that that reporter dude had been so agitated about almost
Speaker 1: ten years earlier. She was a working mom, and not
Speaker 1: just any working mom, a lieutenant governor mom. This was
Speaker 1: a position where the public had every right to criticize
Speaker 1: her job performance, which they did. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: extreme Vietnam obsessed conservatives who had a problem with Jane working.
Speaker 1: It was male politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 1: It was journalists, her constituents. But the criticism that seemed
Speaker 1: to hit Jane the hardest was criticism from other mothers.
Speaker 1: Every time, you know, there was an article written about
Speaker 1: me being pregnant. Um, it seemed like they would go
Speaker 1: to some wealthy, suburban place where all the moms, who
Speaker 1: frankly were much thinner than me and much blonder than me,
Speaker 1: and didn't work. We're doing yoga with their children who
Speaker 1: are going to grow up to be perfect. Would talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the great decisions they made and why they
Speaker 1: questioned whether or not I was making a good decision.
Speaker 1: And I'm being a little bit facetious that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think one of the really hard things for me
Speaker 1: is I could have very easily not the thin and
Speaker 1: blonde part um, but all the other parts my life
Speaker 1: could have taken a couple of different turns and I
Speaker 1: could have been them. And so I was making this
Speaker 1: choice to take on this really high profile, demanding work
Speaker 1: and you know, how dare I Or if I did dare,
Speaker 1: then everything that came along with it, with balancing work
Speaker 1: and family was my problem. And certainly the public shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to, you know, make any concessions or do anything
Speaker 1: differently to accommodate a mother with young children. One thing
Speaker 1: the public wasn't willing to accommodate was Jane's living situation.
Speaker 1: She and Chuck had moved to Boston to be closer
Speaker 1: to the heart of the Commonwealth after Elizabeth was born.
Speaker 1: They decided it was smart for Chuck to stay home
Speaker 1: and be Elizabeth's primary caregiver. It made financial sense to
Speaker 1: but Boston was far from both of their families, who
Speaker 1: lived all the way on the western side of the state.
Speaker 1: So when their daughter was about a year old, they
Speaker 1: made the tough decision to move back to western mass
Speaker 1: where they would have more support from grandparents and extended family,
Speaker 1: and Jane would just have to commute to the city
Speaker 1: for work two and a half hours each way. When
Speaker 1: people would encounter me and my mother role, they would
Speaker 1: be so surprised that I enjoyed being a mother, and
Speaker 1: it was just so striking to me that they couldn't
Speaker 1: seem to reconcile that I could be this successful or
Speaker 1: at least have achieved some level of success in my
Speaker 1: professional life and still embrace my role as a mother, UM,
Speaker 1: And that vexed me personally. UM. I think sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: it really hurt my feelings, but I think it really
Speaker 1: impacted me, um publicly in my ability to do the job.
Speaker 1: It was like you had to either choose to be
Speaker 1: perceived as the competent leader or the caring mother, but
Speaker 1: so many times people couldn't believe that you are both.
Speaker 1: You know, I think, Um, in the workplace, you know,
Speaker 1: the discrimination we hear about mostly is discrimination that comes
Speaker 1: from a boss or a hiring manager, and there are
Speaker 1: laws in place to try to prevent that discrimination. But
Speaker 1: when you're a politician, um, it's the people like the public,
Speaker 1: who are discriminating against you, and it can there aren't
Speaker 1: laws about that. It can be out in the open um. Right.
Speaker 1: So does that feel unfair, like there's no there that
Speaker 1: there were no laws protecting you. Well, here's here's the
Speaker 1: other thing. You could never say it's unfair. The minute
Speaker 1: any political figure says anything is unfair, you are doomed.
Speaker 1: That is the worst defense ever. So even when it
Speaker 1: was unfair, I couldn't say it was unfair because the
Speaker 1: minute I did, like, I could just write those terrible
Speaker 1: headlines and I'd be a cry baby. You know what
Speaker 1: I have tried in my post political life to do
Speaker 1: is when I see things now that are unfair and
Speaker 1: I can say it now, I say the things that
Speaker 1: are unfair happening to other women of both parties, um,
Speaker 1: because I know they can't say it themselves. What a game.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I think is also important is
Speaker 1: I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect,
Speaker 1: and two things I internalized that didn't always work to
Speaker 1: my advantage. One was I could never make mistake, Like
Speaker 1: God forbid I ever messed up. Then every you know
Speaker 1: employer out there, who, even though it was illegal to that,
Speaker 1: was just waiting note for a reason not to promote
Speaker 1: that other mom with little kids was going to use
Speaker 1: me as a cautionary tale, at least in my head. Um.
Speaker 1: But also secondly, I didn't want to give anybody an
Speaker 1: excuse um to imply that any decision was the right
Speaker 1: decision or wrong decision. So um, as an example, my
Speaker 1: husband stayed at home. There were a lot of times when, um,
Speaker 1: it would have been a really easy political defense for
Speaker 1: me to certain questions that frankly I should have never
Speaker 1: been asked, and it was unfair for them to ask me.
Speaker 1: Where I could have said, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: stay at home parent, and there would have been a
Speaker 1: certain uh constituency group it would have been appeased by that.
Speaker 1: I never wanted to say that because that implied that
Speaker 1: I was buying into the argument that the only way
Speaker 1: to do parenthood right was to have one parents stay
Speaker 1: at home. And I don't believe that it was what
Speaker 1: worked for us at a particular point in time. But
Speaker 1: I just felt this really strong senses someone who was
Speaker 1: achieving some first that I shouldn't ever say something that
Speaker 1: implied there's one way to do this, because that would
Speaker 1: have just a made it worse for everybody who came
Speaker 1: after me, but potentially would have just not advanced the
Speaker 1: issues um that I had come to realize still needed
Speaker 1: to make a lot of progress. Jane struggled in both
Speaker 1: of her roles as mom and politician. Once Chuck got
Speaker 1: sick and Jane was alone with Elizabeth, Jane woke up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night to the baby screaming.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth had a diaper rash, so Jane grabbed some cream
Speaker 1: and put it on the baby's bottom, but that just
Speaker 1: made the baby scream louder. Jane was like, what is
Speaker 1: going on? Then she realized the cream was actually ben Gay,
Speaker 1: you know that sort of icy feeling pain reliever for
Speaker 1: grown ups. Jane felt terrible at the office. Jane felt
Speaker 1: like she had so much to prove, and she worked
Speaker 1: incredibly hard. Looking back, she thinks maybe too hard. She
Speaker 1: worked through her lunch break, she asked to be fully
Speaker 1: briefed on every single issue, attend every event. She helped
Speaker 1: implement an education reform bill running between about a hundred educators.
Speaker 1: But Jane's time at the desk came at the expense
Speaker 1: of family time. Well, you know, balancing work and parenthood
Speaker 1: is really challenging, um, and you had a really high
Speaker 1: profile job. Do you think that any of these fears
Speaker 1: that people were expressing were warranted? So I didn't. I
Speaker 1: was not perfect every single day. There were definitely days
Speaker 1: when I was not a hundred percent. So if the
Speaker 1: measure was is Jane Swift a day? Um, then the
Speaker 1: criticisms might have been valid. But what isn't valid is
Speaker 1: nobody ever applied that to guys for that or other reasons.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of guys who show up hungover
Speaker 1: UM for work, or who take time off to golf
Speaker 1: or frankly, um. Here's an even better one, people who
Speaker 1: openly guys openly leave for family events and actually get
Speaker 1: credit for it because they're not giving that day to
Speaker 1: their job. And our perception of that and how we
Speaker 1: evaluate that is totally different. So I hate if what
Speaker 1: you're getting at is this, can you have it all?
Speaker 1: I hate that question. I will never engage, nor will
Speaker 1: I ever answer that question except privately to my own
Speaker 1: daughters when they ask me advice that they want to
Speaker 1: make for their own decisions, because nobody ever asks a
Speaker 1: guy whether they're having to sequence their career or if
Speaker 1: they have to make a decision based on having it all.
Speaker 1: It is a false premise. It's a sexist premise, and
Speaker 1: I wish women would stop answering the question. In a minute,
Speaker 1: Jane's job gets bigger, and so does her family stay
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Speaker 1: with Jane Swift. When we left off, she was Lieutenant
Speaker 1: governor of Massachusetts. Now, if you knew anything about Jane
Speaker 1: before this story, it might be this next thing. One
Speaker 1: particular incident with an aircraft. Yeah, I would love finally
Speaker 1: to talk about the helicopter. The helicopter incident came in
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, just few days before Thanksgiving. Jane's
Speaker 1: daughter Elizabeth, had pneumonia, but Jane was in Boston. She
Speaker 1: was supposed to lead some conference about regional airports. Governors
Speaker 1: from all over the country were flying in for the meeting.
Speaker 1: At about ten o'clock the night before that event, UM,
Speaker 1: I got a call from my husband saying that UM,
Speaker 1: they were thinking about taking Elizabeth to the e R
Speaker 1: because her temperature had gone up pretty high. Um, wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what they were gonna do. I hemmed in hot
Speaker 1: if I should go home then she had never been
Speaker 1: that ill before, but decided that, you know, I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell Governor Salucci or the press and everybody else that
Speaker 1: I had to cancel a big, high profile event because
Speaker 1: my daughter was sick. But the thing is, this event
Speaker 1: was taking place at an airport, an airport where the
Speaker 1: State Police's helicopter is based, and sometimes the governor or
Speaker 1: lieutenant governor can use that helicopter. Jane says. The protocol
Speaker 1: is simple. There's a pretty standard UH way that it's evaluated.
Speaker 1: There's UH State Police helicopter that goes on training runs
Speaker 1: fairly frequently, and if they're scheduled to do a training
Speaker 1: run and they're going in the direction that a governor
Speaker 1: lieutenant governor is going and it doesn't interfere with something else,
Speaker 1: then they put them on the helicopter. Unbeknownst to me,
Speaker 1: the troopers started to ask the State Police if there
Speaker 1: were any training runs scheduled on the helicopter. It was
Speaker 1: two days before Thanksgiving UM and they arranged for me
Speaker 1: to take the helicopter home at the end of that
Speaker 1: event and frankly um and if things had gotten bad
Speaker 1: with Elizabeth's health earlier. So the event ended and Jane
Speaker 1: boarded the helicopter at Logan Airport and the state police
Speaker 1: flew her home on a ride that was already scheduled
Speaker 1: to go in that direction. She didn't give it a
Speaker 1: second thought, but word got out and the press feasted.
Speaker 1: People were furious, why should she get flown around using
Speaker 1: taxpayer money while the rest of the state had to
Speaker 1: sludge along on the highway on one of the busiest
Speaker 1: travel days of the year. It hit lots of nerves, right,
Speaker 1: hit nerves of people who are mad at state government
Speaker 1: because of traffic on a holiday. It hit nerves of
Speaker 1: um parents who are also struggling with you know, sick children.
Speaker 1: Nerves of people who think that political officials are you know,
Speaker 1: above the law and have more assets and privileges than
Speaker 1: others um and so all of those things made it
Speaker 1: a awful political controversy. The Washington Post published a piece
Speaker 1: called super Mom's Power Trip. A local radio show dedicated
Speaker 1: an hour to the scandal. Callers gave Jane nicknames like Skypilot, Dumbo,
Speaker 1: and Jane Air. Get It Air, and the scandal did
Speaker 1: not stop with the helicopter. Chuck caught pneumonia from Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: which meant he couldn't care for her, So Jane wound
Speaker 1: up asking members of her staff to perform childcare duties.
Speaker 1: A Democratic senator at the time distributed buttons that said
Speaker 1: it takes an entire state government to raise a child.
Speaker 1: Jane later admitted, Yeah, using her staff as babysitters was
Speaker 1: not okay. Eventually, an ethics committee investigated. Jane actually requested
Speaker 1: it herself. The committee find Jane dollars for the childcare thing,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't charged with any ethics violations for the helicopter. Still,
Speaker 1: when she thinks about it, this part drives her crazy.
Speaker 1: Had I done the exact same thing as a guy,
Speaker 1: they would have never investigated, And frankly, if they applied
Speaker 1: the same standard to many other future and previous governors,
Speaker 1: they would have had the same findings. So Jane says,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, she wishes she had just taken a sick day.
Speaker 1: Despite the scandal and the penny nicknames, Jane got a promotion.
Speaker 1: Paul Salucci, her governor, got tapped by President George W.
Speaker 1: Bush to serve as the US ambassador to Canada, which
Speaker 1: meant that just months after the helicopter incident, Jane became
Speaker 1: the governor of Massachusetts while acting governor. She's the first
Speaker 1: and only woman to hold the job. So how can
Speaker 1: she do this across the Bay State? That is the
Speaker 1: question that greets Jane Swift as she readies to assume
Speaker 1: the responsibilities of governor tomorrow and soon gives birth to twins.
Speaker 1: Swift has endured a barrage of sometimes almost venomous when
Speaker 1: thought I couldn't possibly outdo myself, I became Governor of
Speaker 1: Massachusetts subscenely pregnant and became the first governor in the
Speaker 1: history of the country to give birth while in office.
Speaker 1: The acting Governor of Massachusetts is in the hospital tonight
Speaker 1: for two of the best reasons in the world, twins.
Speaker 1: Barely a month after taking office when her predecessor resigned.
Speaker 1: Thirties six year old Jane Swift gave birth by sorcerean
Speaker 1: section last night, and CBS is Jim actual Rod reports
Speaker 1: her plans to stay on the job gave birth to
Speaker 1: a political dispute. After her twins were born, Jane took
Speaker 1: an eight week maternity leave, actually working from home the
Speaker 1: entire time, her critics said the governor shouldn't be phoning
Speaker 1: it in. Then, once she was back full time in Boston,
Speaker 1: she was criticized for another reason. Here's Jane on the
Speaker 1: O'Reilly factor. You know, I think I can say this
Speaker 1: pretty safely that you're the only governor in the United
Speaker 1: States that has twin babies right now. Twin babies. Governor
Speaker 1: Angler obviously has the triplets who are born while he
Speaker 1: was in office. But mind get a little more attention,
Speaker 1: all right now? They on Beacon Hill with you, do
Speaker 1: they get they get taken to the capital and all that.
Speaker 1: No they don't. They stay back in Williamstown. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: on the farm where they are well away from the
Speaker 1: craziness that is massive. Take on you though, little infants
Speaker 1: just born, and you're in Boston, and if people don't
Speaker 1: know the Commonwealth you live. Your house is on completely
Speaker 1: the other side of the stage about or our drive through,
Speaker 1: our drive you. The good thing is that it gets
Speaker 1: me out to talk to citizens across the whole Commonwealth.
Speaker 1: I probably do many. Jane tries to change the subject,
Speaker 1: but O'Reilly's got one thing on his mind. But I
Speaker 1: mission you, I see my babies a lot more than
Speaker 1: folks would. UM. I we find it. It seems to
Speaker 1: me like I catch twenty two, which is exactly the
Speaker 1: dilemma that I think all working mothers are in. UM.
Speaker 1: You just can't seem to win at this. UM, do
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions of how to win at this?
Speaker 1: One of the lessons I learned after my oldest daughter
Speaker 1: was born is not to give oxygen to the whole
Speaker 1: family debate, which is really hard. Every new mother wants
Speaker 1: to talk about their kids and have them engaged. But
Speaker 1: unlike male politicians, I stopped letting people take pictures of
Speaker 1: my children. I stopped bringing them to events even that
Speaker 1: we're appropriate to bring children too. So if I went
Speaker 1: to a county fair, I didn't bring my family. UM.
Speaker 1: Once the twins were born, so UM. But really walling
Speaker 1: off and not talking about the twins and the little
Speaker 1: girls really helped in just giving the public and the
Speaker 1: press talk about the work was one of the ways
Speaker 1: that I was more successful. UM. Oprah actually called and
Speaker 1: asked if she could do an interview from my working
Speaker 1: maternity leave. Alright, Q clip, Yeah, there is no clip.
Speaker 1: Jane didn't do it. Who says no to Oprah? But
Speaker 1: my press person's point was, if you say yes to Oprah,
Speaker 1: you can't say no to the Boston Globe and the
Speaker 1: Boston Herald and all the local media. So we really
Speaker 1: didn't do any of those feel good family stories. While
Speaker 1: Jane was in office, she accomplished a lot. She managed
Speaker 1: a financial crisis. She overhauled the state's foster care system.
Speaker 1: She helped lead Massachusetts through the aftermath of nine eleven,
Speaker 1: worked with forty five governors to urge Congress to create
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security. Managing all of at while
Speaker 1: being the mother of three small children took some juggling.
Speaker 1: I would often get up really early. UM many days
Speaker 1: I tried to run, usually at about five o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. I would get in my car with troopers
Speaker 1: who drove me to and from Boston. I would usually
Speaker 1: spend the first half hour reading the newspapers. UM, I'd
Speaker 1: make some phone calls, and I'd get ready to do events.
Speaker 1: I'd usually spend about half my day visiting events, meeting
Speaker 1: with school kids, giving speeches. UM. I'd meet with my staff,
Speaker 1: talk about issues that were coming up, usually meet with
Speaker 1: some legislators, try to persuade them to do what I
Speaker 1: wanted them to do. About four o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: I'd start doing more events outside of the state House,
Speaker 1: probably do a fundraiser too late in the afternoon, and
Speaker 1: on good days, around seven or eight o'clock, I'd be
Speaker 1: headed back to the Berkshire's, usually with a couple hundred
Speaker 1: page briefing book that I would get to read on
Speaker 1: the two and a half hour drive back home. By
Speaker 1: the time she got home, her daughters would usually be asleep.
Speaker 1: Jane and her husband arranged for her to eat breakfast
Speaker 1: with the girls and take half days here and there Sundays,
Speaker 1: though we're always set aside for family. Jane's girls are
Speaker 1: teenagers now, and in some ways her husband has a
Speaker 1: closer relationship with them. He's been spending a lot of
Speaker 1: nights these days hold up in the garage, managing his
Speaker 1: feeling is over becoming an empty nester. Jane wasn't around
Speaker 1: to chaperone field trips, big cookies, or attend holiday singalongs,
Speaker 1: but she did planned school fundraisers from airplanes. She says
Speaker 1: that her years in politics have made her a good
Speaker 1: role model for her daughters, and she enjoys sharing with
Speaker 1: them what she's learned about education and policy, about how
Speaker 1: other people's lives are different from theirs. I know there
Speaker 1: are lots and lots of parents in this world and
Speaker 1: moms in this world who have to work and leave
Speaker 1: their kids home every day for jobs they hate. And
Speaker 1: I'm really lucky that that's never been me. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how I would do that, you know, Jane,
Speaker 1: we started this interview with you telling me that if
Speaker 1: you had known how people would have reacted to uh,
Speaker 1: knowing about your pregnancies, um and young children when you
Speaker 1: when you had started running, if you had known about
Speaker 1: how the public could react to that, that you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have done it. Um. Do you regret having done it?
Speaker 1: Not a day? And I encourage young women all the
Speaker 1: time to run. So here's you know. I would have
Speaker 1: been intimidated, um, and that would have been too bad.
Speaker 1: And I would have you not done it because I
Speaker 1: would have thought it couldn't be done, you know, not
Speaker 1: a lot of times are are things that you could
Speaker 1: say a decade ago that you continue to believe. But
Speaker 1: I believed then I was a better governor because I
Speaker 1: was a mother. And I was a better mother because
Speaker 1: I was a governor. I still believe that today, and
Speaker 1: I still believe today that for me and the personality
Speaker 1: I have and the choices I've made, I'm better as
Speaker 1: a mom as a working mom. Our family is better
Speaker 1: off with me as a working mom. I am announcing
Speaker 1: this afternoon my decision to end my campaign for governor.
Speaker 1: Jane doesn't work in politics anymore. Serving as governor of
Speaker 1: this great Commonwealth has been an honor and a privilege,
Speaker 1: and one for which I'll always be grateful. You ultimately
Speaker 1: decided not to run for re election as governor in
Speaker 1: two thousand two. Why not because Mitt Romney could write
Speaker 1: a check for twenty five million dollars and beat me.
Speaker 1: These days, Jane works in the private sector for an
Speaker 1: education technology company. As a boss, Jane tries to apply
Speaker 1: some of the lessons that she learned in politics. She's
Speaker 1: hired women and mothers because she knows firsthand the time
Speaker 1: management skills and perspective that they bring to the table.
Speaker 1: She herself takes sick days in vacation, and she encourages
Speaker 1: other leaders to be transparent about when they take time
Speaker 1: off for family. Jane's story, I think is a reminder
Speaker 1: that it's often hard to tell when people are being sexist,
Speaker 1: like we're people criticizing Jane just because she was a mom,
Speaker 1: or because it was their job as constituents to scrutinize politicians,
Speaker 1: or maybe just because Jane made some mistakes. Next week,
Speaker 1: our series continues, and we're going to get into why
Speaker 1: Americans discriminate so much against working moms. In the first place,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how our work culture is not set
Speaker 1: up for working mothers or anyone really. Okay, now, we
Speaker 1: were so excited about this series that we teamed up
Speaker 1: with the world's largest independent design firm, Pentagram to rebrand
Speaker 1: the Working Mom. They made a video just for us
Speaker 1: that you can share to help get the word out
Speaker 1: about how badly we need to end discrimination against working moms.
Speaker 1: You can find that video at the homepage for this
Speaker 1: series It's a Real Mother dot Com. You can also
Speaker 1: use it's a Real Mother as a hashtag, like hashtag
Speaker 1: it's a Real mother when bosses eliminate a pregnant woman's position.
Speaker 1: And if you just plain old, need help or want
Speaker 1: to help out, We've got a great list of resources
Speaker 1: all at it's a Real Mother dot Com. You can
Speaker 1: also share your thoughts with us in the comments on
Speaker 1: this episode. That's episode. This podcast is produced by me
Speaker 1: Hilary Frank with Abigail Kiel and Kristen Clark. We had
Speaker 1: production help today from Jackie Sagiko. We are edited by
Speaker 1: Peter Clowney. Our engineers are Pete Carram and Gard O'Connell.
Speaker 1: Our technical director is the Reverend John Delore. Our music
Speaker 1: is performed by Hot Moms dot gov and directed by
Speaker 1: Alison Layton Brown. We all I use music today by
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Speaker 1: on the Longest Shortest Time, we ask why why would
Speaker 1: we set up these systems that would disadvantage so many
Speaker 1: people who could do really great work, all because why
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Speaker 1: Longest Shortest Time Takeover. I hope you liked hearing from
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Speaker 1: episode of The Katie Curic Podcast featuring me, Katie Curic
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