Hello, im bonnie erbe. Welcome to to the contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives. Up first, flex time. Are dads the new moms . We all know the answer is no, but theres some amazing new Research Showing men are using more flex time than we would have thought. A new report by the working Mother Research institute shows nearly eight out of ten men say they have Flexible Work schedules and nearly the same amount say they feel somewhat or very comfortable using flex time. This does not mean men are doing half the house or child care. Labor Department Figures show on a typical day last year, almost half of women did housework, versus fewer than one in five of men. And in households with young children, women spent an hour each day caring for children, while men spent an average of 26 minutes. When it comes to parental leave, another report this year shows the majority of fathers take only about one day of leave time to bond with their new children for every month the typical mother takes. Is so dr. Avis jonesdeweever anything that allows greater workfamily balance is a good thing. Speaking of workfamily balance, corporations will wise up to this. Corporations are people, too. Theyre going to do more for women. I think that its going to help women be able to take that time because corporations will understand the worklife balance. I think its great for us as women to welcome men to the conversation. Earlier this year, max a ceo of a Big Tech Company publicly stepped down as being ceo because he said he wanted more time with his three kids and his wife. I think as women we need to make sure that we welcome men to the worklife balance situation. Is flex time and men adopting it changing it from a womans issue to just an issue, workplace issue . I dont think its going to change it. Its great that men are taking flex time but women are still looked at negatively when they leave work early. When men leave work youre a good dad, good for you picking up a child f. A woman leaves work then its like, shes lacks on the job thats still the reality for many women in the workplace. Agreed . Its going to take time i agree with that. Take time to change that mentality the culture that is out there, the society that we have that women are ashamed leaving work early to go take care of the kids. Companies are offering more flex time options for men and women and theyre offering a lot of options to try to attract and retain good employees. We saw earlier apple and facebook came out going to offer benefit of freezing eggs to keep good female talent. I think this is another example of private Sector Companies trying to allow more flexibility to attract and retain good employees. I wish the data had shown when men take flex time they use it for family, for child care. Use it to go play golf versus how women im sure there are a lot of women who take flex time use it for their hobbies. If they dont have kids or whatever. But do you think theres a difference there . I definitely think its a difference. I think when women use flex time they tend to use it to help them better balance work and family. But men have more freedom in terms of how they use their time. We have to hold men at accountable for that. How do you do that . I do it by choosing who i choose to spend my life with. If you dont respect me enough to know that when were in the household and both are working that we both have certain duties to maintain and you dont deserve my time. Thats very brave because there are lot of women who get married, have auto child, whatever, say i cant convince him to do house work. I cant convince him to cook. Its only fair that you use your power as a woman in a relationship to make those choices. I see one good study on this by steven rose, a professor wrote a book, he studied when men versus women in academia did when they took paternity or Maternity Leave. It found that men often published more after taking paternity leave. You see that theyre using that differently. Leaves questions about what do these family poll shes do how do they impact people in the workplace. I think it matters, it has to come from the top down. If you offer people flex then look down on them when they take flex leave or you as boss dont take flex leave whether you are a man or woman then that trickles down to the workplace. So i think that the idea, if youre leaving on paternity leave should you be taking care of your children, right . I dont want but i think that a culture that you need to create in the workplace. That says that this is your time to bond with your newborn, to bond with your adopted child that might have come in to the family. This is is your time to be with the family. We dont have any expectations that youre going to be doing anything other than that, enjoy this time. That has to come from the home. I dont think any amount of sensitivity training or training in the workplace could get men to wise up realize their role at home and gender roles are changing, it has to start with the woman, saying, you ultimate to help out youre getting this leaflets do this together. We do semen lagging in terms of taking paternity leave versus women taking Maternity Leave. How long untail gap closes. Any ideas . Going to be a long time. I think we are lagging behind generally speaking as a country. I was just at conference couple weeks ago in germany speaking with women from around the world they were shocked to find out of course that america we have absolutely no guaranteed paid Maternity Leave, shocked. Women who come from countries where they have three years of paid leave. And so really, what country is that . That was sweden. It is amazing to see that we lag behind the rest of the world what theyre pushing for now, places like sweden, places like germany pushing for now gender neutral leave because theyre saying what happens at the end of the day is that the women are taking the Maternity Leave that men just take participation in raising their children. Did you find out at this conference, i have heard that there are some leading European Countries who are requiring men to take paternity leave. Time to push that through several parliaments at the moment. Interesting. Will this affect the gender gap and pay . That is bigger question. I want to jump in on the policy question, mandating more paid leave for men and women. I they we have to be careful the economy still struggling, do we want more government regulation on the economy. I think we should be careful about more regulation there really encouraging businesses to hire people and not put more constraints. We want to do more than just talk about, really caring about families, put money where our mouths are. Make sure that we create environment that we can provide children the opportunity to grow up with the best opportunities to be the b that they can be in life. We need to support families with the Financial Base that they need. To be able to be there when their children need them. Americans are addicted to work. We rank lowest in people taking paid legal thats available for vacation. Were low on that list. Its not looked on positively. If we take leave that is shown is that were not strong workers. The very idea that countries that are, that have wonderful economies, that are prospering and doing well provide all of this leave for women, for men being in the workplace just shows that you it does work. We want to hold on to our ideals that we want do that because its going to be intervening in peoples private lives and government shouldnt do that. Reel flee because they intervolleyball in whole lot of other ways that are negative. This one is saying we care about families, we care about you. They work harder. Thats the reality and many studies have shown that. That will give you something to think about let us know what you think. Please follow me on twitter bonnieerbe. From the new dad to the new conservative politics. Republicans claim the socalled war on women is over and female voters realize republican candidates arent waging war on them. But as we get close to election day, a tv war for women voters has erupted in proportions never witnessed before. Even conservative stalwart, republican senator Mitch Mcconnell of kentucky, is claiming to be a womens rights advocate as he stumps for womens votes. Mcconnell, whos also Senate Minority leader, is not seen by most political advocates as a hero of the womens movement. Hes in danger of losing his senate seat to alison lundgren grimes, kentuckys secretary of state. A recent poll showed his lead tightening from two to one point. Hence, this rather unusual pitch on the part of a conservative republican and his democratic opponents response wants me to think that im not good enough. But i couldnt get a job unless washington passed more laws. I cant graduate College Without raising your taxes. She wants me to believe that strong women and strong values are incat glib she thinks ill vote for candidate who looks like me rather than the one who represents glee as a strong kentucky woman im voting for Mitch Mcconnell. Im voting to Mitch Mcconnell. He believes in me and works for us. Im Mitch Mcconnell i approve this message. Im Allison Grimes this is eileen woods. Here is her question for senator mcconnell. Why did you vote against violence against women act and enforcing equal pay for women . I can never get him to answer this one either. I approve this message because senator you must be forgetting that over half the voters in kentucky are women like eileen. Do you see this as i see this, which is historic, about fell through the floor when i saw Mitch Mcconnell running an ad wooing women voters. I think its beautiful. Why not. Why shouldnt he. Like they said in the ad allison counting on these women to vote for them. Shes run in to a lot of trouble, shes a flawed candidate. Wouldnt answer whether she voted for president obama or not. I applaud mitch for pulling it all the stops and i think the war on women is over. Thats funny. If the war on women was over we would have pay equity right now. Why is it. Thats very good question. Why has Mitch Mcconnell and frankly most the number hold on. Not just republicans. Republicans, mainstream republicans. Ive not seen an election ever, ive covered everyone since 76, where the ads trying to get the womens vote which goes democratic. Because theyre scared to death. Mitch mcconnell should not be running for his life right now. She not have as a stalwart of the senate, should not be within a point reach of democratic candidate in kentucky. Its because frankly i want to say the people in kentucky are probably sick and tired of Mitch Mcconnell having plan to take down the president is actually not a plan for the country. Thats the reality. And i think that his ad is almost like a spoof to me, when he says, Mitch Mcconnell cares about women. Mitch mcconnell voted against every measure that would actually matter to women. Violence against women act, pay equity, leave for women. Mitch mcconnell doesnt care about women. He cares about getting votes and he only wants to talk about women when its an election time. Out of an election, where are his policies that help us. Will this draw women to the polls, we might want to make note of the fact that all the women in the ad were white. Thats the vote he needs, the white married womens vote that traditionally goes republican. List all those issues, a recent poll, the number one issue for kentucky voters both male and female is jobs in the economy. Cant lose sight of that. Also you talk about him trying to reach women hes been working on it throughout the campaign, thats why he was ahead with women at one point. Hes got a great Surrogacy Program and 54 of his staff is women. He has one one of the highest percentages in washington, d. C. And lot of these issues are more complicated than i think were making like pay equity issue. Mitch mccontinental is republican how is were talking about jobs and the economy. In order to have a Strong Economy people need to have jobs and people need to be paid what theyre worth. And women arent paid what theyre worth and havent been. When you look at women of color then add in Sexual Orientation and gender identity the keeps falling off the table. You want to buy in to it . I believe numbers. Numbers are real. So thats where hes great with pr he has a great pr campaign ill give him that. When it comes to facts, facts are not there to lift what you hes saying. When you put the rubber to the road, hes not there. Relates so specific issues that women need and talk about the economy, we have 55 job growth, created ten million jobs under this administration, everything that Mitch Mcconnell and republicans have done to stop any sort of push by this president to even expand that number. That compares great to the previous president lets not even go there. When this president came to office, we have turned that around. So the facts i do want to get before we run out of time i wanted to get in to this election and fact that conservatives are now campaigning hard for the womens vote. Is this the year when womens vote has mattered more. Because last year march 2061 the rnc released their growth and opportunity project, the finding basically an autopsy report of what went wrong in 2012 that made a number of candidates wise up. Was the womens vote part that have . Absolutely. Was an effort to appeal to lower income women and women of color which traditionally go democrat. Was that part of it in the. That was absolutely a part. Of course, 10 million Outreach Program that the rnc has because of those issues. I think were going to see lot of candidates as we get closer, very close to election day now wise up and show. I want to point out senator in montana he voted for violence against women act, he has ads out, i encourage people to look them up. Kentucky is kentucky. The south is the south. What is happening across the country the tide is returning. They know what is wrong with the party. Will it work . You know i hope that people sort of get past the facade get past the cute little commercials and log at peoples record. If women take the opportunity to look at the records of those people who are running they would know whether or not really if that candidate is foregleam the commercial was on his record. Talking about richard sells. Thats not kentucky. In general in terms of all candidates it is important for us to look at their record not just the month before its time to pull the lever or its important to see, have these people been on our side . All right. Behind the headlines both parties say young, unmarried women will be crucial in deciding many close races. We spoke with two young female strategists one from each party to hear what they would be doing to woo this critical voting bloc. Republicans have a longstanding problem appealing to young women. Young unmarried women have voted democratic by a wide margin for several years. Since 2004, democrats running for congress have taken at least 63 of their vote. And barack obama won 70 of this demographics vote in 2008, and 68 in 2012. To hold their senate majority, democrats will rely on this demographic in the midterm elections. But, while all people are less likely to vote during midterms, the dropoff is steepest for single women. They tend to vote in president ial election years, but the Democratic Party and Political Parties in general are trying to get turnout in midterms. I think this will be a year where they do that because so many issues that affect them are key issues circulating right now with that happening both parties are beefing up their efforts to reach out to young women to turn them out to the polls. According to democratic strategist atima omara, those issues include pay discrimination, minimum wage and contraception. A Democratic Senate might say republicans wish these young women simply stayed home on election day. But according to republican strategist chelsi henry, the gop does want young single women turning out to the polls and voting for her party. After the 2012 elections, it was our second time losing to president obama, our eyes were wide open to the fact that something had to be done differently. And its not that our message needs to be changed, its how we message to these different communities. Republicans are hopeful that lingering dissatisfaction with president barack obama will discourage young women from voting democrat. Henry says the economy is particularly harsh for women and the president is at fault. The Current Administration and their principles have only worsened what weve seen among women. You have more young women went into poverty under obama, not more young women who were not receiving the pay that they should deserve. You have more young women who have not seen pay increases in several years. These are the things that matter to women. The administration has done a good a job as it can with dealing with the economy, has really tried to be aggressive and pushing forward jobs initiatives, stimulus, college affordability. The economy was at its worst and college. Theyre at a stalemate with congress, the president has been left with executive orders omara says the democrats main obstacle in getting young people to the voting booths isnt dissatisfaction with obama, but frustration with the entire political process. Theyre turned off by the political process, and the parties arguing. We as young dems are aware of that, were not happy either about the political process, because it doesnt benefit young people overall. So we talk about the issues, thats what young people care about, thats what excites them. Thats what we all care about. The republicans, meanwhile, want to shake off the perception that they are not for young women. The face of the party has been older caucasian males, yet the truth of the matter is thats not what defines the Republican Party. Whats most important . Its