The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything is a 454-page report which opens with comments by Maria Shriver and closes with an epilog by Oprah Winfrey.

The most insightful part of this document is the chapter by Suzie Orman, beginning at page 232: Money Matters. Ms. Orman’s most sage advice certainly upstages all the other wish lists and candy-cane dreaming of the other chapters:

"Until women accept the need to make themselves a priority, they will continue to struggle to find their way in the new world order."

Ms. Orman echoes the advice of Eunice Shriver, whom Maria Shriver quotes, but whom she apparently does not understand:

"Use adversity to give your life purpose and mission," Eunice Shriver told her children. "Turn your adversity into advantage and opportunity."

Instead, Ms. Shriver’s introduction is a litany of complaints that, in summary, says: "Momma’s not happy:"

"I learned women are hungry for something that’s missing in their lives—a place to connect.

• They say they feel increasingly isolated, invisible, stressed, and misunderstood.
  
• They say the news media, where I’d worked for 30 years, don’t accurately reflect their lives anymore.
  
• They say women on TV shows and in the movies certainly don’t either.
  
• They can’t believe how out-of touch government is with who women are today and what they need to survive.
  
• They can’t understand how slow business has been in figuring out how to retain, support, and promote women.
  
• They lament that many faith institutions want women to be volunteers, but won’t give them a seat at the table, let alone a place at the altar.
  
• They’re terrified how quickly their family finances could be wiped out by a child’s catastrophic illness or a parent’s Alzheimer’s.
  
• And they’re exasperated that pundits and pollsters continue to jam women into convenient boxes with labels like 'soccer moms' or 'security moms.'"
  

So, first of all, A Woman’s Nation is one bitchy nation.

Part 1: The Economic Setting describes the "new world order" that exists now that women constitute almost half of the workplace. What the report does not address is all those other economic sectors where women have represented over half the headcount for years: the teaching profession, the healthcare profession, and the real estate profession. If those sectors represent what happened when women become the majority, that should speak volumes about what we can expect now that women represent half the workforce overall.

"At one level, everything has changed. And yet so much more change is needed. This report contemplates what a new America should look like after we finally embrace this important new dynamic in our lives and the changes it has caused in our homes and businesses."

Ah yes, once we "embrace" the new world order, everything will change. Whose fault is all this malaise? Part 2 places the blame squarely on all The Institutions: Government, Immigrants (??), Health, Education, Business, Faith (??), and Media -- all of those evil things that have to change to accommodate A Woman’s Nation. They’re all to blame, except of course Faith, which provides women with a safe harbor. Yeah, right, as if faith-based initiatives really helped women get the equal pay they deserved or protected them from being overused free labor. Faith institutions are charity-based, where women find comfort and solace in an otherwise ugly profit-oriented world. "Get thee to a nunnery!"

Part 3 is Let the Conversation Begin: Men, A Man’s Viewpoint, A Woman’s Viewpoint, and (of course) Marriage. So after all the above research and data, it still comes down to what women want out of their marriage -– more help.

"Business owners and political leaders have been getting a free ride on the backs of women, taking advantage of their unpaid and underpaid labor. We will have a women’s nation when: Our laws, public policies, and social institutions make it possible for women and men to move readily between these two realms (work and family)."

Ok, do I understand it correctly? All we have to do is change all the laws, public policies, and social institutions so women and men can move freely between work and family, and THEN women can expect equal pay for equal work.

Part 4 is The Latest From the American People (a survey of 3,413 adults.) including deep-dish questions such as, "Are you confused about the way men and women are supposed to interact these days."

And Oprah Winfrey wraps it all up for us. Ms. Winfrey who is the one who presents woman after woman bemoaning their horrible lives on daytime television, advocating on behalf of diets, beauty treatments, shopping until we drop, and young girls’ beauty encampments --- way over there in Africa. SHE cites Sojourner Truth -– one woman among many who put herself where her values were: on the front line of leadership. Sojourner Truth truly was a woman of courage willing to make change happen by the work of her own hands, not simply whining that "others" do something first.