Politico is running a piece today co-authored by Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice exploring The Shriver Report and its implications for women in the workplace.

Greater equality, they point out, “empowers women with the freedom of choice — the universal right to determine their own destinies, careers, beliefs and family structures.”

Excerpts below, full piece here

According to the Shriver report, the rise of women in the workplace has been accompanied by a significant shift in social attitudes, including acceptance by men of women’s professional roles and support for the idea that women should be entitled to equal pay for equal work. Men are also more likely to agree that the challenge of meeting both economic needs and child-care responsibilities is a joint one, requiring the time and energy of both partners.

As members of the advisory committee for the study, who together make up the entire pool of former female secretaries of state, we find that the most intriguing aspects of the transformational shifts documented in this study are the implications for women across the globe. The changing landscape of the American family and work force has been made possible only by extending equal opportunities for women in the classroom, in the boardroom and at the ballot box.

When women are treated as chattel, however, the symptoms of social and moral decay are almost certain to spread. A society that is not decent to women is not a decent society, and an indecent society is a dangerous one. Men who tyrannize women are prone, in time, to extend their despotism to social and political rivals of every description. In our 21st-century world, such societies ultimately pose the greatest threats to global security. In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s repression of women festered into a society that condoned terrorists who turned to violence against innocents as a form of political expression. They must not be allowed to succeed.