Maria Shriver’s speech about fear, dealing with her mother’s illness and watching her daughters move out brought her audience at the Women’s Conference to tears in Long Beach on Wednesday.
“I’ve concluded that fear keeps us from who we want to be,” said Shriver, California’s first lady.
Shriver said fear can make women think they are not capable or strong enough to overcome positions and stereotypes women are generally placed in.
“I know that fear can paralyze us,” Shriver said.
The conference, officially titled “The California Governor and First Lady’s Conference on Women,” provided a forum of diverse speakers, such as actress Jennifer Lopez, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, billionaire Warren Buffett — also known as the Oracle of Omaha and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway — and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
Shriver described her own personal experiences with fear, such as her endorsing Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries. Shriver didn’t want women to think she was turning her back on them.
“This was, I believed, our moment,” she said.
She feared coming out for Obama, because of her husband’s support for McCain, and feared what women across the nation would think.
It was one of Shriver’s daughters who encouraged her to overcome all of her fears and to do what she believes in.
“I identified [with] his call for a new kind of politics,” Shriver said.
She emphasized being afraid isn’t a bad emotion, because without fear a person can’t have courage, and it is getting through those hardships and stepping through the fear that helps establish a person’s true identity.
“Feeling afraid isn’t weakness, it is the beginning of strength,” Shriver said.
At age 52, Shriver said, “I’m still learning how to be me.”
Several speakers discussed the “glass ceiling” women have often faced.
“I think the glass ceiling is being shattered,” Rice said.
Rice said her main concern for women is in the future of hard sciences and technology.
Rice said there isn’t any particular road to success, a fact she realized as a failed pianist major who eventually took an international politics class and fell in love with the subject material.
“Don’t let somebody else define who you want to be,” Rice said. “Do what you love.”
Rice said the state of education makes her “terrified” and sees it as a national security issue.
“We are not going to be competitive in a global economy that is very competitive,” Rice said, especially, “if [we are] not properly educating all of our people.”
Indra Nooyi, CEO and chair of PepsiCo, said that the glass is transparent and breakable.
“The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women,” Nooyi said. Women “have to learn how to trust other women a lot more.”
Schwarzenegger, Buffett and Chris Matthews, host of Hardball on MSNBC, contributed multi-tasking as one of the most amazing aspects of women.
“If you really watch women and how they function at home and the kind of multitasking that they do — I’m absolutely blown away, for instance, by Maria,” Schwarzenegger said. He added, “She is so unbelievable with the multitasking. And I think women have that capability more so, much more so than men have. So they are maybe superior, who knows?”
The weight of financial burdens was also attributed to women.
“[My father] thought he was the boss,” Matthews said. “And, you know, my mom was the genius.” All three speakers credited women to dealing with financial issues more than they are given credit for.
“[My mother] was the mental brain of the family,” Matthews said. “The checkbook would never have been even looked at if it hadn’t been for her.”