The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.
Interpretation
The lack of women in leadership roles is primarily caused by discrimination in society and the workplace.
This quote highlights the systemic barriers that women face in achieving leadership positions, attributing their underrepresentation to discrimination both in social contexts and professional environments. It suggests that addressing these biases is crucial for empowering women and enabling their advancement in leadership roles.
In practice
In a speech about gender equality in the workplace.
The only difference between men and women in science is that the women have the babies. This makes it more difficult for women in science but should not be seen as a barrier, for it is merely another challenge to be overcome.
We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home.
We bequeath to you, the next generation, our knowledge but also our problems. While we still live, let us join hands, hearts and minds to work together for their solution so that your world will be better than ours and the world of your children even better.
I feel it is now my duty to speak to young women, to encourage them to have careers and, particularly, careers in science.
I wasn't handed college or graduate school or anything else on a silver platter. I had to work very hard, but I did it because I wanted to. That's the real key to happiness. I think unhappy people are those who feel that circumstances are forcing them into a pattern. Happy people are not slaves to the system.
They told me that, as a woman, I'd never get into graduate school in physics, so they got me a job as a secretary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and promised that, if I were a good girl, I would take courses there.
I always say that my job is not to think about today. My job is to look around the corner and feel and see what's coming, and then warn everybody else.
Successful organizing is not built on self-interest but rather on dignity and a sense of purpose.
I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, and to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than to have undertaken this government.
A leader is not someone who says: Follow me.......A leader is someone who says: I'll go first.
Good generalship is a realization that... you've got to try and figure out how to accomplish your mission with a minimum loss of human life.
Supposing Catherine Lim was writing about me and not the prime minister... She would not dare, right? Because my posture, my response has been such that nobody doubts that if you take me on, I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in a cul de sac... Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a Chinese society.
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