When women and men can shed an equal quantity of tears in public, that's when we'll have equal power.
Interpretation
Emotional expression should not be limited by gender, and true equality will be achieved when both men and women can express vulnerability openly.
This quote by Madeleine M. Kunin emphasizes the importance of emotional equality between genders. It suggests that societal norms around gender roles have restricted emotional expression, leading to imbalances in power dynamics. When both men and women can freely express their emotions, including sadness, it indicates a cultural shift towards genuine equality, where no gender feels constrained by stereotypes about how they should behave or feel.
In practice
In a seminar discussing gender roles, this quote illustrates the need for emotional freedom for all genders.
It's time for male leaders to not only ask for binders of qualified women, but to re-write the definition of 'qualified.' The best man for the job, may in fact, be a woman, whose biography is not traditional, but is rich with experiences and skills that are not necessarily learned either in school or on the job.
It's time for women to wake up, to use the power of the vote, to honor the suffragists who chained themselves to the White House fence so that women could vote.
Any smart executive understands that to find the best talent she has to explore new territory that lies beyond familiar geography. That applies not only to gender, but also to race, religion, background and age.
What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.
Legislative proposals that would enable an employer to determine whether or not a woman's insurance would cover the cost of birth control strikes women as particularly bizarre. Is the boss going to take care of the children that are conceived accidentally? Stop treating us like children. Women are grown ups.
What some men don't understand is that by opposing policies to reduce violence, promote equal pay and universal healthcare and voting to limit access to contraception and legal abortion, they are relegating women to another century, a time when men ruled exclusively and women were considered property and had to be guided by a firm masculine hand.
Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse.
The one thing I would say is, I do think women are evaluated differently than men. How we look, what is our age? Do you see a ton of 55-year-old women in sports television? No. But there are men in their 60s and 70s across many networks who are still in sports television.
Women, who are a majority of the peoples of the earth, are indispensable to the accumulation of the kind of social capital that is conducive to development, peace, justice and civility.
This idea of doing it all is the enemy of equality, not the path to do it. It's impossible to do two full-time jobs, and an impossible definition of success is just another way of making women feel like failures... Any definition of success has to include social policies that honor families and men who raise babies as much as women do.
Women have much to tell us. Women are capable of seeing things in a different angle. Women can pose questions that we men cannot understand.
If you're one of the only women on a set - if it's you and a bunch of men - you feel like your value doesn't come from your thoughts and your talent and what you say: your value comes from how you look and how you're perceived by the men around you.
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