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.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote addresses the challenges women face in science due to traditional roles in childbirth, viewing those challenges as opportunities for resilience.
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow highlights the unique challenges that women in the scientific field encounter, primarily due to the societal expectations tied to motherhood. She emphasizes that while having children may complicate a woman's career in science, it should not be perceived as a setback but rather as a challenge that can be courageously met and overcome, reinforcing the need for persistence and resourcefulness in the face of adversity.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a conference about gender equality in STEM, this quote can be shared to inspire female scientists.
More from Rosalyn Sussman Yalow
All quotes →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.
The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.
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.
Similar quotes
Molecular evidense suggests that our common ancestor with the chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between 5 and 7 million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.
Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed: It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe.
A scientist is as weak and human as any man, but the pursuit of science may ennoble him even against his will.
Most scientific or engineering discoveries would never become successful products without contributions from other scientists or engineers. Every major invention is the child of far-flung parents who may never meet.
We know so much about planets and the universe and small particles and we do not know anything about the inner state of our own bodies, we do not know about this microcosm we have inside our skin.
Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify.