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.
We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can in the world. And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way.
I always tell people, good coaches are a dime a dozen. Good coaches that are good people, good husbands, good fathers, that love their players and are passionate about doing things in a way that I believe is important, that pool gets real small.
I have nothing to do with opinions. I deal only with armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors.
In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.
I had worked hard my entire career to establish myself as a leader. But I wasn't a leader until I was perceived as one.
Leadership is standing with your people. People say you have to live to fight another day, but sometimes you have to show you are a true leader.
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