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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the differences in perception and experiences between men and women.
Madeleine M. Kunin emphasizes that societal expectations and self-perception can differ significantly between genders. What may be effective or accepted for men may not hold true for women, illustrating the necessity of understanding and acknowledging these differences in how individuals view themselves and are perceived by others.
In practice
In a discussion about gender roles at a community meeting.
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.
When women and men can shed an equal quantity of tears in public, that's when we'll have equal power.
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.
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.
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
Everything that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world in which men are at the center of the human enterprise and women are at the margin "helping' them. Such a world does not exist - never has.
The more I was treated as a woman, the more woman I became. A adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I found it so myself.
Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.
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.
Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.
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