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The promise of equality is not the same as true equality.
“More women in power.”
Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.
the gains we have made are not enough and may even be slipping.
Young women internalize societal cues about what defines “appropriate” behavior and, in turn, silence themselves.
The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies.
We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers.
Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.
be ambitious not just in pursuing their dreams but in aspiring to become leaders in their fields.
the real issue was not that I felt like a fraud, but that I could feel something deeply and profoundly and be completely wrong.
I could challenge the notion that I was constantly headed for failure.
You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around.
When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.
shocking because no one would ever admit to stereotyping on the basis of gender and unsurprising because clearly we do.
In order to protect ourselves from being disliked, we question our abilities and downplay our achievements, especially in the presence of others.
the paradox of advising women to change the world by adhering to biased rules and expectations.
My hope, of course, is that we won’t have to play by these archaic rules forever and that eventually we can all just be ourselves.
Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby.
Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders—including female leaders themselves.
Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us.
It is difficult to distinguish between the aspects of a job that are truly necessary and those that are not.
“Whoever has power takes over the noun—and the norm—while the less powerful get an adjective.”
employees were judged not by their objective performance, but by the subjective standard of how well they fit in.
we needed to be able to talk about gender without people thinking we were crying for help, asking for special treatment, or about to sue.
The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same.
Men at the top are often unaware of the benefits they enjoy simply because they’re men, and this can make them blind to the disadvantages associated with being a woman.
Women lower down also believe that men at the top are entitled to be there, so they try to play by the rules and work harder to advance rather than raise questions or voice concerns about the possibility of bias.
The goal is to give women something men tend to receive automatically—the benefit of the doubt.
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.”
Gender should neither magnify nor excuse rude and dismissive treatment. We should expect professional behavior, and even kindness, from everyone.
feminism wasn’t supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competitions over who is raising children better, organizing more cooperative marriages, or getting less sleep. It was supposed to make us free—to give us not only choices but the ability to make these choices without constantly feeling that we’d somehow gotten it wrong.”
most women are not focused on changing social norms for the next generation but simply trying to get through each day.
The first wave of women who ascended to leadership positions were few and far between, and to survive, many focused more on fitting in than on helping others. The current wave of female leadership is increasingly willing to speak up.
companies with more women in leadership roles have better work-life policies, smaller gender gaps in executive compensation, and more women in midlevel management.
“Our job is not to make young women grateful. It is to make them ungrateful so they keep going.”
I believe women can lead more in the workplace. I believe men can contribute more in the home. And I believe that this will create a better world, one where half our institutions are run by women and half our homes are run by men.
