1. We don’t so much want to see a female Einstein become an assistant professor. We want a woman schlemiel to get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.
Bella Abzug (1920-98) U.S. politician, lawyer, and campaigner. 1977. Quoted in America Chronicle (Lois Gordon and Alan Gordon; 1987)
2. The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.
Bella Abzug (1920-98) U.S. politician, lawyer, and campaigner. Bella! (1972)
3. Economic empowerment of women is a key to advancement and not only for women. Economies which engage both genders in activity and decision making at all levels have stronger markets.
- Y. Amoako, Ghanain economist and executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. “Enhancing Productivity and Competitiveness: Positioning the SADC Region in the Global Marketplace” (February 1997)
4. People come up to you at a party and say, “Aren’t you bright?” It isn’t a compliment.
Anonymous. Said by a female director of a London investment bank. Quoted in Economist (London) (March 28, 1992)
5. Our managers are all white, middle-aged men, and they promote in their own image.
Anonymous. Said by a female director of a London investment bank. Quoted in Economist (London) (March 28, 1992)
6. What kind of nation is this…nation of silk knees, slender necks, narrow fingers, and ironic mouths which has established itself upon our boundaries?
Anonymous. A compliant about the growing number of women in the modern business office. Fortune (1935)
7. The men are always playing their own macho games. It’s not really the money they want-it’s beating their colleagues by making that extra phone call at night.
Anonymous. A senior female banker on her male colleagues and why women are still rare at the top of the profession. Quoted in The Moneylenders: Bankers in a Dangerous World (Anthony Sampson; 1981)
8. Join the union, girls, and together say Equal Pay for Equal Work.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) U.S. reformer and women’s suffrage leader. The Revolution was the magazine of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The Revolution (1868)
9. Make your employers understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) U.S. reformer and women’s suffrage leader. The Revolution was the magazine of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The Revolution (1868)
10. Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) U.S. reformer and women’s suffrage leader. The Revolution was the magazine of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. The Revolution (1868)
11. When you apply the word power to a man, it means strong and bold-very positive attributes. When you use it to describe a woman, it suggests bitchy, insensitive, hard.
Jill Barad (b.1951) U.S. C.E.O. of Mattel. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)
12. The low wages at which women will work form the chief reason for employing them at all…A women’s cheapness is, so to speak, her greatest economic asset. She can be used to keep down the cost of production.
Bureau of Labor, U.S. government department. Report on Conditions of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States (1911), vol. 11
13. The first step in providing economic equality for women is to ensure a stable economy in which every person who wants to work, can work.
Jimmy Carter (b.1924) U.S. former president and business executive. Speech, Women’s Agenda Conference, Washington, D.C. (October 2, 1976)
14. Running a business here in the U.K. particularly being a woman, is just far too big a deal. The point at which some woman starts up a business and nobody cares about it, that’s when we’ll all know we made it.
Barbara Cassani (b.1960) U.S. former C.E.O. of Go. “Mount Holyoke College: Barbara Cassani ’82, Soaring to New Heights,” Vista (2000)
15. There are twelve major forms of power. Seven are almost totally controlled by men…Money, the thirteenth power, can buy and control the twelve powers. It is a power sacred to most men-and foreign to most women.
Phyllis Chesler (b.1940) U.S. psychologist. Women, Money, and Power (co-written with Emily Jane Goodman; 1977)
16. I found that when I did as well as the men in the field, I got more credit for my work because I am a woman, which seems unfair.
Eugenie Clark (b.1922) U.S. biologist. Quoted in Ms (August 1979)
17. Women do two thirds of the world’s work…Yet they earn only one tenth of the world’s income and own less than one percent of the world’s property. They are among the poorest of the world’s poor.
Barber B. Conable, JR. (b.1923) U.S. business executive and head of the World Bank. Said at the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. New York Times (1986)
18. The feminist surge will crest when a lady named Arabella, flounces and ruffles and all, can rise to the top of a Fortune 500 corporation.
Alma Denny (b.1912) U.S. writer and educator. New York Times (August 30, 1985)
19. It is difficult for minorities in general to get their input heard. Black managers must develop a strategy against racist resistance in order to impact the system.
Floyd Dickens, JR. (b.1940) U.S. management consultant executive and author. The Black Manager: Making it in the Corporate World (co-written with Jacqueline B. Dickens; 1991), ch. 1
20. Many of the experiences, feelings, frustrations, and attitudes of minorities are shared by all managers…Minorities, however, share…an environment that is hostile to their attainment of success because of their lesser status…or because the norm demands the complete socialization of the minority.
Floyd Dickens, JR. (b.1940) U.S. management consultant executive and author. The Black Manager: Making it in the Corporate World (co-written with Jacqueline B. Dickens; 1991), Introduction
21. Money speaks, but I speaks with a male voice.
Andrea Dworkin (b.1946) U.S. feminist writer. Pornography (1981)
22. People assume you slept your way to the top. Frankly, I couldn’t sleep my way to the middle.
Joni Evans (b.1942) U.S. publishing executive. Conference speech to female executives, referring to her start in publishing as a manuscript reader. New York Times (July 22, 1986)
23. This fellow said to me, “You know for a woman you make a lot of money. If I was you, I’d go back to my office and be happy just to have the job.”
Grace Fey, U.S. vice president and director of Frontier Capital Management. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
24. Business shouldn’t be like sports, separating the men from the women.
Carly Fiorina (b.1954) U.S. president and C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard. Speech (October 2002)
25. Don’t think of yourself as a woman in business.
Carly Fiorina (b.1954) U.S. president and C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)
26. Unity not uniformity must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, nor absorbed.
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) U.S. management thinker and author. The New State (1918)
27. A woman is handicapped by her sex, and handicaps society, either by slavishly copying the pattern of man’s advance in the professions, or by refusing to compete with man at all.
Betty Friedan (b.1921) U.S. feminist writer. The Feminine Mystique (1963)
28. The male human being is thousands of years in advance of the female in economic status.
Charlotte Gilman (1860-1935) U.S. feminist and writer. Women and Economics (1898)
29. I look forward to the day when we don’t think in terms of a woman executive at all, but just an executive.
Ellen Gordon, U.S. president of Tootsie Roll Industries. Fortune (1987)
30. If one rich and one’s a woman, one can be quite misunderstood.
Katharine Graham (1917-2001) U.S. newspaper publisher and owner of Washington Post. “The Power That Didn’t Corrupt,” Ms. (Jan Howard; 1974)
31. Organisations need talented women in their core jobs…because many will have the kinds of attitudes and attributes that the new flexible organisation will need. If they screen out the women they will handicap their futures.
Charles Handy (b.1932) British business executive and author. The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future (1994), pt. 3, ch. 10
32. If you want to push something…you’re accused of being aggressive, and that’s not supposed to be a good thing for a woman. If you get upset and show it, you’re accused of being emotional.
Mary Harney (b.1953) Irish politician. Attrib.
33 In countries as diverse as India and Japan, the USA and Latin America, we are seeing the emergence of a new, and very welcome, field of female talent. Highly trained, highly motivated and very involved in their work.
John Harvey-Jones (b.1924) British management adviser, author and former chairman of ICI. Making It Happen (1988)
34. Now I came to power and I said,”Look, this is nonsense, we are great people, we Australians.” Employers are great blokes, workers are great blokes, farmers are great blokes-and I use the term blokes to encompass men and women.
Bob Hawke (b.1929) Australian former prime minister. Quoted in “Sayings of the Year,” Sydney Morning Herald (December 31, 1988)
35. Top jobs are designed for people with wives.
Lucy Heller (b.1959) British business executive. Quoted in Economist (March 28, 1992)
36. Saying that a person cannot be kept out doesn’t ensure that the person can get in, and more important stay in.
Margaret Hennig (b.1940) U.S. business executive and writer. Discussing corporate responses to antidiscrimination legislation. The Managerial Woman (cowritten with Anne Jardim; 1976)
37. Men don’t have some special genetic coding that makes them better fit for playing the markets. It’s simply a matter of education and knowledge.
Sue Herera (b.1957) U.S. journalist and author. Women of the Street (1997)
38. A new type of woman arises. She is called a career woman. A man is never a career man. That is his right and privilege. But the woman is called career woman because he “career”…demands that she…even renounce normal life.
- L. R. James (1901-89) Trinidadian critic, historian, and philosopher. 1943. Quoted in Letter to Constance Webb, the C. L. R. James Reader (Anna Grimshaw, ed.; 1992)
39. When women ask for equality, men take them to be demanding domination.
Elizabeth Janeway (b.1913) U.S. feminist and writer. Man’s World, Woman’s Place (1971)
40. This is a woman’s industry. No man will vote our stock, transact our business, pronounce on woman’s wages, supervise our factories. Give men whatever work is suitable but keep the governing power.
Amanda Theodosia Jones (1835-1914) U.S. inventor, entrepreneur, and psychic. Jones founded the Women’s Canning and Preserving Company after inventing a canning process. Address to employees of the Women’s Canning and Preserving Company, Chicago, A Psychic’s Autobiography (1910)
41. I remember how homogeneous corporations were when I first started working. I was often the first professional woman some of the men had ever seen.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (b.1943) U.S. management theorist, academic, and writer. Interview, Strategy + Business (July-September 1999)
42. Men always try to keep women out of business so they won’t find out how much fun it really is.
Vivien Kellems (1896-1975) U.S. industrialist, feminist, and lecturer. Quoted in Women Can Be Engineers (Alice Goff; 1946)
43. There are very few jobs that actually require a penis or vagina. All other jobs should be open to everybody.
Florynce R. Kennedy (1916-2000) U.S. lawyer and political activist. “Freelancer with No Time to Write,” Writer’s Digest (February 1974)
44. Some authors use the feminine designations “mother, daughter, sister” instead of “father, son, brother”; but for some reason the masculine words seem more professional.
Donald E. Knuth (b.1938) U.S. computer programmer and writer. The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental Algorithms (1995)
45. Men were expected to rise when women entered a room, and male language contained at least two vocabularies-one for exchanges between men-and one for men and women.
Angel Kwolek-Folland, U.S. author. Referring to offices in the 1930s. Engendering Business (1994)
46. Women in business found themselves on the horns of a dilemma: To assert uniqueness was to deny what they shared with men as workers, but to insist on similarities…was to subvert the compelling cultural definitions of gender difference.
Angel Kwolek-Folland, U.S. author. Referring to offices in the 1930s. Engendering Business (1994)
47. Women’s presence in the office work force challenged the Victorian ideal of separate public and private worlds for men and women.
Angel Kwolek-Folland, U.S. author. Referring to the increasing number of women working in offices at the beginning of the 20th century. Engendering Business (1994)
48. Women are undeserved and underestimated as consumers.
Geraldine Laybourne (b.1947) U.S. chairman of Oxygen Media. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)
49. I’m not concerned for women, but I’m concerned for business. If everyone leaves at once, we’re going to have this void. Women won’t be there to fill CEO-level posts.
Shelly Lazarus (b.1949) U.S. chairperson of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Referring to the increasing tendency of American businesswomen to leave for family reasons. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in America Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)
50. I am a female. It’s a mixed blessing. I sometimes wish I could be identified as a CEO of a major firm, not always as a “female” CEO.
Bridget A. Macaskill (b.1949) British non-executive director for J. Sainsburys, former president and C.E.O. of Oppenheimer Funds. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
51. I look around me and I do not see many women who have reached the most senior levels with their husbands and children and outside lives intact.
Bridget A. Macaskill (b.1949) British non-executive director for J. Sainsburys, former president and C.E.O. of Oppenheimer Funds. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
52. For a woman to attain a high level in a male-dominated profession, she has to work twice as hard and/ or be twice as smart.
Elizabeth Mackay, U.S. investment strategist and managing director of Bear Stearns. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
53. We cannot, through ignorant prejudice, afford to under-use the talents and potential of half our citizens, merely because they are women.
Tom Mboya (1930-69) Kenyan politician. The Challenge of Nationhood (1970)
54. I think that I have three trouser suits to my name, but people think that when you wear them that’s all you ever wear.
Mary McAleese (b.1951) Irish president. Responding to reports that she has been criticized for wearing trouser suits on formal occasions. Irish Times (February 28, 1998)
55. We need every human gift and cannot afford to neglect any gift because of artificial barriers of sex or race or class or national origin.
Margaret Mead (1901-78) U.S. anthropologist. Male and Female (1949)
56. The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in man’s mind…He may even believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads.
Elaine Morgan (b.1920) Welsh playwright, screenwriter, and nonfiction author. The Descent of Woman (1972)
57. Gender took a back seat…and I became just part of the team. It was like a button was pressed: gender neutral.
Bernadette Murphy (b.1934) U.S. chief technical analyst of Kimelman & Baird LLC. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
58. Women…hae a double responsibility. We must be achievers and we must make a significant difference.
Bernadette Murphy (b.1934) U.S. chief technical analyst of Kimelman & Baird LLC. Quoted in Women of the Street (Sue Herera; 1997)
59. Women’s battle for financial equality has barely been joined, much less won. Society still traditionally assigns towoman the role of money-handler rather than money-maker, and our assigned specialty is far more likely to be home economics than financial economics.
Paula Nelson (b.1944) U.S. educator. The Joy of Money (1975)
60. I regard affirmative action as pernicious-a system that had wonderful ideas when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.
Camille Paglia (b.1947) U.S. academic, educator, and writer. April 1995. Interview, Reason Magazine (August-September 1995)
61. It’s so much easier for men. They don’t have to paint their nails for a meeting.
Eve Pollard (b.1945) British journalist and newspaper editor. June 1995. Quoted in Guardian (London) (December 30, 1995)
62. What women don’t want is just as important as what they do. They don’t want to do business with an organization, a company, or a brand that condescends to them. That inconveniences them.
Faith Popcorn (b.1947) U.S. trend expert and founder of BrainReserve. EVEolution (2000), ch. 1
63. Women are opening businesses at twice the rate of men…Forty percent of businesses will be owned by women. Women are saying, “I don’t belong in this company. I’m sick of fighting this battle.”
Faith Popcorn (b.1947) U.S. trend expert and founder of BrainReserve. Interview, phenomeNEWS (1999)
64. It’s still a man’s world out there…I’d go to meetings and be one woman out of 30 men-you cope with whatever language and dirty jokes happen to be around at the time.
Pauline Portas (b.1952) British entrepreneur. Financial Times (London) (October 19, 2000)
65. It’s still harder for a woman to get up her own business than it is to get money for a new car, or certainly a new kitchen.
Anita Roddick (b.1942) British entrepreneur and founder of the Body Shop. Quoted in The Adventure Capitalists (Jeff Grout and Lynne Curry; 1998)
66. Men are still clinging to the hope that women are powerless, because they haven’t got much else to cling to.
Harriet Rubin (b.1952) U.S. author. “Thank You Ma’am. May I Have Another?,” Fast Company (1996)
67. We’re good at sending people to diversity training, using politically correct language, and making sure we have people of color in our Annual Report photos. But…the deep-seated issues of intolerance and exclusively go unexamined.
Raymond W. Smith (b.1937) U.S. chairman of Rothschild, Inc. and former chairman of Bell Atlantic Corporation Speech (November 1, 1995)
68. How do you get a girl to start thinking about a career early? That’s really where it has to begin. And it has to begin with her parents. We’re all conditioned to the kind of life we’re expected to live by the time we’re 5.
Jane Trahey (1923-2000) U.S. copywriter and author. Jane Trahey on Women and Power: Who’s Got It? How to Get It? (1977)
69. I am not a millionaire, but I hope to be one day, not because of the money, but because I could do so much then to help my race.
- J. Walker (1867-1919) U.S. business executive. Referring to her aspiration to be the first African American woman millionaire. New York Times Magazine (November 1917)
70. I am not merely satisfied in making money, for I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of the women of my race.
- J. Walker (1867-1919) U.S. business executive. Referring to her aspiration to be the first African American woman millionaire. New York Times Magazine (November 1917)
71. I believe in push, and we must push ourselves.
- J. Walker (1867-1919) U.S. business executive. Referring to her aspiration to be the first African American woman millionaire. New York Times Magazine (November 1917)
72. The notion that by succeeding academically or later, by succeeding in any management, you therefore destroy your “feminity” is the most pervasive threat against women.
Mary Warnock (b.1924) British philosopher and author. Speech, Institute of Directors, London (November 25, 1985)
73. Do you know I’m black? Do you know I’m overweight? Are you sure you want me?
Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) U.S. talk show host, actor, and business executive. “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business,” Fortune (Patricia Sellers and Cora Daniels; October 1999)
74. The greatest contribution you can make to women’s rights, is to be the absolute…best at what you do.
Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) U.S. talk show host, actor, and business executive. Quoted in Oprah Winfrey Speaks (Janet Lowe; 1998)
