Career Women Quotes & Sayings

It's a weird thing society puts on us women. They tell us we can have careers (well, after they told us we could vote-they sort of said it would be ok if we wanted to have a career, as long as we agree to get paid less than a man for the same job), and then they tell us that we aren't real women if we have careers but no babies, and if we dare pick a career over a baby...we better at least talk about that career like its a baby in order to blend in and not call attention to the fact that we're selfish women who are not carrying on the human race. — Jen Kirkman

At the beginning of my career, I shot a lot more documentaries because I liked the adventure, and probably also because it was easier, and still is easier, for women DPs to shoot documentary than it is to shoot fiction. — Maryse Alberti

Showing your femininity should help your career and not go against your career. Dressing like a man, using the suit to look powerful - that was the '80s, and that didn't help women. — Donatella Versace

People don't know how heavily involved I am in my own career. I'm on 15 to 25 conference calls every few days strategizing with my team. I think a lot of artists sit back and have it done for them. Sometimes as women in the industry - if you're sexy or like doing sexy things - some people subconsciously negate your brain. They think you're stupid. — Nicki Minaj

Believe me, I recognize the cultural and anatomical challenges and respect the sacrifices women make in order to balance family and a career, or family with no career, or career with no family. — LZ Granderson

I certainly don't recognise myself as the horrible sexist portrayed in media reports, and I don't think the women who have worked with me throughout my career do either. — Tim Hunt

While there exist many cultures and sub-cultures on Earth, they all can be understood by a simple equation. The males will do whatever it takes to acquire physical intimacy from the females. In cultures where the females require education, career, and a house, the men work to acquire those things. In cultures where the women require bravado, pride, and a propensity for violence, the men acquire those traits. And in cultures where the females require nothing, the men do that, too. The fact that many females give away sex for free then wonder why the men in their lives do not show more ambition has been submitted as evidence in Alliance court that humans lack sufficient intelligence to be considered sentient. — Aaron Lee Yeager

From 1970 onwards, our culture told both sexes that individual expression was paramount. And for women, that was defined as the right to choose an interesting a career, a high-status mate, the desirable handbag or vacation, the perfect family size, and a definitionally fruitless quest for 'perfection.' — Naomi Wolf

I think it's true for men and for women, if you are even remotely attractive, people will assume you're just another pretty face and you don't have the work ethic or the talent to put in the time to flesh out a career. — Erin Cummings

I'm trying to get away from trashing women, to be honest. I think I've done enough of that in my career. — Bill Burr

Women today are bombarded with so many messages, like we should have Naomi Campbell's body and Madeleine Albright's career. — Helen Fielding

Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore. — Lady Gaga

I was labeled as a tricky player early on and have been regarded as tricky throughout my whole career. It was said that I was able to pull out tricks from nowhere. — Judit Polgar

When a man is forced into early retirement, he is often being 'given up for a younger man.' Being forced into early retirement can be to a man what being 'given up for a younger woman' is for a woman ... Why do many men get more upset by retirement than women do from the empty nest when their children leave home? When females retire from children, they can try a career; when a man retires from a career, his children are gone. — Warren Farrell

Women talk a good talk, but they still feel the need to wear heels, shave their legs, and bat their eyelashes for men. They cook, clean, raise children, and feel the need to look good in a bathing suit. Career women are not featured in the magazines lined along the grocery checkout. — Sheila Hageman

Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work. — Mary Matalin

Powerful women intimidate men. If she's a really well-known woman, she has a career, she's famous - in that case, men are really afraid. — Donatella Versace

Marriage is a linchpin in many women's lives, but many other things can create a satisfying life. I adore my career. It stretches every physical, emotional, and intellectual muscle I have. — Geraldine Stutz

I think it's hard for women to be directors, particularly in the feature world because, biologically, your peak career-making years are also your peak baby-making years, and that's just the truth. And those are choices women have to make. — Laura Ziskin

When we wake up and see reality as it is, a lot of people blame feminism. They twist everything around and claim that the feminist vision creates demands which are too high and contradictory, demands that break overworked women down with stress. They claim that everything was so much easier when women were housewives without the demands of work and career. Motherhood and a clean home were a woman's self-realization. Today most women work two jobs, one outside and one inside the home. Yet if we lived equally and men took just as much responsibility for the children and the home, women would not be broken down by the stress. Perhaps it is only possible to accept the difficulties if you see feminism as a resistance movement, and the only path to possible freedom. Because resistance almost always involves pain. — Maria Sveland

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change. — Sheryl Sandberg

Cartooning is a wonderful career, and I'd like more women to get to have it. I can't think of any reason why we won't see more syndicated female cartoonists in the future. — Cathy Guisewite

Many of the big decisions over progression, promotion and future career trajectory are taken when people are in their late twenties and thirties, putting women at a huge disadvantage because this is the very time they are most likely to be having a break to have children. — Cherie Blair

Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor. — Rod Liddle

Current conflicts and guilt about being a woman who is a mother and a person in her own right are a socially defined malaise, notan individual problem ... The conflict is not between being a mother and having a career; it is between nineteenth-century ideas about children and today's ideas about women. — Sandra Scarr

Work-family conflicts
the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child
would not be forced upon women with suchsanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

My entire career stands on the strong pillars of women-oriented films. This stems from the fact that I am sensitive to the entire aura and mystique of a woman and womanhood. — Madhur Bhandarkar

There are three different takes on career women in this house, she thought to herself: that of my husband, who respects working women but wishes I wasn't one of them; that of my mother, who hates the very idea; and then there's me, a working woman who has no idea what she really wants! There — Ayse Kulin

Being eye candy always was a short-term career, and here's the reason. The world finds young women more attractive than old women because youthfulness signals fertility. — Laurie Graham

But when it comes to integrating career and family, planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way, making accommodations and sacrifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold themselves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave. The — Sheryl Sandberg

It would not be going too far to assert that ... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is ... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity. — Karen Horney

We grow up with such an idealistic view on how our life should be; love, friendships, a career or even the place we will live ~ only to age and realise none of it is what you expected & reality is a little disheartening, when you've reached that realisation; you have learnt the gift of all, any new beginning can start now and if you want anything bad enough you'll find the courage to pursue it with all you have. The past doesn't have to be the future, stop making it so. — Nikki Rowe

There was an interesting article in Los Angeles Magazine about women directors. A woman director makes one bad independent film and her career is over. Guys tend to get an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. — Dick Wolf

How far you go in life and in your career is dependent on how far you can think good thoughts! — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

Feminism has nothing at all to do with being 'feminine.' Feminine means accentuating the womanly attributes that make women deliciously different from men. The feminine woman enjoys her right to be a woman. She has a positive outlook on life. She knows she is a person with her own identity and that she can seek fulfillment in the career of her choice, including that of traditional wife and mother. — Phyllis Schlafly

First. I began my career as a copy girl. and the White House coverage, for example, was in the then-Women's section. So it was social coverage. It wasn't news, although we often got rather startling news out of it. — Judith Martin

Why is computer science a good field for women? For one thing, that's where the jobs are, and for another, the pay is better than for many jobs, and finally, it's easier to combine career and family. — Madeleine M. Kunin

I liked my job, but I didn't have a glittering career, and even if I had, let's be honest: women are still only really valued for two things - their looks and their role as mothers. I'm not beautiful, and I can't have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless. — Paula Hawkins

Yes," she thought, "nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career - no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Because it's difficult to have a career as an artist, and in every situation where it's difficult to have a career, it's even harder for women, for all the other reasons that it's harder in other fiercely contested fields. — Elizabeth Price

Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the fruits of his ambition, if you take him from the splendour of a great political career, if you close the doors of public life against him, if you condemn him to sterile failure, he who was made for triumph and success? Women are not meant to judge us but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission. Why should you scourge him with rods for a sin done in his youth, before he knew you, before he knew himself? A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A women's life revolves around curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that man's life progresses. Don't make any terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man's love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them. — Oscar Wilde

I've never wanted to be with women so much as I wanted to be them: there are women whose career arc excites me, whose ease of expression is impressive, whose mastery of party banter has bee simultaneously hostile and rapt. — Lena Dunham

Her skirts, sleeves, collar, and hat saw to it that none of the young ruffians of the Leased Territories would have the opportunity to invade her body space with their eyes, and lest her distinctive face prove too much of a temptation, she wore a veil too ...
The veil offered Nell protection from unwanted scrutiny. Many New Atlantis career women also used the veil as a way of meeting the world on their own terms, ensuring that they were judged on their own merits and not on their appearance. It served a protective function as well, bouncing back the harmful rays of the sun and intercepting many deleterious nanosites that might otherwise slip unhindered into the nose and mouth. — Neal Stephenson

Women liked Strike - she had come to realize that over the months they had worked together. She had not understood the appeal when she had started working for him. He was so very different from Matthew. — Robert Galbraith

If there's anything the world disdains more than uppity young women, it's uppity old women. Dying young has always been a woman's best career move. — Erica Jong

Career had a lot to do with 80 percent of my breakups. It's very tough to date a struggling musician. The idea of it is enticing and fun and mysterious. But the reality is long hours and hard work. I have a lot of respect for the women I've dated. — Taylor Hicks

I find many women are intimidated by "career women"! Bottom line: snap judgments about what you think others' perceptions might be about you, personally or professionally, can be more dangerous or damaging to you than those who are uncomfortable with your stature or your smarts. If you are smart and focused on your career, remind yourself that no one can ever take away your drive and your passion. — Jenna Lee

When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult — Helen Mirren

Our world has created a false unrealistic image of what women are supposed to look like and act like. But the truth is that every woman was not created by God to be skinny, with a flawless complexion and long flowing hair. Not every woman was intended to juggle a career as well as all of the other duties of being a wife, mother, citizen, and daughter. Single women should not be made to feel they are missing somenthing because they are not married. Married women should not be made to feel they must have a career to be complete. We must have the freedom to be our individual selves. — Joyce Meyer

Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?' — Tracy Chapman

Without Police Woman I wouldn't have had a career. The show started about the same time the women's movement was taking off. Ours was the first prime-time one-hour show featuring a strong, professional woman. It paved the way for other series to follow. — Angie Dickinson

(Georgie) Two hundred years later and it's exactly the same thing. You want to spend every single moment with your children and still have a fulfilling life at work. — Nancy Woodruff

Women or mothers in middle-age or mid-career have valuable life experience and may offer an untapped recruitment pool. — Hazel Blears

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perry's career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently. — Lynn Nottage

To marry and have children is the ideal life for a woman. What career could ever be as fine? To give the world splendid men and women-isn't that the noblest thing a woman could possibly do? — Jessie Willcox Smith

In fact, there is perhaps only one human being in a thousand who is passionately interested in his job for the job's sake. The difference is that if that one person in a thousand is a man, we say, simply, that he is passionately keen on his job; if she is a woman, we say she is a freak. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Did Morris put anybody on Coltraine, specifically?"
"Clipper."
"Die-For-Ty? Talk about the sex. How come so many death doctors are wholly iced?"
"A mystery I've pondered throughout my career."
"No, seriously. Clipper's like ummm. He's gay and has a partner, but a yummy treat for the eyes. His partner's an artist. He paints people, literally I mean. Body painting. They've been together about six years."
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"Unlike you, I enjoy hearing about people's personal lives, especially when it involves sex."
"At least since Clipper's not into women, you won't be troubled by sexual fantasies."
Peabody pursed her lips in thought. "I can work with it. Two naked guys, body paints, me. Oh yeah, endless possibilities. — J.D. Robb

The '80s was all about this idea that women could have it all. You could have a career, and you could have a husband, and you could have children. — Candace Bushnell

The fact was that I had always been considered a leader in my scholastic career. It just never dawned on me that this was any kind of preparation for the business world. Like most young women of my background and education, I always performed on demand and never anything else. — Geraldine Stutz

All women on earth
and men, too for that matter
hope for the kind of love that transforms us, raises us up out of the everyday, & gives us the courage to survive our little deaths: the heartache of unfulfilled dreams, of career and personal disappointments, of broken love affairs. — Lisa See

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

You then will lean way in to your career. You will find something you love doing and you will do it with gusto. Find the right career for you and go all the way to the top. Start out by Aiming high. Try- and try hard. I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. — Sheryl Sandberg

I started my career by becoming a stalker, watching women in the street, the way they greet each other. I thought if I could capture some of that expression, that depth of emotion, it will make me interesting to watch as an actor. — Bob Hoskins

It's good you have something to keep you occupied." I smile stiffly and turn away from her. Because I'm this far from asking what the fuck she thinks I do all day. But even through the surge of anger that's rising, I remind myself of what I know is true: she means well. They all do. These women want me to receive all of God's blessings, many of which can be bestowed only after my temple marriage, which should be my first objective. Everything I've done so far (my two graduate degrees, my international travels, my teaching career, my friendships, my creative pursuits), is "preparing." Treading water, keeping time, staying busy until real life begins. — Nicole Hardy

Women have made enormous progress on the lower and middle rungs of the career ladder, but we are failing to make the leap into senior positions. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's motherhood that holds women back, but often the big roadblock is the lack of executive presence. — Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Definitely. Cate Blanchett or Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore - women that have no boundaries, no borders. They can do anything, They can be any character and you accept it and go with it as a viewer, and as an audience member. That's the kind of career that I'm looking for. — Jessica Biel

I think women should have choices and should be able to do what they like, and I think it's a great choice to stay at home and raise kids, just as it's a great choice to have a career. But I don't entirely approve of people who get advanced degrees and then decide to stay at home. I think if society gives you the gift of one of those educations and you take a spot in a very competitive institution, then you should do something with that education to help others ... But I also don't approve of working parents who look down on stay-at-home mothers and think they smother their children. Working parents are every bit as capable of spoiling children as ones who don't work - maybe even more so when they indulge their kids out of guilt. The best think anyone can teach their children is the obligation we all have toward each other - and no one has a monopoly on teaching that. — Will Schwalbe

Political skills are essential career competencies to get ahead and stay ahead. — Bonnie Marcus

I don't believe in competing, because there's room for everyone. You have to compete with yourself, because your duty to grow as a human being and keeping your humility is much more important than your music career. You can get money, women, travels, but all that's an illusion. — Juan Gabriel

I can't tell you the number of times people have told me if I just lost 10kg, I could go much further in my career. But I'm determined to show them - and other average-size women - it is doable and possible. — Ricki-Lee Coulter

The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy. — John F. Kennedy

I have been helped over and over by wonderful men and women in my career. Men help each other all the time, and that kind of inclusion among women can create similar success. — Lesli Linka Glatter

I have been working in male-dominated industries most of my life. When I started my career in investment banking, I was one of two women in my analyst class. — Carol Roth

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career no further. If a man marries, on the other hand, public opinion is all against him if he takes this view. — Rose Macaulay

Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity. — Thomas Huxley

It's more pressure on women to - if they marry or partner with someone, to partner with the right person. Because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with your children if you are also doing all of the housework and child care. — Sheryl Sandberg

I love writing for and about women. In my whole career I have. — Mitch Glazer

See you just don't understand women the way I do J.D. They want it all: a career apple martinis financial independence great shoes but at the same time - and this they'll never admit - they are drawn to patriarchal men who are dominant and controlling. That's the essence of the Darcy complex. He may be an asshole but he's an asshole that gets the girl in the end. — Julie James

You have to be desirable. And that's why so many woman of my age or even younger are pushed to Botox and plastic surgery, all the things that people say, 'Why do women do this?' Where do you go in your 50s in your career? — Kim Cattrall

Some women chasing men, and some - for dreams. If you are at a fork, remember, your career will not wake up one morning to say that more does not love you. — Lady Gaga

Maslow did not make two different pyramids, one for men and one for women. He did not differentiate in identifying what men want and what women want. — Shahla Khan

I don't care how happily married you are or how deeply enmeshed you are with your children and family and career
every woman needs a couple of chicks who'll break out the sangria just because you need to vent. — Jen Lancaster

Corporate men and women, once divided by striking differences in opportunity for career growth, have come to share career chaos. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Women's magazines will often ask me things like, 'All right, I need six five-minute happiness strategies.' And I say, well, there aren't any five-minute happiness strategies. This is something you have to do kind of every day for the rest of your life. Just like if you want to raise moral children or if you want to advance in your career. It's a goal you pursue your whole life. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

I care a great deal about LGBT U.S. servicemen and women being able to serve openly and honestly. Since early in my career, I've included realistic LGBT characters in my books. The idea that a gay Navy SEAL had to hide who he was in order to serve was a terrible one - and I made sure my readers knew that! — Suzanne Brockmann

The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so
concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities. — Jessie Bernard

I told my agent which women I aspire to have a career like: Frances McDormand, Kate Winslet, Laura Linney and Emma Thompson - character actresses who have something to say. I also said that I loved Madeline Kahn and Jessica Lange. — Rachael Harris

The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men. — George Bernard Shaw

Rated "success in a high-paying career or profession" as important to their lives.10 A recent survey of Millennials11 found that women were just as likely to describe themselves as ambitious as men. Although this is an improvement, even among this demographic, the leadership ambition gap remains. Millennial women are less likely than Millennial men to agree that the statement "I aspire — Sheryl Sandberg

I'm going to keep talking about what I think is interesting for my entire career. If you want to hear about how women do a lot of shoe shopping or how being married sucks, go see the guy who does jokes about that. But if you come to see my live show, there's going to be 20 minutes on religion for the rest of my life, probably. If that makes me a caricature, so be it. — David Cross

If women decide that their mission, their political career, balances out what they have to give up, they can be and are equally successful as men. — Dalia Grybauskaite

Career progression often depends upon taking risks and advocating for oneself - traits that girls are discouraged from exhibiting. This may explain why girls' academic gains have not yet translated into significantly higher numbers of women in top jobs. — Sheryl Sandberg

Liberating ourselves from the traditional strictures of marriage altogether, and/or transforming those strictures to include all of us -- gay, feminist, career-focused, baby crazy, monogamous, non-monogamous, skeptical, romantic, and everyone in between -- is the challenge facing this generation. As we consciously opt out or creatively reimagine marriage one loving couple at a time, we'll be able to shift societal expectations wholesale, freeing younger generations from some of the antiquated assumptions we've faced (that women always want to get married and men always shy away from commitment, that gender parity somehow disempowers men, that turning 30 makes an unmarried woman into an old maid). — Courtney E. Martin

Domestic violence is often ignored as it usually happens behind closed doors and it can seem easier not to get involved. Yet, domestic violence continues to affect 1 in 4 women at some point in their lifetime, regardless of their background, career, race or age, and it is vital that we do something now to protect those directly affected by abuse in the home. — John Nettles

Many women assume they can't be good mothers and have challenging careers at the same time, so they might give up trying to do both as they get to a crucial point in their career. Although it can be hard at times, it's important for women to recognize the benefits of working outside the home. — Susan Wojcicki

For this was the age of The Girl. We had come out of the back parlor, out of the kitchen and nursery, we turned our backs upon the blackboards, shed aprons and paper cuffs. A war had freed us and given women a new kind of self-respect.
The adjective poor no longer preceded the once disreputable "working girl". It was honorable, it was jolly, it was even superior to be a "career girl". — Vera Caspary

Stanwyck was slim, and remained so over her career. Regardless of the obligations and pressures regarding size and shape for women in Hollywood, or her own needs and desires as an actress and a person, or the occasions within the films that show off her body, Stanwyck rarely advertises a superficial fantasy of feminine appearance. She is too busy exploring the subtlety of interactions. — Andrew Klevan

I think people underestimate the romance audience. It's everything from career women to high school girls to elderly women. I have male readers, too, especially for the Civil War books. — Heather Graham Pozzessere

In the beginning of my career, I read an article about the reason that men always look five years younger than women is because they shave. — Christie Brinkley

Most professional women I know - myself included - long since gave up looking for a rulebook or a roadmap; we make it up as we go along. Every day presents a new choice, a new challenge, which makes long-term career planning seem like an especially abstract exercise. — Nancy Gibbs