Jane Harman Quotes

I've been working almost 20 years, and I think I've worked with maybe one black director of photography in that time. Maybe two women directors or DPs. Maybe. And I've done a lot of TV. That's a lot of people I've worked with.

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

I go to castings and see several black and Asian girls, then I get to the show and look around there's just me and maybe one other coloured face.

I am working for the time when unqualified Blacks, Browns and women join the unqualified men in running our government.

I think women benefit from being in places and having positions where the quality of work is the criteria, not what you look like. Not every place is like that.

What women need are not benefits and advantages but a merit-based selection process that will allow them to automatically benefit from various opportunities.

I think it's embarrassing for our industry that we have such low diversity across senior-level management at all of the mainstream, top-tier venture capital firms.

To be sure Plato did not favor 'affirmative action' to fill political and military offices in his own society; nor did he enroll women in his school.

I don't think quotas are necessarily an evil. I think when we look at industry in general back to the '60s and the '50s, the way more diverse people like my dad and mom's generation were able to break into industry was because of affirmation action, because of quotas.

I went to a private girls' school where I was one out of five girls in the class who looked like me.

The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.

Cultivating more leaders who reflect our heterogeneous society depends on universities' transparent use of race as one of many factors in an admissions process that is accessible to all.

In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.

I'm always excited when I make it on anyone's list - even if it's for affirmative action. My attitude is, 'Am I the token woman on this list? Because I'll take it.'

I believe that everyone should be treated as an individual. Women should be treated equally in the right to vote, sure. But if I'm paying to see a comedy, then I just want to see who's funniest, with everyone treated equally.

In the early IBM team, that was a racially diverse team, a gender-diverse team.

I have no fears that on a purely merit basis, we will have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose in order to reach gender parity.

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.

I truly don't know why the boys are getting all the votes - it could be because they are really amazing, and that's all there is to it. They're really, really good and every single boy deserves to be in the competition right now, and so do the two girls.

In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.'

The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

... equal responsibilities are less popular than equal rights.

Just imagine for a moment what life in this country might have been if women had been properly represented in Congress. Would a Congress where women in all their diversity were represented tolerate the countless laws now on the books that discriminate against women in all phases of their lives?....Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills?

The law faculty see no reason why any young woman who in respect to character and acquirements fulfilled the Conditions applicable to male students, and who chose to attend the law lectures in good faith for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the laws of her Country, should be denied that privilege.

Without affirmative action I could never have attended Yale University. Without affirmative action Barack Obama would never have gotten into Colombia and Harvard Law school