Christiane Nusslein-Volhard Quotes

Women need to understand that it is possible to stay in the workforce. A lot of women decide to take a back seat in their professional careers even before they are pregnant or are ready to have children.

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.

If colleges and universities are really concerned about women's rights, then they must adjust to a far more flexible structure to allow young women students to take leaves of absence if they want to have children early.

Society has not been set up in a way that allows women to go back to work after taking time off. Many women now have to work as well as do everything at home and no one can do everything. Society needs to find a way of relieving women.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'

We have a large pool of talented and educated women, and yet workplaces haven't necessarily changed to accommodate the reality of their lives.

Some women work while they are pregnant, but not me. That was a choice I had made. That's when I took a break. Men can work at whatever stage they are; whether they turn daddy, they still have their own thing. But women can't afford that because by being mothers, they have to be there for their kids.

If the feminist program goes to pieces on the arrival of the first baby, it's false and useless.

I know women at work who don't talk about having a baby because they don't want to upset the apple cart, but unless people know what the problems are, why should they engage with it?

Maternity leave and parental leave is absolutely vital for strengthening families. It's an issue for men and women.

In college, the guys aren't worrying about whether they'll be able to pursue their career dreams and still have kids.

A woman - even if she is the primary breadwinner - really needs to keep in mind that at some point, she may have a diminished earning capacity because of the fact that she will bear children. Of course, this is case by case. I had two kids, and it didn't really slow me down at all.

I think that the female workforce is so valuable. And if we're going to champion women in the workforce, which our economy seems to want to do, we have to deal with the realities, which is that they have children, and they need a way to take care of their children in a supportive work environment.

I am no different from so many professionals who go on maternity leave only towards the end of their pregnancy.

Average male pay is higher than average female pay for a simple reason. Despite decades of enforced equality, women still have babies, and men still don't. So women who wish to spend any substantial time at all with their own offspring will fall behind in their careers, and their earnings will be less.

Paid family leave, for instance, has strong backing in scientific literature as an effective means of enabling families who want kids to have them.

A lot of women in New Zealand feel like they have to make a choice between having babies and having a career or continuing their career. So is that a decision you feel you have to make or that you feel you've already made?

I'm aware that beyond my own need to find a personal balance, I should be sending a signal to society as women's minister about the importance of work-life balance.

And in the future, you know, maybe there's kids in the future for me, I don't really know. The interesting thing with me is that there has never been a woman doing what I'm doing at this level for this long. So, it's like, would Vince give me maternity leave?

One of the biggest challenges is for women to find an organization that's willing to accept them back after they leave the work force to raise children without taking a cut in compensation and responsibility.

At 24, I took time off to have a baby, and ever since, I have been juggling modelling with motherhood.

I'm not telling women to be like men. I'm telling us to evaluate what men and women do in the workforce and at home without the gender bias.

I'd long wanted to write about that moment when a woman steps off the career track to have her first child. For me, that was a scary time.

Look at Gwyneth Paltrow and my favourite, Kate Winslet. No one ever says, 'Oh, she's making a comeback.' To my mind, I just went on maternity leave and reported back to work.

We found that when people put this issue on the table, it turns out that men acknowledge the issue, and employers and employees can work out solutions just as working mothers do.