Abigail Disney Quotes

I know in the business world, some women won't speak if there are men in meetings for fear of being seen as too assertive.

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.

The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination. In the past, few women have tried, and even fewer have succeeded.

Almost without exception, the talented women I have known have believed they had less ability than they actually had. And almost without exception, the talented men I have known believed they had more.

I realize that every time we discuss a job placement and look at a list of both male and female candidates, there's a question that comes up pretty much all the time for the woman: 'Will she know how to assert herself?' It's not meant to be malicious. It's more, 'Will she manage to take leadership of the team you want to entrust to her?'

When I did my first media interviews after I was announced as a team principal, the first question was, what qualifies you for the job? The second question was, did your husband place you in the role? And the third was, how are you going to do your job as a mother? I was speechless to think that we were not making any progress.

There are still very few companies run by women these days. And, clearly, there are many reasons for that, including what many see as the role of both unconscious bias and outright sexism.

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry, you are so afraid of people thinking you are weak.

Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. But when I say, 'The blunt truth is that men run the world,' people say, 'Really?' That, to me, is the problem.

Women have made tons of progress. But we still have a small percentage of the top jobs in any industry, in any nation in the world. I think that's partly because from a very young age, we encourage our boys to lead and we call our girls bossy.

When I started out, there were three things that made film people look at me with condescension, I was young, I was black, and I was female. I have won a certain respect, but I think the film community still sees directing as a male job.

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.

Even before I went to the UN, I often would want to say something in a meeting - only woman at the table - and I'd think, 'OK well, I don't think I'll say that. It may sound stupid.' And then some man says it, and everybody thinks it's completely brilliant, and you are so mad at yourself for not saying something.

The sexism in Hollywood is not particularly overt - because the system is good at hiding it.

The failure of women to have reached positions of leadership has been due in large part to social and professional discrimination.

Women have more to prove than men when it comes to politics.

There are still people who have an issue working with a woman director. Women can be viewed as 'difficult' even though they work in the same way as men.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

It never crossed my mind to be a director, and I'll tell you why: because I'm a woman. It just didn't occur to me, but I knew I had to be in film.

a nation would not profit under a woman as its leader

The double bind lowers its boom on women in positions of authority, so those who haven't yet risen to such positions have not yet felt its full weight.

When you're female working in a male-dominated industry, there are unfortunately extra things you need to do - for example, couch opinions in a way that sounds palatable and not threatening. That's a skill I developed.

If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, it's seen as weak. But if they talk in ways associated with men or bosses, then they're seen as too aggressive. Whatever they do violates one or the other expectation: either you're not talking as you should as a woman or as boss.

I mean, I've been in a very male-dominated industry from a very young age.

Today, nobody has a problem with a women working, but every woman invariably faces casual sexism at work.