Umera Ahmad Quotes

Success on the front of women's rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances - where no girl is denied access to education, for instance - but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.

As long as outmoded ways of thinking prevent women from making a meaningful contribution to society, progress will be slow. As long as the nation refuses to acknowledge the equal role of more than half of itself, it is doomed to failure.

Laws and traditions that hold back women, hold back entire societies.

The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down.

There is strong mentoring of women in the academy. Corporations appear more willing to resist affirmative action to advance women, and boards and shareholders are more tolerant of this approach.

So much research has been done showing that the woman is the most vulnerable but also the biggest strength leading to economic progress.

Before I leave this Earth, I would like to know they have given women the same benefits and promotions as men.

Every company I know is looking for more women at the table. Every board is looking for more women at the table. There's a reason why men want to understand the challenges women face, address them, because then they're going to be better hirers, attracters and retainers of women.

There is no development strategy more beneficial to society as a whole - women and men alike - than the one which involves women as central players.

My hope in writing 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.

There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.

I think that issues of gender have been discussed widely at Harvard. But I think I was chosen clearly on the merits, and I wish to operate as president on the merits. I think, on one level, we might say that I can affirm that women have the aptitude to do science or to do anything, including being president of Harvard.

We had like a jolt of women in country, and it seems like we're just kind of there now.

More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development.

I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children.

The term 'glass ceiling' was coined in 1984. More than 20 years later, the ceiling has barely cracked. There isn't a single country in the world that has as many female as male politicians. In business, the situation is even worse. Its highest echelon - the board - remains a chauvinist's dream.

While all of these are important and significant events, it is the United States' foreign policy that furthers the advancement of freedoms and rights for women that is the most striking for me.

The previous generation paved the way for my generation to gallop unheeded into jobs previously reserved for men.

Women are a dynamic economic force. We represent the largest consumer market in the world and are drivers of GDP. More and more companies recognize that when they support women as customers, employees, leaders, future investors and partners, they are adopting sound business strategies and advancing social progress.

To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.

There is certainly a growing body of data that correlates investments in women with a country's general prosperity; a recognition that no country can get ahead if half its people are left behind.

I am passionate about acting. 'Girls in our family are not allowed to act' is quite an outdated thought to have. They did it till my mother, but now no more.

If you stand up for women, then don't bash me.

There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.

I think the culture today is very, very different from what it was in the '60s, and I feel lucky that I grew up at a time when I had these very strong female role models.