Claire McCaskill Quotes

We're not seeing enough women rising to the top.

In those same 10 years, women are getting more and more of the graduate degrees, more and more of the undergraduate degrees, and it's translating into more women in entry-level jobs, even more women in lower-level management. But there's absolutely been no progress at the top. You can't explain away 10 years. Ten years of no progress is no progress.

Women have broken through the glass ceiling, and they're now more and more in the power seats.

There are lots of women and lots of men in the business that the powers that be decide are the right people and they'll stand with them for quite a long time.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

I'd like to see women get on to boards and run companies despite the fact that men occupy the citadels of power.

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.

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

I will be a president in a skirt, but I will wear the pants.

If there's one thing white men have never had a problem with in this clubby, white marble enclave of Washington, it's getting pulled up the ladder by other men.

When men hold the greater majority of all professional positions of power, it is impossible for a woman to advance her career without the support of men.

A lot of young girls have looked to their career paths and have said they'd like to be chief. There's been a change in the limits people see.

Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top - C-level jobs, board seats - tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.

The distribution of wealth ... depends on the laws and customs of society ... what the opinions and feelings of the ruling class make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

Our nation’s political spectrum is not left to right, but top to bottom. People can locate themselves on this rich-to-poor pole for this is not a theoretical positioning: It’s based on our actual experience with money and power.

I'm from a generation of women that shattered the glass ceiling. We didn't wait for doors to open. The lesson I learned is that you need to open some doors for yourself in pursuit of career advancement.

When you're behind, you have to work harder. Women have had to work harder to get ahead, and now they are in a place where they are surpassing men.

I was proud to be the first woman to serve as the No. 2 in the Clandestine Service. It is not my way to trumpet the fact that I am a woman up for the top job, but I would be remiss in not remarking on it - not least because of the outpouring of support from young women at CIA who consider it a good sign for their own prospects.

Too many women don't see themselves in senior leadership and so don't push themselves to advance their careers as their male peer group do.

Unfortunately, too few women take the risk of running for political office or assuming positions of influence. As a result, our voices are not part of the conversation yet alone the final decision.

Inequality is partly a marker of success.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

If women could sleep their way to the top, there'd be a lot more women at the top.

I think mainly it's an optics thing: to be able to visualize a woman in a position of power. It's going to be wonderful for all of us in every field.

[On women in previously all-male fields:] I think it will change in a lot of workplaces. I'm not so sure it will ever change on Capitol Hill until more women are in powerful positions. Because this is the last plantation for men.