‘Bitches Get Stuff Done’: 18 Women On What It’s Like To Be The Boss
“If you want to be successful and you are a woman, you have to understand that there’s all kinds of horrible stuff that comes with it, and you simply cannot do anything about it but move on.”
By 
Katie Mather
1. “Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions; go over, under, through, and opinions will change organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.”
2. “If you want to be successful and you are a woman, you have to understand that there’s all kinds of horrible stuff that comes with it, and you simply cannot do anything about it but move on.”
3. “How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice? … Making it through the glass ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman’s footprints. I just hit at exactly the right time in exactly the right spot.”
4. “The bigger we get, the easier it is.”
—Safra Catz
5. “It’s also important to realize that it’s okay to be the first. If you constantly look for role models who look like you, then there won’t be any firsts.”
6. “[Being a boss] is my job…We’re all feminists here and I don’t think anyone I work with would interpret that being a boss would be like being a bitch or anything.”
7. “I always get asked, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’ I think people are well meaning, but it’s pretty insulting. Because what it means to me is, ‘You, Mindy Kaling, have all the trappings of a very marginalized person. You’re not skinny, you’re not white, you’re a woman. Why on earth would you feel like you’re worth anything?’”
8. “Be first and be lonely.”
9. “We should not wait for someone else to come and raise our voice. We should do it by ourselves. We should believe in ourselves. Yes, we can do it. One day you will see that all the girls will be powerful; all the girls will be going to school. And it is possible only by our struggle; only when we raise our voice.”
10. “Let me take a minute to say that I love bossy women. Some people hate the word, and I understand how ‘bossy’ can seem like a shitty way to describe a woman with a determined point of view, but for me, a bossy woman is someone to search out and celebrate. A bossy woman is someone who cares and commits and is a natural leader.”
11. “There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.”
—Indra Nooyi
12. “You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious.”
13. “Whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I’m well aware of, but that’s just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves.”
—Hillary Clinton
14. “I handle my business and also I speak up for myself. But if I was not like this, so many people would’ve taken advantage of me…I just always felt like, I’m never going to let anyone pull me down and make me feel small. I’m never going to let a man do that and I think sometimes that transfers over into your career as a woman … I’m a businesswoman.”
15. “If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.”
16. “No matter where you are in life, you’ll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be.”
—Sophia Amoruso
17. “It is pure mythology that women cannot perform as well as men in science, engineering and mathematics. In my experience, the opposite is true: Women are often more adept and patient at untangling complex problems, multitasking, seeing the possibilities in new solutions and winning team support for collaborative action.”
18. “I think when you start out in your career, you think that everything is fair, and you are getting equal opportunities. And as you move up higher in the ranks, you realize that actually there are fewer positions and it’s more competitive and it’s harder to get those opportunities. And then you reach a point where you realize, hey, these opportunities are not equal, and I think that’s been the case for many women.”
