Even Though There Were Three Newspapers In Chicago At The Time, He Said 'you Wouldn't Want To Compete With Your Husband," And So Instead Of Doing What I Might Do Now In That Situation, I Basically Saluted And Found Other Things To Do.
You Can't Just Think That You Will Get A Job For No Good Reason... And I Think That The Other Part Is You Have To Work Your Way Up, You Know I Did A Lot Of Xeroxing And Getting Coffee...i Always Did What I Was Asked To Do. I Delivered. People Knew That I Would Get Things Done And Get Them Done Well. And That Is A Big Part Of Our Resumes, Are Based On Being Responsible And Being Willing To Do What Needed To Be Done.
As Far As Barriers Once I Joined The Government I Was Very Lucky Because I Had All Of My Credentials Together, I Was Doctor Albright... So When Somebody Wanted The One Woman I Made Sure That They Knew I Was Dependable And Qualified.
The Stunning Part Was That One Time Neil Mcelroy The Secretary Of Defense Who Was The Father Of One Of Our Classmates Spoke And Basically At Commencement, He Told Us All That Our Job After Graduation Was To Get Married And Have Interesting Sons...and We All Found That Hard To Believe.
I Went To College Somewhere Between The Invention Of The Ipad And The Discovery Of Fire... But I Had Gone To A Women's College.
Bill Clinton Valued My Opinion And Always Made Sure That My Views Were Heard, And People Knew That He Wanted Me To Talk.
I Had More Problems With The Men In Our Own Government, And Not Because They Were Male Chauvinistic Pigs But Because They Had Known Me For So Long. I Might Have Been A Carpool Mother And A Friend Of Their Wife, And So They'd Been To My House For Dinner And Things Like And They Thought 'how Did She Get To Be Secretary Of State When I Should Be Secretary Of State?' So That Was More Of A Problem.
One Of My Trips Was To Meet With The Gulf Cooperation Council With All The Saudi Foreign Ministers, And When We Started The Meeting I Said 'perhaps You've Noticed That I'm Not Dressed The Same As My Predecessors", But No-one Had A Problem And I Was Never Treated With Anything Other Than Respect...so I Did Not Have Problems With That, Interestingly Enough.
People Didn't Think That A Woman Could Be The Secretary Of State, When My Name Was Out There...but Then The Arab Ambassadors At The Un Said 'we Have No Problem Dealing With Ambassador Albright, And We Would Have No Problem Dealing With Secretary Albright.'
The Interesting Part Is, That Being The United States Secretary Of State, Most Places I Went Didn't Have A Problem With Me Being A Woman, Because I Was Representing The United States.
I Was Not Only The First Woman To Become Secretary Of State, I Was The First [u.s.] Secretary Of State Of The 21st Century. I Was The First Secretary Of State To Own A Web Site, To Visit Internet Cafes, And To Make Internet Access A Part Of Policy.
