To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

Meir’s remark captures a persistent double standard in professional and political life: women are often required to demonstrate higher competence to receive the same credibility, authority, or advancement granted more readily to men. The line is less a claim about innate ability than an indictment of biased evaluation—women must be “much better” because the threshold for being judged merely “good enough” is set higher for them. Coming from a leader who rose to the top of a male-dominated political world, the quote also reads as hard-earned counsel: excellence may be necessary but not sufficient, and success frequently demands overcoming skepticism, scrutiny, and unequal expectations.