Daily Inspiration Quote by Sally Ride

There’s a quiet demolition job happening in that sentence. Sally Ride doesn’t posture or scold; she normalizes. By leading with the numbers - 29 men, 6 women - she acknowledges the imbalance without making it the headline. Then she pivots to a deceptively simple claim: the men “were all very used to working with women.” It reads almost bland, which is the point. Ride is refusing the myth that women in elite technical spaces are disruptive novelties. She’s describing competence as routine, not exceptional.

The subtext is aimed at the culture that surrounded her more than the colleagues she’s describing. Ride came up in an era when NASA and the press treated female astronauts as social experiments: Could they handle stress? Would they cry? Who would do their hair? Against that backdrop, “used to working with women” is a rebuke to the idea that men must be trained, persuaded, or heroically enlightened to share professional ground. She frames it as a baseline expectation for serious adults.

It’s also a strategic piece of messaging from someone who spent years being turned into a symbol whether she wanted it or not. Ride offers reassurance without begging for acceptance: the workplace already had the skills to accommodate women; any friction was more likely manufactured by institutions, media narratives, or policy, not by day-to-day collaboration. The line carries her signature restraint - calm, empirical, and quietly political - turning inclusion into something unremarkable enough to be irreversible.