Leadership Quote by Eddie Bernice Johnson

In Eddie Bernice Johnson's mouth, this isn't a compliment; it's a procedural demand. "There is not an issue" is totalizing on purpose, a preemptive strike against the lazy partitioning of politics into "women's issues" and everything else. Johnson spent decades in Congress watching that partition get weaponized: women invited to speak on childcare or health, then sidelined when the conversation turns to budgets, national security, infrastructure, or science. Her line yanks the whole policy map back under one roof.

The phrasing also carries a veteran lawmaker's tactical restraint. She doesn't claim women will "solve" every problem. She claims "a perspective" - a word that sounds modest, even deferential, while actually challenging how legitimacy is granted in political rooms. Perspective implies lived experience, but also expertise: the ability to see second-order effects, the gaps between legislation and life. It's an argument for epistemic diversity as a governing tool, not a moral accessory.

Context matters because Johnson wasn't a symbolic figure; she was a working power center, the first Black woman to chair the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. That biography is embedded in the sentence: if a Black woman can credibly lead on science and infrastructure, then the old gatekeeping story collapses. The subtext is blunt: if women aren't at the table on every issue, the issue isn't fully understood - and the outcomes will show it.