If you’ve ever shared in a conversation about inspiring women and girls into male-dominated fields or leadership, you’ve likely heard the line, “you can’t be what you can’t see” as a rallying call for representation in leadership.
The phrase can be traced back to American civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, who used it to note how it can foster a sense of value and belonging when someone sees someone like themselves succeeding in a field, especially in the context of children of colour seeing themselves in storybooks.
But Edelman’s direct line actually had a caveat. The author said, “it’s hard to be what you can’t see”, as opposed to the definitive “you can’t be what you can’t see” that the phrase is often shortened to today.
A lack of representation can and will make things harder, but not impossible.
Indeed, all the firsts achieved by women came from recognising that they could get there regardless of what they were currently seeing.
As one Women’s Agenda reader, Sharon Orrman-Rossiter, was quick to point out following our coverage of the Women In Leadership Summit last week where the line was shared, the shortened version of the saying may perpetuate the lack of representation despite it being used with good intentions.
Sharon is a neuroscientist and, she says, an example of the quote being untrue and limiting women’s sense of what they can achieve.
“I had never ‘seen’ a female scientist and yet I became one,” she says.
Sharon grew up in a conservative household and conservative country town where women were mostly housewives, with the exception of teachers and nurses. Her parents did not finish high school and she did not know anyone who went to university other than her teachers.
Sharon became the first in her family to go to university. The desire to become a scientist came from curiosity and determination, rather than “seeing” a female scientist in her field.
She’d prefer we reframed the message to something closer to, “Even if you have never seen it, you can still become it. Go for it. We will support and encourage you.”
“There is always someone who has to be the first. Let’s not unintentionally plant the seed in girls that they can’t live their dreams if they haven’t seen someone already do it,” Sharon says.
Jen Wittwer CSM was on the case back in 2022, noting on the Grounded Curiosity site that young women are looking for inspiration, not imitation.
“We just need women leaders, of all shapes and sizes, to be visible. And that includes young women who may not see a senior woman in her field or speciality but have the confidence to believe she can achieve her aspirations.” She further noted that if we keep using this phrase, young women may feel that if they cannot see a role model or the desired career, they will aspire to less.
Wittwer herself achieved many firsts in her military career. She said in a 2018 interview that “you can be what you can’t see, because as the world evolves, and as workplaces evolve, there’s always going to be firsts.”
And as Kasey Champion noted in her piece celebrating the movie Hidden Figures:
“You can’t be what you can’t see? How disrespectful of the pioneers! Who were they looking to when they had to forge their own paths? How disrespectful of our children’s imaginations, that we think they can’t be engineers because they don’t see people that look like them being engineers. Thank God Marissa Mayer is blonde because otherwise I probably would have to limit my career choices to Disney princess or Barbie doll.” (It was the year 2017)
My very 2026 argument on ending the “you can’t be what you can’t see” trope is that the leadership we are seeing at the top isn’t particularly great, and isn’t something many girls and women would aspire to anyway. It’s here that you can be something different to what you see: something more gracious and less egotistical, more inclusive, more open to difference and collaboration.