Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work...

The words of Barbra Streisand, “Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work,” strike with the weight of centuries of inequality and the sharpness of truth. She names the double standard that has bound women through the ages: where men are praised for their ambition, women are too often judged for theirs, told that their devotion belongs to love alone, and not to the craft, the art, or the calling that burns within them.

The origin of this injustice lies deep in the structures of patriarchal societies. For countless generations, work was seen as the domain of men, while women were confined to the household, their worth measured by their service to husbands and children. To show passion for a man was celebrated; to show equal fire for labor, invention, or leadership was condemned as unnatural. Streisand, an artist who carved her way through these barriers, speaks as one who knows the price of daring to devote herself to something beyond the narrow path laid before her.

Consider the story of Madame Curie, whose brilliance illuminated the mysteries of radiation. Though she won two Nobel Prizes, she endured scorn and suspicion, her commitment to science treated as unfeminine, her discoveries overshadowed by the myth that only men could bear such genius. Where a man would have been lauded as a hero, she was attacked as a woman who loved her work too much. Yet her persistence proved Streisand’s words: that women who dedicate themselves to labor beyond romance often pay a price men are never asked to pay.

Streisand’s statement also reveals a hidden wound of culture. By allowing men the full breadth of passion—whether for business, art, politics, or invention—society gives them wings. By confining women’s passion to love for a man, society binds them, robbing the world of half its genius. It is not only women who suffer from this injustice, but humanity itself, for it silences voices that could have changed history, painted masterpieces, discovered cures, and led nations.

The lesson is both heroic and urgent: passion is not the property of one sex. To love one’s work is no less noble than to love a man, and to devote one’s soul to creation is no less sacred than to devote it to companionship. To deny women this right is to deny them their full humanity, and to deny the world the fruits of their greatness.

Let the generations remember: true equality is not only the freedom to love whom one will, but the freedom to labor, to dream, to build, and to pour the fire of the heart into any calling. For when women are allowed to embrace their commitment to work as fiercely as men, the world itself is enriched, and humanity rises closer to its full potential.