The message I like to convey to women and girls across the globe

The words of Venus Williams, “The message I like to convey to women and girls across the globe is that there is no glass ceiling,” rise like a call to arms, a declaration that invisible barriers cannot bind the human spirit. The glass ceiling, that unseen yet unyielding wall which limits women’s rise in power, wealth, and recognition, is here denied its permanence. Williams, a warrior of the court, speaks with the authority of one who has fought battles not only with rackets and balls, but against prejudice, dismissal, and inequality itself.

In the ancient spirit, her words echo the courage of those who refused to bow before limits. The glass ceiling is but the modern name for the chains of tradition that once confined women to hearth and home. It is the shadow of laws that barred them from councils, the sneer that told them they were too fragile for leadership. To declare that it does not exist is not blindness, but defiance—the refusal to grant such chains legitimacy, and the insistence that they are illusions to be shattered by courage.

Consider Williams’ own struggle for equal pay in tennis. For years, women were denied the same rewards as men, though they fought with the same sweat and spirit upon the court. She raised her voice, stood firm against critics, and helped bring change to Wimbledon and beyond. Her victory was not merely for herself, but for all who would follow, proving that even the most hallowed institutions could not withstand the force of justice.

History offers another mirror in the life of Emmeline Pankhurst, who led the suffragettes of Britain. She too declared that barriers were illusions, created to maintain control, and that they would fall if met with relentless will. She marched, she endured prison, and through her defiance, women won the right to vote. Like Venus Williams, she showed that what seems unbreakable is only waiting for the hammer of determination.

So let this truth be carried forward: the glass ceiling exists only as long as belief sustains it. When women and girls lift their eyes beyond it, when they push upward with strength, wisdom, and unity, it shatters into dust. Williams’ words are not comfort, but command: to refuse the myth of limitation, to step boldly into every arena, and to claim the fullness of destiny. For there is no ceiling above the human spirit—only the sky, and beyond it, the stars.