(Note: This transcript has been edited for readability.)

"It’s just socially or culturally, people tend to separate between men and women. So even if you’re all sitting at the same table together, men will be on one side of the table, and women will be on the other. Even if it’s family, and it’s okay for them all to interact. You can have co-ed meals, but it’s generally not going to be ‘mixed,’ how we have it here, where there’s some men and women sitting next to each other. As a woman, I can’t make a show of being loud or being aggressive because that’s not well received there. And it’s not how women can assert power there. So, you just have to constantly maintain it in more subtle ways, like maintaining eye contact. Also just being really firm if you ask for something. Just making sure that that’s exactly what you get, and not saying, ‘Oh, well, it’s okay.’ No, it’s not okay. It has to be exactly that way. Or else, the next time, it’s just a slippery slope."