Nancy Pelosi, the outgoing congresswoman and former House speaker, has conceded that she may not see a woman be elected US president in her lifetime.

The California Democrat said as much in a USA Today interview published on Sunday with her retirement looming after four decades in Congress – and invoked a turn of phrase referring to a metaphorical barrier impeding advancement in a profession that often confronts women and racial minorities.

“It’s not a glass ceiling. It’s a marble ceiling,” Pelosi told the publication while discussing the defeats her party colleagues Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris respectively endured against Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections – as well as institutional resistance she met during her own rise on Capitol Hill.

“I thought certainly the American people are far ahead of the Congress in terms of their acceptance or their enthusiasm for a woman to be president of the United States.”

She added: “I always thought that a woman would be president of the United States long before a woman would be speaker of the House.”

With that not occurring, USA Today reported that Pelosi had adjusted her timetable – and even “tempered” her optimism – for when a woman may assume the Oval Office.

“I think it’s … maybe not in my lifetime,” Pelosi, who turns 86 in March, said to the outlet. But she made it a point to predict “within this next generation, there’ll be a woman” serving as US president.

Pelosi’s comments in some ways mirror ones delivered by former first lady Michelle Obama in November about whether the US could soon join its North American neighbors Mexico and Canada in having a female chief executive.

“Sadly, we ain’t ready,” the attorney, author and wife of Barack Obama – the US president between 2009 and 2017 – said during a conversation posted on her YouTube page.

“That’s why I’m like: ‘Don’t look at me about running ‘cause you all are lying – you are not ready for a woman.’ We got a lot of growing up to do and there’s still … a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman, and we saw it.”

Pelosi joined Congress in 1988 to represent San Francisco. She won election to the post 20 times and was the first woman to serve as US House speaker, a role she held from 2007 to 2011 and 2019 to 2023.

In the USA Today interview, she revisited her role in convincing Joe Biden, her fellow Democrat and longtime political friend, to drop out of seeking re-election to the White House in 2024. She said she and Biden have not spoken ever since he shelved his 2024 campaign before Trump – whom he defeated four years earlier – won a second term.

“I’m saddened by it because I love him and I respect him,” Pelosi told USA Today of her estrangement from Biden. “But I respect his decision in that regard.”

Pelosi did say that she was grateful Biden issued a statement declaring her “the best speaker of the House in American history” when she announced in November that she would retire at the end of her final term in January 2027.

Of her decision to retire as an octogenarian, Pelosi said to the publication, “It was time. I mean – I’ve been ready for a while.”

Pelosi also reportedly said, with an exasperated tone, that she is commonly asked: “What are you going to do next?”

Pelosi told USA Today she mostly replies with something to the effect of: “I don’t have to do anything – I’m old!”