Quotes About Gender

Men are born privileged in the scale of things - I'm generalizing, but it's true. Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliche, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.

If you read all your history books, there are no women in them.

I think there have always been male writers, female writers. As a reader, I never picked up a book and said, 'Oh, I can't read this - it's about a male,' and set it back down.

'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.

After my first book, many of my readers came back to tell me that the female characters I had created were not strong enough. I have consciously rectified that in my next four books. In any case, it's true that women run the world, and men would do better to listen to them!

I think as women we've always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There's a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it's important to give women strong heroines.

A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We can't read sexuality off of gender.

It is particularly challenging for women who are trying to stay competitive in a real estate market where men really don't have the same degree of safety concerns.

It would be easier for people to grasp that gender, sex, and sexual orientation are different things if we had as much imagination in real life as we do when we are making our movies.

Without sounding sexist, you have to cast a real man opposite Cate Blanchett. You need a guy who's grown up.

It isn't so much that there are so few women in finance in total but, rather, few women in senior leadership roles. It is a real problem that we all need to focus on every day, but it is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

I was so intent as a young lawyer on beating the men at their own game that I didn't take any real maternity leave with my three younger children. It is only looking back that I realise I wasn't beating the system but reinforcing it.

The important thing is when you look at areas like physics and you realise that only one in five A-level students is a girl. We know it isn't about aptitude.

As a kid, you get to the stage where you realise the gender barriers that exist in society and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.

I didn't really realise that I was going to have more obstacles because I was a woman. It was never something that I thought about.

There are more women editors than people realise. I think we're more able to keep our eye on what the film needs. Between men, sometimes it's a real ego battle, and that's very bad for the film.

I was always made to feel that men were desirable because of their masculinity, and for a boy, being feminine was not something you should be proud of. But, I came to realise it's OK for boys to be feminine, for girls to be masculine and we should all express ourselves however we want.

I look young. I heard this said so often that it became irritating. I once worked as a babysitter for a woman who, the first time we met, said she didn't want somebody in high school. I was 22. Later, I realised that in certain places being female and looking 'young' meant it was more difficult to be taken seriously, so I turned to make-up.

As a five-year-old in Berlin in 1965, I didn't know that funny women existed. It wasn't until I got back to England that I realised women could be funny.

I never really thought about being a woman in a man's world. Then at the World Championships in 2000 I finished 15th. I was called on to the podium just for being a woman, and I realised things were going to be different.

I realised how rarely women are involved in all aspects of the music making, how rarely I've worked with female engineers. That became something that I started looking at as well. How many women can I bring into the project across the board.

I'm beginning to think I have two years encountering sexism without really realising it.

When I graduated from law school in 1959, there wasn't a single woman on any federal bench. It wouldn't be a realistic ambition for a woman to want to become a federal judge. It wasn't realistic until Jimmy Carter became our president.

There are no trans roles, and if there are, they go to Jared Leto or Eddie Redmayne or Elle Fanning... Will there ever come a point where I could play a woman in a realistic, naturalistic drama and have there not be the word 'trans' in the script?