Quotes About Equality

The more polarized the gender roles, the more violent the society. The less polarized the gender roles, the more peaceful the society.

if girls were raised a little more like boys—if they had more right to say no, to declare boundaries, to develop a strong personal identity, to be angry, to rebel—they would be less likely to be revictimized as adults.

As I write this, there are mainstream educators trying to discredit efforts to diversify the academic canon by giving them the dreaded label "politically correct"—now known familiarly on campus as "P.C." (which, as Robin Morgan has pointed out, might well stand for "Plain Courtesy")—as if centuries of exclusion had not been the height (or depth) of politics.

I don't think feminism can just be imitative or integrationist. By definition, it must transform. But in the short run, there are goals we agree on. And it's in the short run that we must act.

To be just, a law has to be flexible.

Perhaps because women are seen as good listeners, I find that a traveling woman - perhaps especially a traveling feminist - becomes a kind of celestial bartender.

This is all the more important today when we have world leaders who don't respect differences. That lack of respect is a dictatorship.

I was more interested in going to sea and the revolution than in staying home as the mother or the wife.

Pound for pound, she was stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In retrospect, the second cause for delay makes less feminist sense: the long popularity of assertiveness training. Though most women needed to be more assertive (or even more aggressive, though that word was considered too controversial), many assertiveness courses taught women how to play the existing game, not how to change the rules.

the discovery that ordinary people are smart, smart people are ordinary

In the words of so many daughters who don't yet know that a female fate is not a personal fault

I was angry about the human talent that was lost just because it was born into a female body, and the mediocrity that was rewarded because it was born into a male one.

Women are becoming the men we wanted to marry (But too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry).

I was being measured against the expectation that any feminist had to be unattractive in a conventional sense—and then described in contrast to that stereotype. The subtext was: If you could get a man, why would you need equal pay?

It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one.

It seems more hopeful to talk about what came before patriarchy--and could show us a way beyond it.

Every woman knows there is a big difference between help that is designed to keep you dependent, and help that is designed to make you independent.

Whether by dowry murders in India, honor killings in Egypt, or domestic violence in the United States, records show that women are most likely to be beaten or killed at home and by men they know. Statistically speaking, home is an even more dangerous place for woman than the road. Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self willed journey-and to be welcomed when she comes home.

What we didn't talk about were the male staffers who rated our looks, brushed against us in close quarters, and became hazards to be navigated. Our presence was the problem; their behavior was inevitable. Avoiding them while keeping their egos intact was just part of our job.

I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine," so we suppress it—until it overflows.

Women can't have it all if that means doing it all.

The idea that women are "our own worst enemies" forces us to admit that we don't have the power to be, even if we wanted to. When

Marilyn supplied sex so that she would be allowed to work, but not so that she wouldn't have to work.