Quotes About Equality

These two revolutions of faith and feminism, though very different, were built upon the same fundamental assumption: every person is intrinsically as valuable and worthy of love as any other.

The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that religion and feminism are different expressions of the same impulse toward making life more just and whole.

The patriarchy may have stolen our freedoms, but we don't have to be complicit in the abandonment of our souls.

Feminism has to fight 'the tyranny of niceness'. It is, and has always been, one of the most potent forces holding women back.

If feminism doesn't frighten people with power, it is toothless.

It is deeply conservative to suggest that any sufficiently difficult woman from history -- say, one who rebelled against the constraints of femininity by dressing and acting in a masculine way -- must have been a man.

I we open up sport to women, it sends a message that wanting leisure time is not being selfish or unreasonable.

Perhaps you are thinking: I don't care about sport. Well, neither did I. But now I realise that's partly because sport did not seem to have a place for me.

There's definitely a feminist version of false consciousness. If you're trapped as a housewife, you begin to take pride in how shiny your taps are, castigate other women whose taps are not sufficiently shiny, and refuse to contemplate a world in which shiny taps are not the best measure of your worth as a human being. You do not question why, if shiny taps are so important, you're not being paid to clean them

The women's movement doesn't hate men. It hates patriarchy – a system created and supported by all of us, where men and women are legally, financially and socially unequal.

the story of gendered time is not one of beastly oppressive men and poor downtrodden women. It's a story of cultural scripts which we all follow without thinking.

A factory manager once tried to intimidate her. 'You can't win with that sari on,' he said. 'Why don't you change into a miniskirt?'fn5 Desai's reply took inspiration from Indira Gandhi, then prime minister of India: 'I'll tell you something, manager. Mrs Gandhi wears a sari and she runs a country of 600 million people. You can't even run a little factory.

Harman rejected the idea that women should see each other as competition. The US feminist Katha Pollitt called this 'Smurfette syndrome': just as there is only one female Smurf, we imagine there is only one slot for women at the top table. If she has it, then I can't: so I have to bring her down.

We creep closer to equality, before something drags us back. Misogyny mutates. Sexism and feminism are like bacteria and antibiotics; the latter forces the former to evolve. As soon as one argument against women's rights becomes useless, another takes its place.

If there is to be a Fifth Wave [of feminism], what should our focus be? Here is my own messy, imperfect, difficult answer: structures, structures, structures. Social progress is fast, captivating, enthralling. It is ferociously beautiful to see the world change at the speed of speaking out. But those advances won't survive unless we do the hard work of economic and legal reform to support them

Most of all I hope my work is about a thing that seems to me of the deepest possible importance in our present-day historical moment: finding ways to recognise and love difference. The

The women of Juarez, and women across the world, do not want to have to take revenge, any more than Procne and Philomela did. What they want is to be able to rely on the modern gods -- the police, the courts, and the media -- for justice.

I watched wealthy men and their wives and dates dancing and playing cards and making deals: I will admire you exactly as much, no more or less, as you admire me. I will love you in the strictest moderation.

She wants to see good hearts and good brains put to proper use, but I'm not convinced that everybody ought to live like that, or even that everybody can.

I like driving cab. Receptionists, sales clerks, waitresses -- they all have to look pleasant all the time. I can snarl if I want. There ain't too many women who can do that. Maybe garment workers are allowed to snarl at their sewing machines. But women mostly have to look pleasant when they're fucking miserable, and smile when they're angry.

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men that want crops without plowing up the ground….Power concedes nothing without a demand.

I am woman, hear me roar.

You're more likely to be able to get on in life, get educated, and get a good job, regardless of who your parents are and what they do in Denmark than anywhere else. It turns out that it's easier to live 'The American Dream' here than it's ever likely to be in the US.

Unlike in the US and the UK, where already stressed out and underpaid women were being told to 'lean in' and do more, it looked like you could pretty much lean any way you fancied in Denmark and still do OK. Oh, and women weren't handed sticks to beat themselves with if they weren't 'having it all'. This, I decided, was refreshing.