-Feminist Quotations- Compiled by- B R SIWAL- E-MAIL:br_siwal@yahoo.com

• “For me, women’s progress is when every woman can make and contribute to informed decisions about her rights, welfare, and general well-being of her society.”

- Elsie Onubogu

• Women’s love in the family is expressed and demanded in terms of work. The difference in gender is related to this enormous mass of energy which women pour into others, to make them feel like human beings in a system that treats them like commodities.”

• - Antanello Picchio (1992

From Rio to Beijing to Rome

In Rio they told us Women play an important role in

protecting the environmentIn Vienna we applaudedThat women’s rights are human rightsIn Cairo they told us That reproductive rights and safe

motherhood was assured to womenIn Copenhagen it was said That Women’s contribution to national

development would be considered

In Beijing we highlighted the themesof equality, development and peace

And Reminded all to see the world through women’s eyes

In Istanbul we were assured of the right to shelter

At the World Food Summit in RomeWomen’s role in food security was recognized

Rio, Vienna, Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing, Istanbul and Rome

To all we have been

And now what next?

- Ruth Mubiru, Uganda Women Tree Planting Movement,

- Online Working Group 3, 1999

Women

We have a purpose in our lives

To be part of history, of a new dawn

To be an overflowing river

That waters the world

Which belongs to all, equally.

- Song by Shakti Group

- Where there is no freedom there can be no morality. Women lived out their lives under a code imposed upon them by men, under conditions in which the feminine point of view was simply ignored as if it had no existence.

- - Alison Neilans

Out of doors is unsafe because women are not there. If women were there, everywhere, in the world which belongs to them as much as to men, then everywhere would be safe. We try to make the women safe in the home, and keep them there; to make the world safe for women and children has not occurred to us.

- - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Only men wrote the Constitution; women were expressly excluded in intent and content. Wilma Scott Heide

• discrimination because of one’s sex is just as degrading, dehumanizing, immoral, unjust, indefensible, infuriating and capable of producing societal turmoil as discrimination because of one’s race.

- - Pauli Murray

• The fear that a woman may deviate the slightest from conventionalism in any way, has become a nervous disease with the public.

- Elizabeth Oakes Smith

- Home is full of good, but life is difficult in it. The trouble is caused, not by the home, but by what goes on in it.

- Elizabeth Hawes, • The home is a human institution. All

human institutions are open to improvement.

• Charlotte Perkings Gilman,

• The most wasteful “brain drain” in World today is the drain in the kitchen sink.

- Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex, 1971

• Religion was for man to preach- and women to practise.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman

- Every nation has kept woman in ignorance, and has used its religion as a means of securing her subjection. Is it any wonder then that the world has always been a scene of bloodshed and cruelty?

- Anonymous Author

- On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abuse herself but to assert herself-on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.

- - Simone De Beauvoir

• Self-reliance is one of the first lessons to be taught to our daughters; they should be educated with our sons, and equally with them taught to look forward to some independent means of support…

- Matilda Joslyn Gage

- The basic freedom of the world is woman’s freedom.

- - Margaret Sanger

• We are told that home is woman’s sphere. So it is, and man’s sphere, too…

- Ibid

- On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abuse herself but to assert herself-on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.

- - Simone De Beauvoir

• Woman must not accept; she must challenge… When she chooses her new, free course of action, it must be in the light of her own opinion-of her own intuition. Only so can she give play to the feminine spirit.

- Ibid

- She knows that regardless of what ought to be, the brutal, unavoidable fact is that she will never receive her freedom until she takes it for herself.

- - Ibid

• Does anybody wonder so many women die, grief and constant anxiety kill nearly as many women as men dies in the battle field.

• -Chesnut Marry

• Equality of opportunity means equal opportunity to be unequal.

- - Macleod Iain

- Here lies a poor women who always tired, for she lived in place where help was not hired. Her last words on earth. Dear friend I am going where washing ain’t done nor sweeping nor sewing, and everything there is exact to my wishes, for there they do not eat and there is no washing of dishes, do not mourn for me now, do not mourn for me never, for I am going to do nothing for ever and ever.

- - Epitaphs

- Get up, Stand up

- Stand up for your rights

- Get up, Stand up

- Do not give up the fight- - Marley Bob

• So long as a woman is dependent on a man for her self image of her self-esteem, she will remain without any sense of her own worthy – Can never be fully realized human being.

- Perry Eleanor

- Equality does not signify that kind of mathematical or physical equivalence in virtue of which any one element may be substituted for another. It denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each, irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities.

- - John Dewey

• One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the human female presents in the society, it is a civilisation as a whole that provides this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as a feminine.

• Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female – whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

• She essentially to the male as a sexual being. She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her, she is the incidental, the essential as opposed to the essential. He is the subject, he is the absolute.• - Simon De Beauvoir – Second Sex

- I am the woman who holds up the sky

- The rainbow runs through my eyes

- The sun makes a path to my womb

- My thoughts are in the shape of clouds

- But my words are yet to come

- - Poem of the UTE Indians

• Women as a class have never subjugated another group – we want to be neither oppressor nor oppressed.- Susan Brownmiller – American Feminist

- It is probably true to say that the largest scope for change still lies in men’s attitude to women, and in women’s attitude to themselves.

- Brittain Vera

- When men are oppressed it is tragedy and when women are oppressed it is tradition.

- - Berndette Mosala

• We want a world where inequality based on class, gender and race is absent from every country, and from the relationships among countries. We want a world where basic needs become basic rights and where poverty and all forms of violence are eliminated. Each person will have the opportunity to develop her or his full potential and creativity, and women’s values of nurturance and solidarity will characterise human relationships.

• - Dawn

• Man is defined as a human being and women as a female – whenever she behaves as human beinf she is said to imitate the male.

• Simone De Beauvoir• One is not born, but rather becomes, a women. No

biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described feminine.

• - Simone De Beauvoir

• Woman? ‘Doesn’t exist.’ She borrows the disguise which she is required to assume. She mimes the role imposed upon her. The only thing expected of her is that she maintain, without fail, the circulation of pretence by enveloping herself in femininity.

• - Luce Irigaray

• Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge. ~Author Unknown

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl." ~Shirley Chisholm

Women belong in the house... and the Senate. ~Author Unknown

• Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their opressors. ~Evelyn Cunningham

Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy. ~Henry Kissinger

• The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ~Roseanne Barr

• Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural heritage. ~Author Unknown

I see my body as an instrument, rather than an ornament. ~Alanis Morissette, quoted in Reader's Digest, March 2000

• You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. ~Jane Galvin Lewis

• History is herstory too. ~Author Unknown

• Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. ~Joseph Conrad

• Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths. ~Lois Wyse

No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself. ~Rabbi Sofer

I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. ~Sally Kempton,

• One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man. ~Marlo Thomas

I ask no favors for my sex.... All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks. ~Sarah Moore Grimké

•I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves. ~Mary Wollstonecraft

• The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes. ~Bella Abzug

•A man has every season while a woman only has the right to spring. ~Jane Fonda

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. ~Gloria Steinem

Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you. ~Sheila Rowbotham

•The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source. ~Lucretia Mott

• Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ~Margaret Mead

Women's chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy. ~Estelle R. Ramey

• The foolish and cruel notion that a wife is to obey her husband has sent more women to the grave than to the courts for a divorce.

• ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

•

If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? ~Mary Astell

I think, therefore I'm single. ~Lizz Winstead

I can't be a rose in any man's lapel. ~Margaret Trudeau

• Several men I can think of are as capable, as smart, as funny, as compassionate, and as confused - as remarkable you might say - as most women. ~Jane Howard

Not only is women's work never done, the definition keeps changing. ~Bill Copeland

Never let the hand you hold, hold you down. ~Author Unknown

•Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. ~Betty Friedan

•When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband. ~Shana Alexander, State-by-State Guide to Women's Legal Rights, 1975

• It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. ~Sally Kempton, Esquire, 1970

I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body. ~Elaine Boosler

• Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. ~Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

• Women are not the weak, frail little flowers that they are advertised. There has never been anything invented yet, including war, that a man would enter into, that a woman wouldn't, too. ~Will Rogers

• We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. ~Gloria Steinem

There is more difference within the sexes than between them. ~Ivy Compton

-Burnett, Mother and Son