I pursued education not instead of being a good mother, but because being a good mother required that I build a better life for my family.

The key to the trap is, of course, education. The feminine mystique has made higher education for women seem suspect, unnecessary and even dangerous. But I think that education, and only education, has saved, and...

Surely the freedom of women must mean more to us than the freedom of pimps.

Unfortunately, power is something that women abjure once they perceive the great difference between the lives possible to men and to women…

But, of course, you might be asking yourself, ‘Am I a feminist? I might not be. I don’t know! I still don’t know what it is! I’m too knackered and confused to work it out....

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation...

…if I have a daughter I will tell her she can do anything, and I will mean it, because I have no other intention of informing her otherwise. As my mother did with me, and...

In all societies, women are in double jeopardy; on the one hand we are expected to conform to certain emotional standards in our relationships with others at the penalty of being declared insane; on the...

Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!Lysistrata: If that’s all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then...

Shrouded as he was for a decade in an apparent cloak of anonymity and obscurity, Osama bin Laden was by no means an invisible man. He was ubiquitous and palpable, both in a physical and...

[T]he more clamour we make about ‘the women’s point of view’, the more we rub it into people that the women’s point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is —...

In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of...

When will women become civilized enough to stop mistreating men? When will they cease from training their lovers to become providers, merely because they have the power to do so?As long as they continue as...

When men decided women could be educated – this is what I think – they educated them on the male plan; they put them into schools with mottoes and school songs and muddy team games,...

In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the...

I know, I know, I’m being a girl.

The problem with gender is that is prescribes how we ´should’ be rather than recognizing how we are.

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that tiesMy hair…now could I but unloose my soul!We are sepulchred alive in this close world,And want more room.

When women have so absorbed the disease of sexism that they themselves can inflict it on each other, we clearly have a perfect, self-replenishing machine for the continuation of sexism. Unable to turn our assertiveness...

A story once went the rounds of Israel to the effect that Ben-Gurion described me as ‘the only man’ in his cabinet. What amused me about is that he (or whoever invented the story) thought...

Todavía siento que en muchos ámbitos de nuestra sociedad, si no eres santa y sumisa, si protestas, reivindicas, si molestas y te revelas, te señalan indicando que eres conflictiva, que eres peligrosa. (…) Ser feminisita...

[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly...

What is whiter than snow?’ he said. ‘The truth,’ said Grania.’What is the best colour?’ said Finn. ‘The colour of childhood,’ said she.’What is hotter than fire?’ ‘The face of a hospitable man when he...

Frankly, I’m not responsible for other people’s perceptions and what they consider real or fake. We must abolish the entitlement that deludes us int believing that we have the right to make assumptions about people’s...

Peace in patriarchy is war against women.

Matriarchy is a time-honored staple for any writer looking to invent an exotic society.

We knew the pain of winter rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball....

There is any amount of love and good in the world, but you must search for it. Being misunderstood is one of the trials we all must bear. I think that even the most common-minded...

It portrayed motherhood as the highest position that a woman could achieve. For God had made Mary neither a prophet nor the messiah nor the daughter of God. Nor did God take the form of...

And now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands.

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e. “moral) girl and...

Those who are so eager for women and girls to go back to the kitchen might think again about just what it is we might be up to in there. You can plan a lot...

This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it’s said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we...

The night is mine, my own time, to do with it as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don’t move. As long as I lie still. The difference between...

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their...

A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting...

Gender identity is our internal response to a social construction that attempts to make a connection between a person’s biological makeup and their eventual role in society.

Si la mujer es prosaica, casera, bajamente utilitaria, se debe a que le imponen que consagre su existencia a preparar alimentos y limpiar deyecciones. No será de ahí de donde podrá extraer el sentido de...

It’s as if our girls don’t understand that they can be recognized for other things–their goals, their brains. Not just their bodies.

In a story, you must always listen for the voice you cannot hear, the one that has been ignored or silenced. In that crushed voice, there is a strain of truth, as a crushed grape...

Neurotic, ha!” I let out a scornful laugh. “If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one...

The situation of those men in the hierarchy of gender who avail themselves of female tenderness is not thereby altered: Their superordinate position is neither abandoned, nor their male privilege relinquished. The vulnerability these men...

When a man says to me, ‘Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired...

The anti-feminism bacllash has been set off not by women’s achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they...

I think one of the primary goals of a feminist landscape architecture would be to work toward a public landscape in which we can roam the streets at midnight, in which every square is available...

I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared.Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked.

On the scale of relevance, public approval or disapproval of a woman’s choices should not merit measure.

I first knew I was a woman when my mother and father took me out to dinner to celebrate my success on the debate team.” It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they...

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children…But the majority of men did not share the load...