Anna Quindlen Quotes

I think it's absolutely about time that we have as many female leads as male. It's a very exciting time to be an actress.

In 'The Force Awakens,' women as well as men are in positions of authority. And you don't have to work hard to do that - it's not a statement, it's the world.

On the political front, of course it's a zero-sum game. If it's all white males holding positions, you bring 10 women in, then it's, 'Women are coming!' Get 10 blacks and it's, 'Blacks are coming!' 'Hispanics are coming!' Zero-sum game. The seatmates might change but the chairs don't move. In the economy, the number of chairs can actually increase.

I was very proud, on just my second day in office, to appoint a gender-balanced cabinet - one of only three in the developed world.

We can celebrate how far we've come from our sexist past when women and men are equally represented in the pages of science fiction anthologies.

In particular, I want to set a challenge to public bodies and private companies to improve gender balance on their own boards.

It matters whether women sit at the table. No one speaks up for you when you are standing outside with your nose pressed up against the glass. You cannot window-shop for power.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.

We don't want to be our own niche. We're filmmakers like everybody. How many years in a row are we going to talk about the fact that we make films and we are women? Enough already.

We're showing kids a world that is very scantily populated with women and female characters. They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do.

I have no fears that on a purely merit basis, we will have an embarrassment of riches from which to choose in order to reach gender parity.

I think there's so many points of view that you want to make sure your stories are being told from men and women... you get all of the different backgrounds. You don't want every story being told from the same point of view. So just for better storytelling, I'm like, 'Yes, please, bring some more ladies on.'

Instead of hoping that some day the boys' club will open its doors, we can form our own clubs, define 'worthy' our own way, and celebrate the books and voices that we decide deserve celebration.

No nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women

It's not often that a strong female role comes across one's desk, unfortunately, but it's getting better.

I think the media can definitely show more diversity - different sizes of women, different colours of women, just more diversity in general.

I think women benefit from being in places and having positions where the quality of work is the criteria, not what you look like. Not every place is like that.

I bring something to the table as a woman; I bring something to the table as a woman of color.

People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women. Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different.

A woman is never going to get to be Bond or Doctor Who. That will never happen.

I feel that for a lot of my career, I had success, I was adored, but I was also this alien creature. I want to show that I have the skill like any other female model, and I'm asking for the same equal treatment and equal respect as any other female model.

I think the goal is parity: I try to be pro-woman without being anti-man, and I hope and wish that men could do the same in that when they look at the screenplay, they say, 'Wait, wait, wait - is my daughter represented here, is my wife represented here? Is my sister represented?'

The more women and people of color who find positions of influence, the more women and people of color who will find positions of influence. So we need critical mass, and we're still working toward that. I won't be satisfied until we're at the 50-50 place, where we ought to be.

The problem of sexism is getting better, but I don't know if it's getting better fast enough. We see more roles for women that don't entirely revolve around the way in which they function in a man's life, but typically those women are almost always white, and even then, there are only a few of them.

It's not just about casting female protagonists. It's gotta be across the board throughout the industry.