Stephanie Coontz Quotes

I'm not a sexist. I believe if a man can to go work all his life, a woman can. Who am I to say, 'Don't do that because you're a girl?'

Women must become more conscious of themselves as women and of their ability to function as a group. At the same time they must try to wipe from men’s consciousness the need to consider them as a group or as women in their everyday activities, especially as workers in industry or the professions.

The greatest barrier to women's advance in the public world of action has been their acquiescence in the idea that they don't belong out there.

The poorest and most backward societies are always those that put women down.

As a woman, you're not accessible to every world.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Any woman who wishes to smash into the world of men isn't very feminine.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

The whole world is starting to realize that it was the most unwise thing for our society to have ignored women power, to run the society with male priorities.

New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I've discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage.

There's still prejudice and that resistance regarding women, not only on female football but in various activities. Men think that women are a bit fragile to perform some types of activities or don't have the ability and aren't strong enough.

Women can break down barriers to opportunity, and men, many of them reluctantly, have learned to relate to women as their equals in thought and action. But except for an eccentric few, women do not want to become warriors.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

Women have talent and intelligence but, due to social constraints and prejudices, it is still a long distance away from the goal of gender equality.

I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children.

Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.

There's something advantageous about being a woman in rock versus, say, a woman in chemistry or construction. There's definitely a built-in sexism across the board, but I think you're afforded a degree of freedom in rock because, historically, the rules have been flexible.

And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

Women are still second-class citizens.

Despite the fact that feminists say they're not getting a fair deal, women are still very powerful.

I believe I've always been a big believer in equality. No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.

Success on the front of women's rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances - where no girl is denied access to education, for instance - but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.

No woman has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me.

Until women are as ambitious as men, they're not gong to achieve as much as men.

Men are born privileged in the scale of things - I'm generalizing, but it's true. Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliche, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.