Riane Eisler Quotes

The implication that women work for pin money and can manage on a worse pension, presumably by relying on husbands, riles. But even more galling for women is that few government ministers seem to even appreciate the value of the work they do.

Sometimes our definitions fall short. Take, for example, the way we view income and labor. It simply doesn't cover enough of the work that women, and in particular poor women, are doing - especially in their own households and the vast 'informal' economy in which most of the world's poorest people work.

The first bill that President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I think it says something about his priorities that the first bill he put his name on has my name on it too. As he said that day with me by his side, 'Making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone.'

To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages.

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.

For both Adam Smith and Karl Marx the essential work of caring for people, starting in early childhood, was "just women's work" - and in their minds not even classified as "productive work."

I feel like we need to understand feminism more as a tool to mediate, counteract, to ultimately defeat patriarchy and restore balance to our government, our culture and our ways of thinking and structuring the world. I think we've had a very "masculine" sensibility for a long time, and I think we need to go back to the roots of social imbalance. I think we have to try to right that first, and from there and all these more pressing issues will follow.

We respect women and don't insult them by saying all they care about is reproductive rights. All issues are women's issues.

Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.

She (a woman politician) will be challenging a system that is still wedded to militarism and that saves billions of dollars a year by underpaying women and using them as a reserve cheap labor supply

What I often say to people who are quick to say I’m not a feminist is if you think you’re not a feminist, give it all back.

I'm like a bit of a feminist, I have kinds of highly political dreams. I'm a dreamer about taking on the patriarchy and all that kinda stuff. So I actually have the secret belief that there are enough people who would consider themselves quote-unquote "other" to support my particular taste.

As long as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long can there be no question at all but that splendor of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring we must set people to work at, not lace.

The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

The problem is not just affirmative action, though. The problem is poor people, working people and their children, and affirmative action for the most part doesn't even apply to them.

You know, I've always considered women to be people.

I think actually under scrutiny, Hillary's [Clinton] promotion of equal wages at poverty level and of healthcare for children but not for their families, of childcare when there are no jobs, it just doesn't cut it. I think women need a real agenda of justice because women are care-givers, because women are instruments of justice for our families and for our communities.

The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.

I think people resist feminism because they're scared. I think for women, they're scared of being picked on or of being called out.

We want the government to be controlled by all the people, not by the richest 1%. That's always been the first demand. That's a simple enough message, and I think it's pretty clear now, even though much of the media has been disingenuous in its coverage. We don't want the heads of the biggest industries to make all the decisions, because they're not for the people. They're for the corporations. Power to the people!

Because men have so long ruled the world, it does not follow that the philosophy by which they have ruled it is the correct one.

We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we've got to go forward in the fight to make that happen.

The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people.

Misogyny is ingrained in people from the time they are born. So to me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it's just basically another word for equality.

Freedoms in Iran are genuine, true freedoms. Iranian people are free. Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom. In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.