Queen Rania of Jordan Quotes

I think that women's lives are multilayered.

It seems to me that 'women's writing' by nature would not seek equivalence in the male world. It would be a writing that sought to express a distinction, not deny it.

Men need to understand, and women too, what feminism is really about.

Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.

I think we still have a long way to go in understanding that feminist and femininity are not opposites.

I've written about women's lives, and I just want to write about them from being a woman. I don't need feminism on top of that when I'm writing.

Feminist theory has left an indelible mark on my own critical—and creative—thinking . . . For me, everything I questioned about what it meant to be a man – and how much my sexuality would perpetually challenge those meanings—could be found in arguments posed by feminists. What can I say? I identified.

Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.

For an author to show that only traditional male power and place matter is to discount and belittle the hard and complex lives of our peers and our ancestresses.

[The Golden Notebook] was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise. Instantly a lot of very ancient weapons were unleashed, the main ones, as usual, being on the theme of "She is unfeminine", "She is a man-hater".

Not to be too doctrinaire, but we live in the patriarchy! And therefore anything explicitly associated with the female gender, including motherhood, needs to be defensively claimed, because it's either devalued or sentimentally idealized, but not supported. I so thoroughly believe that female human beings have worth that I don't feel the need to argue it, but I think that there's a part of me that very specifically wants to make space for those ideas to be centralized, if only for the moment.

Any strain upon a girl's intellect is to be dreaded, and any attempt to bring women into competition with men can scarcely escapefailure.

Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the clich? that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.

Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman.

And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.

People have foolishly mistaken equality for sameness. Equality of the genders means that both have equal value and worth, and one is not better than the other. But it doesn't mean we're all exactly the same. And many of us who still believe in gender separation say, 'Vive la difference!

I believe in the difference between men and women. In fact, I embrace the difference.

I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us.

It's called male bonding. You'll never get it. I believe women are as capable as men, deserve equal pay—and that one day, should be sooner than later, in my opinion, the right woman can and should be leader of the free world. But you can't understand the male bonding rituals any more than men can understand why the vast majority of women are obsessed with shoes and other footwear.

All the women I know feel a little like outlaws.

Who has ever attempted to draw a line of separation between the duties of men and women, as moral beings, without committing the grossest inconsistencies on the one hand, or running into the most arrant absurdities on the other?

Boys and girls were both created with given attributes, and given the freedom to act and react. But Adam was allowed to name all the animals, and Eve was made from Adam's rib, as a companion for him. No wonder she ate the apple, she was rebelling against a world where everything was stacked against her. She was just a prop to make Adam happy.

There has to be this balance of reality for a woman. I don't want to play women who just serve a purpose for the script.

I think there are many feminists who would say that I am not a feminist. I love women, I have a lot of girlfriends, I admire them, they make so much more sense to me than men, and I feel like the world is a better place when women are in charge. So that kind of by default makes me a feminist. I love working in a female world.

I am constantly trying to reflect the way women are treated. It's hard to interpret that in clothes or in a show but there's always an underlying, sinister side to women's sexuality in my work because of the way I have seen women treated in my life. Where I come from, a woman met a man, had babies, moved to Dagenham, two up two down, made the dinner, went to bed. That was my image of women and I didn't want that. I wanted to get that out of my head.