Eleanor Holmes Norton Quotes

I remember becoming aware of women's issues and inequality. It became glaringly clear to me when I was living in America that women are regarded as less intelligent than men.

I know how hard it is to be a woman, especially a black woman.

What rights have women? ... [they are] punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance—if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion—parlor puppets...

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

The world is still sexist.

For a long time in the United States, in practice if not in principle, only white, male, Protestants were born free and equal.

American women who know the history of this country will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enhancing their wives and mothers.

Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society.

Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men!... The economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

Under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed … firstly because the law does not give them equality with men; and secondly—and this is the main thing—they remain in ‘household bondage’; they continue to be ‘household slaves’, for they are overburdened with the drudgery if the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen in the family household.

The only chance women have for justice in this country is to violate the law

Of course there's systemic misogyny in certain parts of our culture and systemic racism and a wider range of insults women have to face.

The struggle against patriarchy and racism must be substantively robust and inextricably intertwined.

Sexism isn't a one-size-fits-all phenomenon. It doesn't happen to black and white women the same way.

I know how difficult it is to be not just a woman, but a black woman, and I know how much we get attacked and our voices aren't heard. I experience it every single day.

Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.

We don't live in a society that has genuine equality, and every woman we know has experienced that.

I've run into more discrimination as a woman than as an Indian.

Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged.

Hollywood is the definition of sexual discrimination.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.

Although black and white Americans live, work, and learn together now, there is still injustice in America.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.