Antonia Fraser Quotes

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

Stewardesses were a joke to many of us coming of age in the liberated Sixties. They were no joke in the women's movement that liberated us, however.

Feminism, like Boston, is a state of mind. It is the state of mind of women who realize that their whole position in the social order is antiquated, as a woman cooking over an open fire with heavy iron pots would know that her entire housekeeping was out of date.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

The embattled gates to equal rights indeed opened up for modern women, but I sometimes think to myself; that is not what I meant by freedom, it is only social progress.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

I was brought up with a very strong sense of what can happen if your society starts to chip away at the small victories women have won for themselves.

I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

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.

It's a little bit late in the day for men to object that women are getting outside their proper sphere.

I think I would have died if there hadn't been the women's movement.

When I started giving talks about women's history, one of the things that bothered me was the tendency to say, 'Well, everybody was totally oppressed and suddenly in 1964 we rose up, got our freedom, and here we are.' It dismisses the women who fought for rights for several hundred years of our history up to that point.

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist…. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing

Every movement takes a century to make its mark. The women’s movement is only 40 some years old.

I'lI say this: I recall entering Congress in 1971 and being called a 'feminist' by members of my own party as if it was a dirty word. They didn't realize that I wore that label as a badge of honor.

I was alive during the women's lib movement, and I do not remember anyone taking a position against cooking. I think they were talking about other things.

When I went to college in the 1970s, the Women's Liberation movement was all the buzz.

Feminism has always been a theme that I'm very interested in.

The scope of the history of women is so underplayed and not told as often as it should be.

We always had a lot of admiration for feminists who were out there trying to change things for the better for women, who were trying to find equality in the workplace and at home.

I've been reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, which is obviously very dated now but still relevant. It's so interesting to see how far we've come and how far we haven't come with all these myths that people put onto women.

Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

As women began to challenge their own internalized views of a woman's proper place, their desire and demand for equal status and free choice began to grow exponentially.