Ai-jen Poo Quotes

Our society really needs to take a better look at what we're selling, because I think women being empowered will be as beneficial to men as it is to us.

Obviously, I don't want to minimize the patriarchal nature of our media, our government and our culture as a whole. But I think it's our refusal as women to own our power that is our biggest problem, both individually and collectively. The linchpin that holds the current system in place is the slumber of women.

If I can use my platform to affect change in gender, as I can in race, then I think I can have an impact.

Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'

All men should be feminists. If men cared about women's rights, the world would be a better place

The media and even, to some degree, leaders of women's organizations don't understand that the women's movement is an absolute part of society now. It is in the consciousness, it is taken for granted. It is part of the way women look at themselves, and women are looked at.

When men realize that feminism is a universal good that affects them in very intimate ways then I think they really become allies and leaders.

The very same people who 40 years ago were saying that feminism was unnatural and unnecessary are now saying “Well, it used to be necessary, but it’s not any more.”

We remember when women were spoken of differently. I don't mean that we didn't speak of women sexually - that happened. It was never this crude: there wasn't the connotations, the violence. I think there's got to be a relationship between the coarsening of the culture, of which pornography was a piece of the puzzle.

Right now the topic of female empowerment is at the forefront of conversation and it's important we take advantage of the trend while there is added pressure to adjust long-standing beliefs, prejudices, and cultural discrimination.

I think maybe it's too bad that our society isn't further along and this is such a big deal. I think it's time...that people realize that women in this country can do any job they want to do.

I think what happens sometimes is, unfortunately, it's a scary thing for men to admit that they want equality or even to say the word feminist because there's a lot of fear that they're going to say the wrong thing.

Ideally there should not be a men's movement but a gender transition movement; only the power of the women's movement necessitates the temporary corrective of a men's movement. And this creates a special challenge for men: There are few political movements filled with healthy people, yet few healthy changes have occurred without political movements.

I just don't feel that we've traveled very far in the realm of social equality. There just seems to be a little bit of unrest. And sometimes I think that happens when you really feel like something's about to change. Right before the moment of lift off, sometimes things feel a little bit unhinged, and that's what it feels like to me right now, both as a woman and just as a human on the planet as an American woman in America. I feel like we're on the precipice of change. I feel a little nervous.

Feminism and issues surrounding being female in the world, always, but particularly right now at this complicated cultural moment. It's a huge part of what's important to me.

I feel like a lot of artists these days are going out with being a feminist and making it cool, and being outspoken and letting it be mainstream, which is a great thing. I absolutely think it should be mainstream to be a feminist, it should be a no-brainer to speak up about stuff and have a voice.

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.

The goals of the feminist movement have not been achieved, and those who claim we're living in a post-feminist era are either sadly mistaken or tired of thinking about the whole subject.

All year there have been these cover stories that the women's movement is dead and about the death of feminism and the post-feminist generation of young women who don't identify with feminism - and then we have the biggest march ever of women in Washington. More people than had ever marched for anything - not only more women, but more people.

I am absolutely behind equal rights but I am also bridging the gap between cultural mentality and society's mindset as there are huge amount of gaps that need to be addressed and progress needs to be made. Yeah I am a feminist, it is not a difficult thing to explain.

I think feminism is taking off. It's just not visible in the way that we would like it to be.

It seems to me to be kind of inescapable that one has to be interested in the issue of gender and gender equality. I don’t really expect any credit for going in that direction. It’s the only natural direction to go in. Why is it that some people don’t see that as so patently obvious as it should be?

When Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York in 1993, his belief in the 'Broken Windows' theory led him to implement the 'Zero Tolerance' crime policy. Crime dropped dramatically, significantly, and continued to for the next ten years. Personally, I feel the time has come for women to introduce their own Zero Tolerance policy on the Broken Windows issues in our lives - I want a Zero Tolerance policy on 'All The Patriarchal Bullshit'.

Feminism is a transformational force, an individual and social force. It is a way of looking at the world-a questioning of power/domination issues, an affirmation of women's energy.

In the last two or three decades, there's been a feminization of the man in popular media that I've never really understood.