Paula Broadwell Quotes

I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now.

Many feminists in the academy and in the major women's groups are knocking down open doors. It's 2016, not 1950. But you wouldn't know that if you looked through a typical women's studies textbook or website.

A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.

I feel like there's this weird thing that as a feminist band you get put in this role as ambassadors.

I do think that more people are feminists than they realize.

We need feminist voices today, you know. In my time, we had incredible feminist voices and I'm sure we have it today, too, but in all the massive outlets, maybe the one or two or three voices are somehow disappearing.

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?

Young women know that something is off; they know that the world is a messed-up place. They know that the world is a sexist place because they've had experiences in their own life; they see things happening to their friends, to their parents. But because feminism isn't widely accepted, because they don't necessarily have access to feminist thought or to feminist groups, they don't necessarily have a language to put behind the feelings and the thoughts that they're having. And they certainly don't have a support system to let them know like, hey, that's okay; you're right, that is screwed up.

The #metoo campaign opened a particular window into the gender dynamics in technology, with many prominent women speaking out.

My mother was a feminist, and she gave me some tools of self-possession and self-empowerment, but now that I have lived here for forty-three years, it's, like, whoa, there is just so much more to do, other than become myself. I'm still talking about it. I still drop the P-word, "patriarchy," on unsuspecting people in everyday conversations.

We are living in a Millennial culture that is attacking "patriarchy." The culture in America as zeroed in, and it's been going on and it's been building since the modern era of the feminazis began, since the late sixties and early seventies.

I think that I was just on the cusp of the generation that was beginning to really challenge some of the assumptions about the role of women and the role of men on campus.

Society is so slow. A feminist is a bore.

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.

I feel sad that we have allowed these knee-jerk feminists who want to act like it's a struggle against men...but again that's the least politically developed strand of feminism.

We don't need to be feminist in my generation.

I don't like calling myself a "feminist" only because I don't think I've done anything active enough to call myself one. It'd be like calling myself a civil rights activist just because I'm not racist.

Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.

In those days one advantage of being a woman was that there was a basic courtesy towards us on which we could draw - something which today's feminists have largely dissipated.

Women are feminist by default.

I spent most of my career, including my time at McKinsey, never acknowledging that I was a woman. And, you know, fast forward - I'm 43 now - fitting in is not helping us.

I think the idea that feminism is dead is dangerous because it leads women and men to believe that (1) they don't have to do anything; the work has been done, and that everything is okay now; and (2) it leaves them kind of alone, I think, in a struggle, and that's something I've seen a lot when I go to colleges and I speak to young women.

The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.

Feminists want to be treated as equals, but at the same time they want special treatment.

We're viewed as equals - but we're still not there yet. The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance. How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening? Our girls are going to have to contend with that. I contend with it right now in every realm I operate in.