Barbara Tuchman Quotes

Basically, women have to prove they are strong at all times. And then when they go on the attack, they have to not appear mean because those women often get the label of being catty.

There's an unfair position that women are sometimes put in, in the context of superhero movies and action movies, where at once they have to be very strong and fierce but also sexy.

It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.

Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.

People put stock in someone being in a 'girl group,' but we don't say that a band is a 'man group.'

People think anything done from a woman's perspective is only going to appeal to women.

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else.

In my generation, if a man washes the dishes, the older women still tend to cluster around and coo and thank him and praise him. But if a woman washes the dishes, it's business as usual, even if both man and woman have tough office jobs.

Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.

I don't like the term 'chick flick.' I think it denigrates a movie. It has overtones of talking down to women, like they are second best.

Growing up in Texas, you were either pretty or smart. Smart didn't get you very far, because there weren't too many job opportunities for women. I wondered why you couldn't be both.

Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'

There's a lot of good roles for men, always, and for very young girls. But for women, not so many.

I think where men are credited for being strong, women are divas. I just think it's such a cop out.

A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.

We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home; that a woman should not aspire to achieve more than her male counterparts and, particularly, not more than her husband.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

You come across words all the time that are everyday sexism. I was described as 'competently bossy' and 'bossily competent' by a male journalist, and I thought, 'Gosh, 'bossy' is never used of a man.'

You can't be a strong or cool woman and be represented except in a harsh way, looking mean and cold and hard. It's like reverse sexism.

A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough.

Women become invisible as they age; men become impotent.

When I look around the world, I don't see too many damsels in distress. If they're a damsel in distress, they're manipulating some guy to help them.

While so much is said of the inferior intellect of woman, it is by a strange absurdity conceded that very many eminent men owe their station in life to their mothers.

For 150 years a woman was regarded as some kind of prostitute if she wanted to go into business….Young girls were supposed to have their focus on motherhood and babies.