Madeleine M. Kunin Quotes

'Not again!' I thought to myself this morning, as news trickled out that John McCain was set to pick Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not again, because too often women are promoted for the wrong reasons, and then blamed when things don't go right.

Over the years, the most ponderous problem for women has been that men think that men and women are very different. Another of our massive problems is that women also think that men and women are very different.

In this society, if a man is called a woman, that's the biggest insult he could get. Is that because women are considered something less?

Eventually I figured out there was something systematic in the way women are treated.

Party organization matters. When the door of a smoke-filled room is closed, there's hardly ever a woman inside.

Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.

The notion that somehow women are wildly different infuriates me.

Washington and Congress are steeped in history and tradition, and that's been very male-oriented.

I would gladly admit women are superior to men if only they would stop trying to be the same as us.

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

At the end of the day, women are a distraction. Whether you realize it or not.

When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.

Because if you say men and women are the same and if male behaviour is the norm, and women are always expected to act like men, we will never be as good at being men as men are.

There aren't good roles for women: the female parts aren't developed: the women are serving the men.

I think sometimes women are not driven by the same, albeit, testosterone power thing that pushes men to get into politics.

Sometimes I try to sell shows with a female lead to networks, and that isn't something that's been a proven formula for them, so they reject it. I do feel like men get the funniest roles in movies.

It is a difficult one, as you get scripts where women are just objects.

Both men and women are really vast and boundless and yet in many films we're told that they're not. We're told they can only be one thing - like handsome and charming and that's it. Nothing more.

There are things you maybe could get by a male drill instructor that a female instructor absolutely is never going to let you get away with. Women are harder on women.

If I have a male protagonist, it's a studio movie, and if it's a female protagonist, it's an indie movie. That's just how it is. It's not about the studios. It's about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren't interested in the woman's story. They just aren't.

We have all the mistakes of one-sex legislation.

Do you think it would be possible for women to make a worse mess of politics than the men have?

The law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women.

It is a fight between those who are convinced that women are not qualified to be judges – you’ll hear a hundred justifications for this – and the few that are enlightened, convinced that women can be judges. But they are powerless.

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.”