Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

The Socialist movement, the Labour movement, call it which you will, and the Women’s movement, are but different aspects of the same great force which has been, all through the ages, gradually pushing its way upwards, making for the reconstruction and regeneration of Society.

The thing I have learned this year is that any improvement in the great mass of women is only possible through socialism…

Feminists are disappointed in each other a lot, a natural side effect of being involved in a movement, which naturally implies that progress toward the ultimate goal is the only measure of success and that setbacks are always disasters.

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.

If any proof were needed of the progress of the cause for which I have worked, it is here tonight. The presence on the stage of these college women, and in the audience of all those college girls who will some day be the nation's greatest strength, will tell their own story to the world.

Unfortunately, the belief that women are a minority is endemic in most cultures around the world. Obviously some take it to the extreme where violence against women is legal and supported and in other cultures it is more subversive and easy to dismiss as "progress."

A country cannot make progress while leaving half of its population behind.

It is a commonly observed fact that the enslavement of women is invariably associated with a low type of social life, and that, conversely, her elevation towards an equality with man uniformly accompanies progress.

No country can get ahead when it leaves half of its people behind.

As we move into the twenty-first century, women's status in society will become the standard by which to measure our progress toward civility and peace.

The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women.

For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive.

Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.

Without fear of contradiction, I can safely say that every step in progress that woman has made she has been assailed by ecclesiastics, that her most vigilant unwearied opponents have always been the clergy.

...there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.

The most poor and backward areas in the world are those in which women are subjugated and exploited. Improving the situation of the woman improves the family, the community, and by extension the whole country.

Women were doing quite well in this country before feminism came along.

I think in a society where you can't even pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it's very difficult to women make a progress. Incidentally, we are exactly 160 years after the very first women's public rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, when a handful of women started it all and began the movement to make women equal.

The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land.

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

I think the degree of a nation's civilisation may be measured by the degree of enlightenment of its women.

It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization, she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development, but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention.

It is a positive change that our country and other countries in the region are making by giving a chance to women.