Amartya Sen Quotes

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

Woman has always been man's dependent, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shaped the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change.

Despite great advances in women's rights, statistics show that when it comes to the balance of power between the sexes, equality is far from being a global reality.

She is still less civilized than man, largely because she has not been educated.

In the early days of Islam, women were much more socially and politically active than they are today.

I think in the United States we have a different standard for what equality means for women that isn't really that comparable to that in the Middle East.

There have always been women who were successful against the odds. Now we need to change the odds so more women can be successful.

For thirty years, I've been hearing that it's getting better for women. And until I see statistical proof over enough years that that's true, I won't believe it.

Inequality of women concerns both India and France, though it might have different manifestations in both the countries.

As it has turned out, the whole relationship between men, women and children has tilted, to the disadvantage of women.

One of the most disturbing things I heard was that women's issues weren't "hot." Which is so ironic, because women are constantly being judged on some "hot" level. The conversation is not hot enough for them to do anything about. We have to make it hot, make them feel the fire. Until then, a lot of them aren't going to do anything.

It cannot be doubted that in most countries today women, in comparison to men, still remain underprivileged.

There may be countries [where] there's no gender inequality in schooling, even in higher education, but [where there is] gender inequality in high business. Japan is a very good example of that. You might find cases in the United States where at one level women's equality has progressed tremendously. You don't have the kind of problem of higher women's mortality as you see in South Asia, North Africa, and East Asia, China, too, and yet for American women there are some fields in which equality hasn't yet come.

Fifty percent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty.

We see all around the world where women's rights are denied, where governments don't believe in educating their girls. There are 800 million people in the world who are illiterate and 75 percent of them are women and girls.

In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.

One of the problems and the reason why Carolyn [Maloney ] wrote the book, the Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated is that some people think we have made it when we have not and there's much to be done.

I really think that women should be allowed to be more European, in this country.

Numerically speaking, half the population cannot be a minority. Yet when it comes to women, the numbers plainly show that the mathematically impossible is the socially acceptable.

My hope in writing 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.

As long as the G.O.P., led by its increasingly visible women, continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests, the gender gap won't go away.

For women in, say, Alabama, 'feminism' is a dirty word. They would never march in the streets. But although they don't think of themselves as the beneficiaries of feminism, they are.

That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.

I don't know if I have any particular views about women in positions of power, though I do think it's more difficult for women, particularly in a Medieval setting. They have the additional problem that they're a woman and people don't want them in a position of power in an essentially patriarchal society.

The thing I can say about Japan is they were progressive for a country that is very male dominant.