Laura Bush Quotes

In the last 25 years, we've convinced ourselves and a majority of the country that women can do what men can do. Now we have to convince the majority of the country - and ourselves - that men can do what women can do. ... Let's face it: until men are fully equal inside the home, women will never be really equal outside it.

In the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment.

We have to look at it country by country. In places like the developing world where, as you say, in Mumbai, it's about five hours' gap between what a woman does and a man does. You have to start by recognizing the problem and talking about it, trying to change those roles.

Women in Africa, generally a lot needs to be done for women. Women are not being educated, not only in Angola but my trip to Nigeria, one point I would make over and over again was that women need to be educated too.

In Pakistan, the right to go to school is not a given. In the more rural areas, a girl is born, married off as early as 9 years old, and basically lives life under the control of men.

As a woman, I have tried to take advantage of the extra access I have in the Muslim world: with Muslim women, for example. Many people underestimate women in that part of the world because, typically, they don't work.

Success on the front of women's rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances - where no girl is denied access to education, for instance - but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints.

The world cannot evolve if girls refuse to become women.

In metros, girls are very independent, conscious and aware. But in the interiors of our country, where education is not given importance, they continue to be oppressed. But it is important for every woman to acknowledge what she wants from herself rather than going for what people expect from her.

Make education more accessible to women - all women, not just Americans.

Historically, and even now, women have been asked to give up on their dreams way more than men, mostly - because it's sort of like you're supposed to once you become a wife and mother. That's a generalization; that's what the mentality has been.

A man does not have to stay at home all day, in order to love it; why should a woman?

We didn't educate women, because the leaders then didn't think they were educable. That changed when a shortage of teachers developed, because men didn't get paid enough to teach school. Then men, who held the positions of power, sent women to teachers' colleges.

There's still this underlying image of women that they should fulfil a certain role. It's no accident that a lot of men who are a bit misogynistic tend to say things like 'get back to the kitchen' or 'why aren't you at home looking after the kids'.

In industrial countries where male privilege is still firmly entrenched - in Spain, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, for example - women are delaying marriage longer than in America, and often resisting childbearing as well. They are less likely than American women to say that marriage is a good deal.

We might as well expect to grow trees from leaves as hope to build up a civilization or a manhood without taking into consideration our women and the home life made by them, which must be the root and ground of the whole matter. Let our girls feel that we expect something more of them than that they merely look pretty and appear well in society. Teach them that there is a race with special needs which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.

Envy of the male role can come as much from an undervaluation of the role of wife and mother as from an overvaluation of the public aspects of achievement that have been reserved for men.

In some of the countries, women are not allowed to even leave the house. And that's something that needs to change. So, raising awareness among both sexes is key to that.

Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women "has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty" The problem, she said, was that "the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has made into a standard for the formation of the female character." Reason and religion teach us, she said, that "we too are primary existences...not the satellites of men.

In places like South Afghanistan, where cultural norms prevent men from entering homes, female vaccinators often make the difference between a closed or opened door.

Men should think twice before making widow hood woman's only path to power.

I don't want my daughter to be educated. I think women should just be decorative.

What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.