Claire Tomalin Quotes

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

Women have to stand up to tremendous discriminatory practices, whether inherited traditions, whether imposed norms, male perceptions of power and control. The women always have to go through that and cannot take any privilege for granted.

I don't think men realize that when a woman walks out every single day, there's an unconscious way we cater to making some man comfortable. That's our experience.

Partners and mothers allow men to get away with too much.

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.

What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.

We're comfortable with women in certain roles but not comfortable with women expressing anger or fully accepting their power. The most daring question a woman can ask is, 'What do I want?'

We take men's obligation to earn money, and when they do it well, we blame them for having power and being oppressors. And when they don't do it all, women just don't marry men who are reading 'I'm Okay, You're Okay' in the unemployment line.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

I never say 'nagging.' I think that 'nagging' is a term that men created to get women to pipe down some. But, it's a trap that we've created. We created several terms for women to back you down. Nagging means to stop asking me questions, then we get away with more. I think it's a term men created.

We don't think only men can be powerful and strong. Behind the heads of the Mafia, the leaders of culture, there are always very strong women. European culture is a matriarchy, especially in the south. The women have a lot of power.

Why is it men are permitted to be obsessed about their work, but women are only permitted to be obsessed about men?

Men have always detested women's gossip because they suspect the truth: their measurements are being taken and compared.

Male privilege and entitlement are dying a very painful death; no one gives up power without a struggle.

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.

Black men don't like to be called 'boys,' but women accept being called 'girls.'

A woman who does not become the slave of just one man becomes the slave of all men.

Women will never be as successful as men because they have no wives to advise them.

For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.

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

The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.

But it will be said that the husband provides for the wife, or in other words, he feeds, clothes and shelters her! I wish I had the power to make every one before me fully realize the degradation contained in that idea.

Women with money and women in power are two uncomfortable ideas in our society.