Annie Besant Quotes

Men trade unionists are accused of sex privilege and prejudice ... A belief in the divine right of every man to his job is not peculiar to kings and capitalists, and men in organized trades are not disposed to share these advantages with a host of women competitors.

Half a century ago women were at an infinite disadvantage in regard to their occupations. The idea that their sphere was at home, and only at home, was like a band of steel on society.

Quebec women are treated like sows.

The only job for which no woman is or can be qualified is sperm donor.

Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.

Under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed … firstly because the law does not give them equality with men; and secondly—and this is the main thing—they remain in ‘household bondage’; they continue to be ‘household slaves’, for they are overburdened with the drudgery if the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen in the family household.

It often means that a woman is hired because she is pretty, regardless of her qualifications; that a woman's job security is eternally dependent on how well she pleases her boss, and he often thinks sexual companionship is part of the job description; and that women are fired because they have aged or they are too independent or they say 'no' to sexual byplay

In prosperous times, the marginal workers get by. But in tough times, they get the shaft.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

Women are from their very infancy debarred those Advantages with the want of which they are afterwards reproached.

For more than six thousand years the history of woman has been one of hopeless sadness. She moved only to the clank of chains, and her vain desire for better and higher things could not find expression, for woman was by force of circumstances inarticulate. Detraction of one sex and exaltation of the other became a habit of mind expressed in law, in religion, in literature as well as in the ordinary activities of everyday life.

There are not enough good jobs for the skill levels we have.

We have taken this action, because as women…we realize that the condition of our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty even to break the law in order to call attention to the reasons why we do so.

Rail as they will about “discrimination,” women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.

Our laws are shamelessly unequal when they make the punishment for stealing away a woman's honor no greater than for the purloining of her wardrobe, or when they give the man who robs her of her character a lighter sentence than he who steals her purse would incur…

Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian country has been “authorized by the Bible” and riveted and perpetuated by the pulpit.

Naturally I knew it was ridiculous to deprive half the people of the country of any voice in the laws they had to live under, merely on account of a trifling difference in sex, but I did not think anything I could do about it was likely to be helpful.

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

The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement

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.

The Egyptian law and the constitution do not differentiate between men and women. …. But there are some jobs like the job of prosecutors and judges, which women have not entered yet because society cannot accept it. If they go into that profession, they will have to work on criminal cases. The nature of the work is not suitable for women because they have to investigate murder, arson, rape. We still cannot imagine that a girl can play that role. When the culture of the people changes, maybe they’ll accept it. With time, maybe the culture will change

To remain single was thought a disgrace and at thirty an unmarried woman was called an old maid. After their parents died, what could they do, where could they go? If they had a brother, as unwanted and permanent guests, they might live in his house. Some had to maintain themselves and then, indeed, difficulty arose. The only paid occupation open to them a gentlewoman was to become a governess under despised conditions and a miserable salary. None of the professions were open to women; there were no women in Government offices; no secretarial work was done by them. Even nursing was disorganized and disreputable until Florence Nightingale Florence Nightingale recreated it as a profession by founding the Nightingale School of Nursing in 1860.

I thought surely if women were consulted in the management of the state happier and better conditions must exist for hard-working sweated lives such as these... It was gradually unfolded to me that the unequal laws which made women appear interior to men were the main cause of these evils. I found that the man-made laws of marriage, parentage and divorce placed women in every way in a condition of slavery - and were as harmful to men by giving them power to be tyrants

Women usually don't want to work as hard as a man.

No human being has the right to be idle... Women must, as children of God, be trained to do some work in the world.