Letty Cottin Pogrebin Quotes

I will not accept anybody’s claim that they are striving for equal rights for women when they refuse to agree to a radical redistribution of work—both gainful employment and unpaid work [in the home].

When women are expected to bear the burden of unpaid work, everyone loses.

Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and homemaking.

The ability of women is not known because they are relegated to the business of procreation, child-rearing, and breast feeding.

I'm against all employment for women outside their home...In my opinion basically the access of women to the factory floor is against the laws of nature...Besides if women are employed by industry and the public sector, they will displace men and close their employment opportunities.

I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife.

For 150 years a woman was regarded as some kind of prostitute if she wanted to go into business….Young girls were supposed to have their focus on motherhood and babies.

Women constitute a cheap labor force and above all a submissive one that only in the rarest of cases dares to kick against the thorns of capitalist exploitation, the capitalists multiply the possibilities of women’s work in industry. As a result of all this, the proletarian woman has achieved her independence. But verily, the price was very high and for the moment they have gained very little.

It has been the great curse of American women that work--work for a living--was considered dishonorable, and only to be resorted to in case of necessity.

The common man thinks that the marriage is like appointing one to do his work. The husband thinks so! The husband’s family thinks so. Every one thinks that a girl is coming to the family to do work. Even the girl’s family trains the girl to do the household work

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.

Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.

You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.

Our economies are built on the backs of all this unpaid labor that women do.

No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office.

I'm pretty sure that changing diapers of all sizes isn't the kind of women's work Betty Friedan had in mind, nor Linda Hirshman.

I've never been drawn to the feminist movement. I was brought up to believe that men had little to do with the home or children - except to bring in the money.

You cannot make women contented with cooking and cleaning and you need not try.

On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the proper spheres assigned to our Masters and our Lords, may we also deserve the dignified title and encomium of Mistress and Lady in our kitchens and in our parlours.

Women do kids. Women do cooking. Women doing everything. And yet, their position in society is totally unacceptable.

Just as there is a wage gap between men and women in the workplace, there is a 'leisure gap' between them at home. Most women work one shift in the office or factory and a 'second shift' at home.

Just because I'm a woman does not mean I have to deal with everything to do with food.

My mother made me do all the housework as a boy. I still do it, even in hotels.

Whatever feminists may say about their only advocating choices, everyone knows the truth: Feminism regards work outside the home as more elevating, honorable, and personally productive than full-time mothering and making a home.

No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas.