Voltaire Quotes

I used to be very interested in the history of women's rights in this country and in other countries. I tried to learn as much as I could about it, and more than anything, I would be called gay. It was phenomenal. But if a boy has something to say, he is appreciated; he's even popular. If a girl says something, it's instantly a threat.

Our discomfort with female leadership runs deep. We call little girls bossy. We never really call little boys bossy, because a boy is expected to lead, so it doesn't surprise or offend.

Sometimes I try to sell shows with a female lead to networks, and that isn't something that's been a proven formula for them, so they reject it. I do feel like men get the funniest roles in movies.

We call our little girls bossy. Go to a playground; little girls get called bossy all the time - a word that's almost never used for boys - and that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce.

If I want to dislike women, I should be allowed to. As it happens, I love them. Women to me are privately worshipped and publicly disdained.

Nothing's worse than a woman know-it-all.

A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman.

In a general way, anything that affects men is taken more seriously than anything that affects only women.

Over the years, the most ponderous problem for women has been that men think that men and women are very different. Another of our massive problems is that women also think that men and women are very different.

A woman's experience is different from a man's in virtually every respect, including how she is treated by the media.

Eventually I figured out there was something systematic in the way women are treated.

Books about women and children are not valued in the same way as a book about war. And why is that? I don't know.

Women cannot be a part of the Institute of France

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

What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from; since nobody asks for protective duties and bounties in favor of women; it is only asked that the present bounties and protective duties in favor of men should be recalled.

The oppression of women is based on custom and tradition—not religion.

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes.”

The progress of man has never been impeded by preconceived ideas regarding his abilities, his proper interests, and his appropriate activities. Woman has always been so hampered.

There will never be any really great women writers in the theatre, because women do not know as much as men.

When women do take on traditionally male subjects, certain male colleagues can seem affronted that a woman has dared to trespass on their subject. I could given you dozens of examples, but here's one: Max Hastings's review in the 'Sunday Times' in 2009 of Miranda Carter's book 'The Three Emperors'.

Lately, I've been in meetings regarding a new script idea I have. A studio executive asked me to change the female lead to a male, because... 'Women don't go to movies.' Really?

If anyone says they haven't experienced sexism then I don't know what life they've lived. Males and females have, for different reasons, and I don't think it's a media thing.

I feel like in our society there is definitely still a lot of underlying sexism. It's funny how many guys are surprised when you pick up an instrument in the studio, or write your own songs.

Gender is a shackle.

Where a man is forceful, a woman is shrill.