Jeannette Rankin Quotes

I know that many honorable members have viewed the advent of women to the legislative halls with something approaching alarm;

For me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.

If we take into account that women have had the right to vote only for some 100 years - in some countries even less - and that we have already won seats in governments or presidential offices, I understand that men look at this rise with some anxiety.

When given the chance, women have proven they will participate in the electoral process.

I am really proud to be a part in whatever way of women becoming active in the political scene. I think it was the first time that people came to terms with the reality of what it meant to have a Senate made up of 98 men and two women.

We believed that growth through Local Government, and perhaps through some special machinery for bringing the wishes and influence of women of all classes to bear on Parliament, other than the Parliamentary vote, was the real line of progress.

Women are unfit for parliament and parliament is unfit for them.

If we think that our daughters ought to be in Congress next to our sons, we'd better let our sons know that now, so that they get prepared to have women as colleagues.

I consider every attempt to induce women to think they have a just right to participate in the public duties of government as injurious to their best interests and derogatory to their character.

Parliament's centuries of history have been overwhelmingly dominated by men, but things are changing.

Do I want more women elected to Parliament? Absolutely. I devote significant amounts of time to getting more women in that situation.

That more women are getting involved in politics - either by running for office, managing campaigns or voting - is a great thing.

Decisions just look different with women at the table. We still have a long way to go. The most powerful thing we own is our vote.

There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.

In politics, they found there were not enough females in the House of Commons, so they came up with the idea of shortlists having to have women on them.

The Labour party has done more than any other to address gender inequalities, through legislation and other means, and to increase women's representation in politics, which has led to recent increases in the number of female politicians.

I cannot doubt that women will line up, like the men elected, with the groups whose political thinking and convictions are in accord with their own political convictions.

I would not have a woman go to Congress merely because she is a woman.

Women have had the vote for over forty years and their organizations lobby in Washington for all sorts of causes; why, why, why don't they take up their own causes and obvious needs?

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Women are as much politicians as men, and I hope that more and more women will enter public life through politics, as this would not only increase participation of women in public life but also have a salutary effect for the amelioration of women's status in India.

Twenty-six years ago, I became the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. I was the first, but I made sure I wasn't the only.

In Tunisia, where women have long enjoyed greater rights than many of their Arab neighbors, women pushed for and won a new electoral code that guarantees women will make up half of a candidates' list for office.

It will take a long time for women's effect on politics to register so that we may properly appraise it.

We're half the people; we should be half the Congress.