Donald Sassoon Quotes
Wealth may not necessarily be the decisive element in the progress of women, but it does create the conditions for further emancipation and equality.
Many of the most liberated and accomplished women in history have been from wealthy families. And yet with all their money they could only go so far. They needed an entire movement of women of all classes—and men to finally attain suffrage and the progress made thus far. Wealthy women were very active, alongside with working and middle class women in most of the demonstrations and campaigns for women’s rights.
Donald Sassoon, Political & Economic Historian, Political Scientist, One Hundred Years of Socialism, 1996
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women’s emancipation.
The most important documents and doctrine of most churches were created by men who also established the framework of the religion. The result has in almost all cases been a sexist structure with women having not only little power not typically females are banned from all church governance. See {640303} for her quote on religion in general vis a vis women.
This statement is referring to the custom of women covering their eyes whenever a man who they did not know passed them. Turks did not ever use Burkas the way some other Muslim countries do, but they wore headscarves and covered their eyes when a strange man appeared. This was a shocking statement in a sexist Islamic culture. Although the process of modernization and reform in Turkey was relatively bloodless, Ataturk was prepared to and did use force to defend it. This and many others made the role of women not only uniquely equal in the Islamic world, but women were suddenly elevated to the level of most Western nations and in voting rights were ahead of most. He used his own family to set an example. See {584503}.
Women were not, in the decisions of Canadian courts “Persons.” As such they were not allowed to serve as public officials and legislators. In 1929 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council reversed previous interpretations and declared women eligible for all public offices. It became known as “The Persons Case.” Murphy then wrote her argument. Murphy wrote serious non-fiction under her own name and novels under the pseudonym Janey Canuck.
She was prescient. The amendment was never ratified by enough states.
Jinnah was a modern Islamist who saw the role of females in a modern context. He, like the Indian Hindu leaders were in a sense products of the West and Western government and education. He would be very surprised that in his Pakistan men can murder their female relatives who they believe have dishonored the family, or that women would not be educated in the Madrassas, or that authorities could sentence a female relative of a man deemed guilty of seduction to be gang raped, but that is what happens in modern Pakistan. Jinnah and many of the early leaders believed that their new government could modernize Islam but the control and influence went the other way. Pakistan became a religiously dominated autocracy rather than the democracy that Jinnah foresaw.
Of all the inequalities that existed in society, the easiest one to overcome with effort is wealth. Race, blood, parentage, even education are not as easily overcome. Of all the inequalities, traditionally Americans have been least offended by that of wealth under the theory that with current effort that can often be overcome. It is only in the latter part of the 20th century where modern economics and sociology have shown that wealth inequality itself is also difficult to overcome, that money as a societal leveler has been conceptually diminished. Sedgwick was the first American to identify the phenomenon that had operated in early America.
Although most politicians of the time opposed voting rights, Harding, whose wife was herself a suffragette, and an accomplished woman, tried to lead the nation in the new direction of female equality. It was one of the few laudatory things he did in an otherwise lap luster presidency.
