Sharon Kay Penman Quotes

Yesterday woman was a chattel. Now she is, in law, a minor. Tomorrow she will be free, or partially so--that is to say, as free as man.

Inequality of women concerns both India and France, though it might have different manifestations in both the countries.

They say Afghanistan is the worst country for a girl to be born. Hogwash!

I come from a state in India that is a matrilineal state, Kerala. And so women really are seen as very powerful.

It's about women. It's about power and it's about women and you just hate those two words in the same sentence, don't you?

The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men.

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.

Feminists have convinced themselves that any difference between men and women is oppression and that women in the United States are an oppressed minority. This is such a lie. American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth.

Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.

We women are doing pretty well. We're almost back to where we were in the twenties.

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being.

Unfortunately, the belief that women are a minority is endemic in most cultures around the world. Obviously some take it to the extreme where violence against women is legal and supported and in other cultures it is more subversive and easy to dismiss as "progress."

In India, [in] the great documents like [the] Upanishads in eighth century B.C., you find some of the wisest [women] making great, learned speeches and then you worship them, but actually don't do very much about girls' education generally. So I think there has been a kind of dual presence of pain, respect, and saying you are great, etc., but not providing the basic facilities that make women able to lead the kind of life that they would like to and that men easily do.

Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women. The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden.

It is extremely important that adequate provision be made for reasonable levels of income to them, for the care of the children which they must leave at home or in school, and for protection of the family unit. One of the prime objectives of the Commission on the Status of Women, which I appointed 18 months ago, is to develop a program to accomplish these purposes.

You think Christianity is favorable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world.

Fifty percent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty.

It is a significant fact that, of all the Christian countries, in those where the church stands highest, and has most power, women rank lowest, and have fewest rights accorded them, whether of personal liberty or proprietary interest.

It is a commonly observed fact that the enslavement of women is invariably associated with a low type of social life, and that, conversely, her elevation towards an equality with man uniformly accompanies progress.

As we move into the twenty-first century, women's status in society will become the standard by which to measure our progress toward civility and peace.

it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

I was very, very pro-women many years ago.

The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women.

Women ten years ago were much more of the household property than is the case now. It's not to say that if you go backcountry you don't also find that. And there's a tremendous education campaign that is needed to apprise women of their rights.