Gail Collins Quotes

Men ruled the roost and women played a subservient role [in the 1960s]. Working wives were a rarity, because their place was in the home, bringing up the kids. The women who did work were treated as second-class citizens because it was a male-dominated society. That was a fact of life then. But it wouldn't be tolerated today, and that's quite right in my book... people look back on those days through a thick veil of nostalgia, but life was hard if you were anything other than a rich, powerful, white male.

One of the things that interests me about the Regency period is how women began to stir under the thumbs of men, wanting more and bigger freedoms.

The women's movement is taking a different form right now, and it is because it has been so effective and so successful that there's a huge counter movement to try to stop it, to try to divide women from one another, to try to almost foment divisiveness.

There is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them.

It was not seen that woman’s place was in the home until she began to go out of it; the statement was a reply to an unspoken challenge, it was attempted resistance to irresistible change.

You may hiss as much as you please, but women will get their rights anyway. You can’t stop us, neither

Now that Arab women are pouring into the streets by the million, men discover with dismay that they, not women, were the captives of the harem dream.

I do not subscribe to a feminism that demands perfection or super heroic nobility of women. But I do insist that putting women at the service of patriarchy is no victory for us.

I was just nine years old when 'Straw Dogs' came out, so I can't really speak to the women of the time, but I can tell you that the women of 2011 are not put-upon, and they're not victims.

Watching the progression and backlash against feminism even since 1970 will give you a serious case of whiplash.

If the preservation of the home means the enslavement of women, economically or morally, then we had better break it.

The sight of women talking together has always made men uneasy; nowadays it means rank subversion.

I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.

'Power' is an explosive word, particularly when applied to women.

My generation of bossy, confident, baby-boom women were something brand new in history. Our energy and assertiveness weren't created by Betty Friedan, unknown before her 1963 book, or by Gloria Steinem, whose political activism, as even the Lifetime profile admitted, did not begin until 1969.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

I really don't care what people say. It's amazing that feminism continues to exist at all, considering how much counter-feminism is out there.

My mum fought for feminism in her day so instilled in me the importance of equality. She taught me so much about women.

Until Eve arrived, this was a man's world.

I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.

That attitude toward women as objects may have worked for the late Sixties, but it doesn't do so now.

I'm very curious to witness the historic transformation of Chinese women.

A lot of women are turned off by the physical appearance of some of the first feminists.