Serena Williams Quotes

I never understood why women wanted equality in the workplace when in fact, that would be selling them short.

My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She would always point out to my brother and me that our culture does often portray women like objects...

I don’t know what happened through the ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s that took feminism off the table, that made it something that women weren’t supposed to identify with and were supposed to be ashamed of. Feminism is about the fight for equality between the sexes, with equal respect, equal pay, and equal opportunity. At the moment we are still a long way off that.

I think that in a country as successful as ours, we still have a long way to go in terms of parity for women, whether it’s equal pay in the workforce or a whole host of other issues.

Women inevitably have to work a little bit harder to be heard. Hollywood is disgustingly sexist. It's crazy.

I ask you, how would you like your mom, your wife, your daughter to spend $100,000 to go to Harvard or some state school, and go out into the workplace, and you know she's great, and men are getting paid $200 per week more than her? Would that piss you off? What if you lost your job and you stay home crippled while she goes out, and she thinks she's going to get a good job, but someone male with the same level of experience and the same level of education gets paid more than her? You're going to get pissed. Until you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, I don't want to hear it.

I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.

The only thing the women were after was just the chance to help the world on. But some men were so dreadfully afraid of them that they refused to understand, and talked about 'shrieking sisterhoods' and 'disappointed spinsters' and rubbish of that sort.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

It's such a male-dominated industry. You can be a feminist, it's just difficult because it sometimes comes back at you.

I don't know why there is a discrimination between women and men entrepreneurs. Those who are doing their job should just be seen as professionals and not women or men.

While I am reluctant to cite sexism as a political issue, sexism certainly can exist.

I'm always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.”

There are so many more roles for men than there are for women.

I think, being a woman, we got to prove ourselves twice.

It's only that we live in a patriarchal society, and therefore, the word 'feminism' has to be used as a counter to patriarchy. But feminism is about being equal. The word used should be 'equalist,' as it is about all humans being equal and respecting each other for that.

Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.

The American woman's inequality with men is proved by her defiant attitude.

The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.

I was always a feminist. My mother was a feminist; my grandmother was a feminist. I always understood women had to fight very hard to do what they wanted to do in the world - that it wasn't an easy choice. But I think the most important part is that we all want the right to be taken seriously as human beings, and to use our talents without reservation, and that's still not possible for women.

Why is there even a conversation about feminism?

How did it come to be that you think men and women are the same? Well, there's a simple answer to the question: Feminism.

I wish the women's rights folks would be more sensible. I think women have a great deal to learn, before they are fit to vote.

women used to be elected only when their husbands died and they became widows. The men found this was too hard on them. That's why they've become feminists.

Feminism is to sexism what black nationalism is to racism; the most rational response to the problem.