A Quote by Naomi Wolf

As women demanded access to power, the power structure used the beauty myth materially to undermine women's advancement.

Naomi Wolf

Quote Topics

Access Advancement Beauty Beauty Myth Demanded Myth Power Power Structure Structure Undermine Used Women

Quote Author

Naomi Wolf
American - Author
Born: November 12, 1962

Society was built on male power, and women's power was... ignored is the best word to describe it I suppose, we have been running society on one power, half a power really. And that's so terrible. The world needs women's power too.

Yoko Ono

In acknowledging woman-to-woman help it is important to recognize that power, within the family and elsewhere, can be used vindictively, and that it is not only powerful men who abuse women; women with power may also abuse other women.

Sheila Kitzinger

In some ways, privileged women who are closer to power wind up being able to exert their influence in ways that change public policy in ways that women with less power don't have access to.

Rebecca Traister

It turns out that a lot of women just have a problem with women in power. You know, this whole sisterhood, this whole let's go march for women's rights and, you know, just constantly talking about what women look like or what they wear, or making fun of their choices or presuming that they're not as powerful as the men around. This presumptive negativity about women in power I think is very unfortunate, because let's just try to access that and have a conversation about it, rather than a confrontation about it.

Kellyanne Conway

The nature of women's oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children - we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.

Andrea Dworkin

Defining child care primarily as women's sphere reinforces the devaluing of women and prevents their equal access to power.

Mary Frances Berry

If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?" "Hah!" went Tenar; and presently, with some cunning, she said, "Haven't there been queens? Weren't they women of power?" "A queen's only a she-king," said Ged. She snorted. "I mean, men give her power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.

Ursula K. Le Guin

When women breached the power structure in the 1980s?two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money.

Naomi Wolf

The male establishment power structure has not really changed its attitude towards women. They did not give these rights to women out of kindness. These rights were fought for by many highly evolved women who cared about the lives of their daughters and granddaughters.

Frederick Lenz

BlogHer is an incredibly important conference because it really taps into the power of women. It gives women an ability to do what they do - take care of the home, go to work - and, at the same time, spread their power through the power of the digital world.

Indra Nooyi

I think being a scientist is a position of respect and power and access, and it's a privileged position in society. And I think there are fundamental mechanisms that keep men and women from achieving the same level of power and access and privilege in society.

Hope Jahren

Disconnected from my feminine soul, I had also unknowingly forfeited my power to name sacred reality. I had simply accepted what men had named. Neither had I noticed that when women give this power away, it is rarely used to liberate and restore value to women. More often it is used to shore up and enhance the privileged position of men.

Sue Monk Kidd

They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women[they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not "need" the power to limit the development of others.

Jean Baker Miller

I ask myself a lot how other women can be against the ideology that has to do with women empowering other women. Going along with the access of power and the status quo and forging a special position and the thought process that goes: I am not like those women. When it comes to things like assault, for example, perhaps it makes them feel safer. It's the denial: I'm okay. This won't happen to me. Acknowledging that the world is a profoundly unsafe for women is a scary thought.

Jessica Valenti

I have always felt that perhaps women have sometimes almost embraced the same values as men, and the same character as men, because they are in the men's world, and they are trying to fit into a system that men have created. And maybe in truth when there is a critical mass of women who play that role in governments, then we will see whether women can really manage power in a way that is less destructive than the way that men have used power.