A Quote by Virginia Gildersleeve

There was danger at times that women might not be judged by the highest standards, but more leniently because of their sex. "She is a remarkably good chemist--for a woman," you might hear a man say. It seemed to me essential, if the ablest young women scholars were to achieve the best work of which they were capable, that they should be held to the most rigorous standards. ...To advance, a woman must do at least as good work as her male colleagues, usually better.
If you talk to a woman, she will give you at least five incidents in a day, 5-10 in a month, where she had to work harder to prove herself because she is a 'woman,' maybe at a male-dominated work place or when she has to come across as a smarter woman if she is good-looking.
The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men's theories of women, as they alwayshave done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it's because she doesn't quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man's picture of woman to live up to.
...at this stage in the advancement of women the best policy for them is not to talk much about the abstract principles of women'srights but to do good work in any job they get, better work if possible than their male colleagues.
It just struck me as really odd that there were all of these conversations going on about what young women were up to. Were young women having too much sex? Were young women politically apathetic? Are young women socially engaged or not? And whenever these conversations were happening, they were mostly happening by older women and by older feminists. And maybe there would be a younger woman quoted every once in a while, but we weren't really a central part of that conversation. We weren't really being allowed to speak on our own behalf.
Women in Washington - and in positions of power anywhere - should be subjected to the same criticisms and held to the same standards as men. That does not include the assumption that any successful woman has attained her position through flattery, feminine wiles, or her ability to provide maternal comfort to a more powerful man.
We still live in a world in which a significant fraction of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and wants to belong exclusively in the home; that a woman should not aspire to achieve more than her male counterparts and, particularly, not more than her husband.
It was ironic, but when you scratched the surface, most successful men were working for one thing only--to retire--and the sooner the better. Whereas women were the complete opposite. She had never heard a woman say she was working so she could retire to a desert island or to live on a boat. It was probably, she thought, because most women didn't think they deserved to do nothing.
Prejudice against womenis many, many times intensified against older women. You are viewed not as an intellect but as a body.... Astonishingly, even women's liberation has paid extraordinarily little attention to the older woman and to the fact that her job is limited because she is [older]. They say that women shouldn't be sex objects, but you damned well better be a sex object if you want to get ahead in television.
the way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicity represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. ... While officially it is rightly and consistently said that God is spirit and so beyond identification with either male or female sex, yet the daily language of preaching, worship, catechesis, and instruction conveys a different message: God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, or at least more fittingly addressed as male than as female.
I think if you were to talk to women who have run, both successfully and unsuccessfully, nearly all of them would say, "You learn so much." You learn about yourself, what you're capable of doing.... And it doesn't have to all happen when you're young - I mean, one of the most powerful women in American politics is Nancy Pelosi. She had five children. She didn't go into politics until her youngest child was in high school.... That's one of the great things about being a woman in today's world: You have a much longer potential work life than our mothers or our grandmothers did.
When I looked at [Fannie Lou] Hamer and that speech it seemed to me that she had to be the bravest woman ever, to come before that body and to assert her rights, when she knew that she was going lose that battle. But she did it anyway, because she knew she was speaking not just for herself and for that day, but for me, and for all the other young women who were coming behind her. She didn't know our names, but she was working for us. I find that incredibly empowering.
I talked to my mother about it a lot. I asked her what it was like to grow up in New York and Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s, and I asked her about a woman leaving her husband. I asked her about how she would feel about that woman, and my mother grew up in the Church Of God In Christ, and she told me that the woman might be isolated because the other women thought she might go and come after their husbands. That's how they thought then.
It's weird because here I am, an actress, representing - at least in some sense - an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me.
A woman has all too much substance in a man's eyes at the best of times. That is why men like women to be slim. Her lack of flesh negates her. The less of her there is, the less notice he need take of her. The more like a male she appears to be, the safer he feels.
Until quite recently I've been wholly cut off from [the Shias] because their tenets forbid them to look upon an unveiled woman and my tenets don't permit me to veil Nor is it any good trying to make friends through the women - if they were allowed to see me they would veil before me as if I were a man. So you see I appear to be too female for one sex and too male for the other.
I advocate for people who believe sex work is work. But women have so many avenues open. In the same way, a trans woman or a hijra should have that many doors open. If later on she chooses sex work, that's fine. But she shouldn't have to choose sex work because all the other doors are closed. Every hijra or trans person is not a sex worker. We need our own respect. And whoever chooses sex work after having all doors open, I really respect that.
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