The freer that women become, the freer will men be. Because when you enslave someone -- you are enslaved.
--Louise Nevelson, 1974

Women can't have an honest exchange in front of men without having it called a cat fight.
--Clare Boothe Luce, 1975

The acceptance of women as authority figures or as role models is an important step in female education . . . It is this process of identification, respect, and then self-respect that promotes growth.
--Judy Chicago, 1975

The feeling is that until men are comfortable working in some of these fields that are traditionally considered to be female . . . women end up doing two jobs, and the men are still doing just one.
--Rosemary Brown, 1975

It is little wonder that rape is one of the least-reported crimes. Perhaps it is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused and, in reality, it is she who must prove her good reputation, her mental soundness, and her impeccable propriety.
--Freda Adler, 1975

I've really never accepted the idea that a woman can't do whatever the hell it is she wants.
--Sylvia Chase, 1976

Now men and women are separate and unequal. We should be hand in hand; in fact, we should have our arms around each other.
--Cloris Leachman, 1978

Anybody against women, against the ERA, should never be voted into office again.
--Liz Carpenter, 1979

I don't consider [the Equal Rights Amendment] a political issue. It is a moral issue as far as I am concerned. Where are women mentioned in the Constitution except in the Nineteenth Amendment, giving us the right to vote? When they said all men were created equal, they really meant it -- otherwise, why did we have to fight for the Nineteenth Amendment?
--Carol Burnett, 1979

The woman's movement was very significant to my career. Without it people would have continued to assume that women could not be in high positions. It changed tradition, if it hasn't yet changed all the minds. I would not have been promoted so many times without that as a backdrop.
--Joan Manley, 1979

When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think.
--Patricia Schroeder, 1980

I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.
--Frances Kuehn, 1981

Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of "women's issues".
--Charlotte Bunch, 1981

Women cannot serve two masters at once who are urgently beaming antithetical orders . . . Either we believe in patriarchy -- the rule of men over women -- or we believe in equality.
--Sonia Johnson, 1981

The only difference between a man and woman climbing the ladder of success is that a woman is expected to put it in the closet when she's finished with it.
--Barbara Dale, 1985

If you say, "I'm for equal pay," that's a reform. But if you say, "I'm a feminist," that's . . . a transformation of society.
--Gloria Steinem, 1992

For things to have value in man's world, they are given the role of commodities. Among man's oldest and most constant commodity is woman.
--Ana Castillo, 1994

Only when women rebel against patriarchal standards does female muscle become more accepted.
--Gloria Steinem, 1994