Quotes About Empowerment

She became who she had been meant to be

In the old days of Take Back the Night, you could march with other women and feel that all the rapists of the world were small and powerless.

Men give women the power that they themselves don't want.

Corporate America had tried to get women to behave as badly as men, Faith Frank said, but women did not have to capitulate. They could be strong and powerful, all the while keeping their integrity and decency.

If Jules or Ash needed to see each other, then the two husbands stepped aside. It almost seemed gratifying to the men to step aside in those moments, remembering what women could have together that men rarely could.

Whenever I give a talk at colleges I meet young women who say, 'I'm not a feminist, but . . .' By which they mean, 'I don't call myself a feminist, but I want equal pay, and I want to have equal relationships with men, and of course I want to have an equal right to sexual pleasure. I want to have a fair and good life. I don't want to be held back because I'm a woman.

Or maybe they don't even want babies, some of these women, and life opens out to them in an endless field of work. And once in a while the world responds in a big way, letting them in, giving them a key, a crown. It does happen, it does. But usually it doesn't.

Corporate America had tried to get women to behave as badly as men, Faith Frank said, but women did not have to capitulate.

Everyone has something to say. But not everyone can bear to say it. Your job is to find a way.

Why did a strong woman need to be her own shield

To live in a world of female power—mutual power—felt like a desirable dream to Zee. Having power meant that the world was like a pasture with the gate left open, and that there was nothing stopping you, and you could run and run.

Good girls could go far, but they could rarely go the distance.

I like being a girl. I just want to be the one who says what that means.

He paused to wonder which Disney character Jules was, and realized that Disney did not make women or girls or woodland animals that were like her.

Girls weren't weak. They had a softness sometimes, but not all the time.

It's so wonderful that all of you have so much more freedom than I did. But along with that freedom can sometimes come a sense that you don't need other women. And that isn't true.

Faith had taken an interest in her. She had even said she admired her. And now Faith was giving her permission. But permission to do what? The answer wasn't at all obvious.

ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY, the women were waking up.

Apparently you didn't require air when you were a teenager. You made your own air.

Women were allowed to tell each other what they felt without holding back. Women could now say, "I love you," without any hesitation or discomfort or a sense that there were sexual overtones between them, even if one of them was gay.

Why not try to use your 'outside voice'? You know, I sometimes think that the most effective people in the world are introverts who taught themselves how to be extroverts.

there are two aspects to feminism. The first is individualism, which is that I get to shape my own life. That I don't have to fit into a stereotype, doing what my mother tells me, conforming to someone else's idea of what a woman is. But there's a second aspect too, and here I want to use the old-fashioned word 'sisterhood,' which may make you groan a little and head for the exits in a stampede, but I'll just have to take that chance.

You needed to find a way to make your world dynamic, Greer knew. Sometimes you couldn't do it yourself. Someone had to see something in you and speak to you in a way that no one else ever had.

This is my body, and I can make it do things. I can make it spin, flip, fly.