---------------------------------------------------------------------- QUOTES: WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH
March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day, a good occasion to reacquaint oneself with the struggle for women’s equality in the United States -- a struggle with many victories, but still far from over. Following is an eclectic collection of quotes about the struggle from various sources:
Women textile workers on strike in Lowell, Mass., in 1836 -- at a time when women workers earned perhaps one-quarter of men’s wages -- delivered this declaration: “As our fathers resisted unto blood the lordly avarice of the British ministry, so we, their daughters, never will wear the yoke which has been prepared for us.”
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), the former slave born in Ulster County, N.Y., who became a leading abolitionist and feminist (some historians say she may not have spoken these exact words, which were attributed to her speech at the 1851 women’s rights convention in Ohio, but they are consistent with her known general views and style): “The man over there [a minister who had just spoken] says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches and have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over puddles, or gives me the best place -- and ain’t I a woman? Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns and no man could head me -- and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man -- when I could get it -- and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have born 13 children, and seen most of ‘em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me -- and ain’t I a woman?”
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), one of the best known U.S. feminist leaders and editor of the periodical, The Revolution, which had this motto: “Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), another great leader and Anthony’s closest associate: “The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.” She also said, “Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.”
Mother (Mary Harris) Jones (1830-1930), the veteran labor leader who lived to be 100 and remained a militant fighter until the day she died: “No matter what your fight, don’t be ladylike! God Almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.”
Martha Carey Thomas (1857-1935), the suffragist and president of Bryn Mawr College: “Women are one-half of the world, but until a century ago ... it was a man’s world. The laws were men’s laws, the government a man’s government, the country a man’s country. Now women have won the right to higher education and economic independence. The right to become citizens of the state [by obtaining voting rights] is the next and inevitable consequence of education and work outside the home. We have gone so far; we must go farther. We cannot go back.”
Dorothy Ballan (1918-92), the U.S. socialist organizer and writer, from her 1971 pamphlet, Feminism & Marxism: “It is really impossible to understand the origin or development of the present status of women without subjecting the question to a materialist view of history, that is, from a class point of view. If women in the leadership of this movement see the question in historical perspective, it would help to avoid another decline such as happened to the suffragist movement.”
Gloria Steinem (1934- ), the founder of Ms. magazine and feminist organizer: “Feminism is not antisexuality; on the contrary. It says that sexuality shouldn’t be confused with violence and dominance and that it should be a matter of free choice. It shouldn’t be forced on you by economics, including dependence on a husband, or by pressure.”
Germaine Greer (1939- ), the feminist author: “I didn’t fight to get women out from behind the vacuum cleaner to get them onto the board of Hoover.”
Robin Morgan (1941- ), the feminist editor and writer: “Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We’re not inherently anything but human.”
Erica Jong, (1942- ), the author: “Women really must have equal pay for equal work, equality in work at home, and reproductive choices. Men must press for these things also. They must cease to see them as ‘women’s issues’ and learn that they are everyone’s issues -- essential to survival on planet Earth.”
Angela Davis (1944 - ), the University of California professor and well-known African-American political activist: “When the feminist historians of the 21st century attempt to recapitulate [the modern women’s struggle] will they ignore the momentous contributions of Afro-American women, who have been leaders and activists in movements often confined to women of color, but whose accomplishments have invariably advanced the cause of white women as well? Will the exclusionary policies of the mainstream women’s movement -- from its inceptions to the present -- which have often compelled Afro-American women to conduct their struggle for equality outside the ranks of that movement, continue to result in the systematic omission of our names from the roster of prominent leaders and activists of the women’s movement?”
Susan Faludi (1959- ), the journalist and author: “Feminism’s agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to ‘choose’ between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves -- instead of having their identify defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.” (end)