You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. Donald Trump, to Billy Bush 2005
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. Virginia Woolf
A woman can hardly ever choose … She is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach. George Eliot, Felix Holt
A woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. George Eliot, Middlemarch
The happiest woman, like the happiest nations, have no history. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. ibid.
That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place. And aren’t I a woman? ... I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me – and aren’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 aren’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and aren’t I a woman? Sojourner Truth, speech Women’s Rights Convention 1851
There is a great stir about coloured men getting their rights, but not a word about the coloured women; and if coloured men get their rights, and not coloured women theirs, you see the coloured men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. Sojourner Truth, speech Equal Rights Convention 1867
The insistent demand of women for recognition in spheres of work outside the home, which has quietly but unremittingly been advanced in the course of the last hundred years, has grudgingly been conceded. As a doctor and a Member of Parliament I am fully conscious of the fact that the doors both of the medical schools and of the House of Commons had to be forced by furious and frustrated women before their claims were recognized. It would be quite inaccurate to suggest that we were welcomed into the universities or into public life. Edith Summerskill
Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind;
Let all her ways be unconfined;
And clap your padlock – on her mind. Matthew Prior, An English Padlock, 1705
We were basing our request for the vote on inequalities and injustices and lack of opportunity. Dame Margery Corbett Ashby, interview BBC 1972
Women should be obscene and not heard. John Lennon
I think women should have lots of opinions but not allowed to express them. Richard Harris, interview The Parkinson Show 1973
A woman’s love for us increases
The less we love her, sooth to say –
She stoops, she falls, her struggling ceases;
Caught fast, she cannot get away. Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, 1833
Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included. Karl Marx
It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition ... The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present. ibid.
Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room, 1977
Women are nothing but machines for producing children. Napoleon Bonaparte
Ford of Britain can produce 3,100 cars a day. Made in Dagenham 2010 starring Bob Hoskins & Miranda Richardson & Sally Hawkins & Geraldine James & Rosamund Pike & Andrea Riseborough & Jaime Winstone & Daniel Mays & Richard Schiff & Phil Cornwell et al, director Nigel Cole, Ford advert
Now occupy more than seven square miles. ibid.
‘Those for industrial action hands up.’ ibid. Albert
‘Machinists threatening strike action – they couldn’t believe it.’ ibid.
‘That is not unskilled work.’ ibid. Rita convenor
‘Everybody out.’ ibid.
‘26,000 strikes in the United Kingdom.’ ibid. Barbara Castle
‘Because they can. They’re allowed to pay women a lower wage than men. All over the country women are getting less because they’re women.’ ibid. Albert
‘It’s a glimpse innit of what it could be.’ ibid. woman
‘This strike is about one thing and one thing only – fairness.’ ibid.
‘In six months’ time your union won’t exist. Industry cannot afford to pay women the same rates as men ... It will collapse under the weight of the extra wages.’ ibid. Ford boss
Ford Women Fight On ... Tide Turns Against Dagenham Women. ibid. newspaper headline
‘Rights is not privileges.’ ibid. Rita
‘It was a matter of principle. You had to stand up and do what was right otherwise you wouldn’t be able to look yourself in the mirror ... When did we in this country decide to stop fighting? ... We are the working classes, the men and the women ... Equal pay for women is right.’ ibid. Rita at conference
‘What’s worth fighting for?’ ibid. Rita to Barbara Castle
‘The government is in full support of the creation of an Equal Pay Act.’ ibid. Barbara Castle
‘Nobody expected us to come out on strike.’ ibid. striker
Companies across Britain are in the spotlight on pay. Now the government’s making large companies declare their gender pay gaps. But is your boss playing by the rules? Dispatches: The Truth About Your Pay, Channel 4 2018
A new industry has sprung up offering advice on the reporting legislation. ibid.
Every day British is discovering just how much more men are earning than women. Nearly fifty years after equal pay became the law, could this be the year that things finally change? Panorama: Britain’s Equal Pay Scandal, BBC 2018
Did you know in the UK women get paid on average 14% less than men? … From women on the supermarket shop floor who are earning less than the men in the warehouse to the female stars of film and TV women are still fighting for equal pay. Why Do Men Earn More Than Women? Channel 5 2018
Welcome to the club! The Small World of Sammy Lee 1963 starring Anthony Newley & Julia Foster & Robert Stephens & Wilfrid Brambell & Miriam Karlin & Kenneth J Warren & Warren Mitchell & Harry Locke & Roy Kinnear & Alfred Burke & Harry Baird & Julia Foster, director Ken Hughes, stripper to Patsy
Make yourselves comfortable. Not too comfortable there, sir, thank you, we were raided last week. ibid. compare
Every morning when I wake up I see a man’s penis I haven’t asked to see … This morning I have had 37 [phone texts] … It’s the ultimate disrespect. Emily Atack: Asking For It? BBC 2023