The workers’ paradise had given way to the Gulag: when a country is in crisis one of the first things to go is women’s rights, and so it was in the Soviet Union. ibid.
Margaret Sanger: ‘It’s about time’ ibid. on hearing of birth control pill
I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been. William Golding, Lord of the Flies
She’s more than a mistress. She’s more than a wife. She’s a mother. She’s a daughter. She’s an errant child. She can make you laugh. She can make you cry. Peter Cook, interview Clive Anderson Talks Back, 1993
Sorry I’m late, Mr Hicks. But I’ve got a bit of a personal problem for which I was told to apply live yoghurt. Well I could only find a Crunch Corner so you can imagine the chaffing I’ve had all morning. The Catherine Tate Show s2e2, Bernie, BBC 2005
From abuse hurled at women appearing on Question Time to bomb threats sent to campaigners agitating for more female heroes on banknotes, from the sexually explicit trail of women in pop videos to rape jokes, is there a new culture abroad in which men – and it is mainly men – seem to think they have the freedom and the right – to speak about, write about, and portray women in a derogatory even abusive way? And is this culture now infecting and polluting the lives of schoolgirls? Kirsty Wark, Blurred Lines: The New Battle of the Sexes, BBC 2014
By the 13th century Church authorities had taken control of marriage, enforced celibacy on clergy and silenced Christian women. They had boosted their power by intruding into people’s private lives in unprecedented ways. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Sex and the Church II: Sexual Revolution, BBC 2015
No conflict in history, a journalist wrote, was so much a woman’s war as the Civil War. North and South women looked for ways to help. Ken Burns, The Civil War: The Universe of Battle, PBS 1990
I like my women to be feminine, not sliding into tackles and covered in mud. Brian Clough
Modern women destroy these stereotypes, and they’ve actually been doing it for centuries ... ‘women who have killed, women who have ruled, women who have taken power’. Strange Rituals: Warrior Women, History 2009
No story of warrior women is more famous than that of the Amazons. ibid.
Violence by women, however, is much less common than violence against women, especially women who dare to take a stand. ibid.
Gertrude, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has traditionally been played as a sensual, deceitful woman ... The famous film versions of Hamlet illustrate the standard presentation, wherein Gertrude is a vain, self-satisfied woman of strong physical and sexual appetites. Rebecca Smith, A Heart Cleft in Twain: The Dilemma of Shakespeare’s Gertrude
One finds little that hints at hypocrisy, suppression, or uncontrolled passion and their implied complexity. ibid.
Since the beginning of the play, Hamlet has been obsessed with Claudius’s and Gertrude’s guilt, and it is this which precipitates his distempered behaviour. ibid.
The nurturing, loving, careful mother and wife – malleable, submissive, totally dependant, and solicitous of others at the expense of herself. This is still a stereotype, but a more positive one than that of the temptress and destroyer – self-indulgent and soulless. And certainly it more accurately reflects the Gertrude that Shakespeare created. ibid.
Old women are closer to God than we’ll ever be. They get to that age and they don’t need the operator any more. They’ve got the direct line. Father Ted s1e2: Entertaining Father Stone, Father Ted to Dougal, Channel 4 1995
This is a film about a new type of cosmetic surgery that has become the fastest growing in the UK. But it isn’t a facelift or a tummy tuck, this is virginal cosmetic surgery. The Perfect Vagina, 2008
Even teenage girls are seeing their GPs as they are convinced they need to go under the knife. ibid.
Shockingly she’ll be awake while she has her labia sliced off. ibid.
It can take up to three months for the vagina to completely recover. ibid.
Restoration of the hymen: oh my God! Hymenoplasty: this restorative and reconstructive surgery repairs the hymen as though penetration has never occurred. ibid.
40th anniversary of the Great GM Sit-Down Strike: ‘… faced the buckshot, faced the teargas, this armband still has the teargas on it. The Women’s Emergency Brigade of Flint, Michigan, made American history …’ With Banners & Babies: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, conference speaker, 1979
We were the pioneers of the labor movement. ibid. striker
The more you produced, the more likely you would keep their job. ibid.
The foremen were using the girls and holding it over their heads that if they didn’t do what they wanted to do, they wouldn’t have a job. ibid.
That’s all we had in Flint, Michigan – churches and bars. ibid.
We met in a little coalshed. ibid.
They would have done anything to turn one against the other. ibid.
That’s when we decided to form the Women’s Auxiliary. ibid.
General Motors goons – our lives were in danger – they were actually prepared with guns. ibid.
First they turned the heat off on ’em, then they turned the water off on ’em. ibid.
The victory was won and the UAW was born. ibid.
‘My father … was a skilled roofer and he was a union man, and he said, If you go to work and there’s a union, join it, no matter what kind it is. Any union is better than none, and if there isn’t one, organise one.’ Union Maids, 1976
This is the story of three women who were part of the rank and file labor movement during the tumultuous 1930s. Their lives were like many other young working women. But all three rose to the demands of their time and became militant organizers for their class. ibid. caption
‘People took what ever little work they could get … Hoover told us that prosperity was just around the corner.’ ibid.
‘The whites and blacks did different kinds of work and made different kinds of pay also.’ ibid.
By the mid-1930s workers saw they could not make gains without the strength of a union. But the American Federation of Labor refused to organise the growing number of unskilled workers. The A F of L was made up of many separate trade unions. ibid. caption
‘The most exciting meetings were those that were called at the shop gates.’ ibid.
The Women’s Movement was also plagued by the same class and racial bigotries that afflicted labor unions. Plutocracy II: Solidarity Forever, 2016
In Britain today young women like me take basic rights for granted. But for millions of girls around the world just being female can put their lives at risk. Stacey Dooley Investigates: World’s Worst Place to be a Woman, BBC 2015
Honduras – the country with the world’s highest murder rate for women. ibid.
Almost two-thirds of the population live in poverty. ibid.
‘If she had behaved better she wouldn’t have proved me to do this [slash her throat].’ ibid. Homer
Fewer than 3% of domestic violence cases are resolved here. ibid.
Both abortion and the morning after pill have been made illegal. ibid.
Rape happens more frequently than murder here and the majority of victims are under fourteen. ibid.
I live in a war zone every day. There is a war on women. It’s real. It can be very ugly. Seeing Allred, Gloria, 2018
She is easily the most famous women’s rights attorney in the country. ibid. television reporter’s comment
For Gloria the Bill Cosby case is everything she is looking for. ibid. Laurie Levenson
Outside the venue Gloria Allred was leading the biggest protest to date against the comedian. ibid. television presenter
She talked about sexual harassment when nobody wanted to talk about it. ibid. commentator
More than forty women have publicly accused him [Cosby] of drugging and sexually assaulting them. ibid. Gloria