48 Empowering Women'S Rights Quotes

In a world striving for equality and empowerment, words hold immense power to inspire change and ignite action. With this curated collection of 48 empowering women's rights quotes, we celebrate the voices that have dared to challenge the status quo and advocate for gender equality. From trailblazing pioneers to contemporary leaders, these quotes encapsulate the resilience, strength, and wisdom of women who have left an indelible mark on history. Whether you seek motivation, reflection, or a renewed sense of purpose, these powerful words will serve as a beacon of light, reminding us of the long journey towards achieving true equality and justice for all.

1. “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” - Jane Austen

2. “A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.” - Jostein Gaarder

3. “But if God had wanted us to think with just our wombs, why did He give us a brain?” - Clare Boothe Luce

4. “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

5. “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

6. “Reproductive freedom is critical to a whole range of issues. If we can’t take charge of this most personal aspect of our lives, we can’t take care of anything. It should not be seen as a privilege or as a benefit, but a fundamental human right.” - Faye Wattleton

7. “Uh.. you'er Sophie?" Mrianda ventured"That's me""How old areyou?"Sophie rolled ker wide brown eyes, "Ahunderd and forty-eight" she relied. "I got to live back when women coulden't vote, isn't that awesome?” - Dianne Sylvan

8. “After listening to Rick Santorum, I'm now for late-term abortions (say up to age 53).” - Quentin R. Bufogle

9. “While significant strides have been made in the pursuit of life expectancy, healthcare, educational opportunities, and constitutional protections for women, the Supreme Court, in particular, still wrestles with their status, as evidenced by their problems in pursuing equal opportunity in education and employment, reproductive freedom, the military, and violence against women.” - David E. Wilkins

10. “No nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.” - Muhammad Ali Jinnah

11. “There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.” - Muhammad Ali Jinnah

12. “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.” - Muhammad Ali Jinnah

13. “[] it is unthinkable to allow complete strangers, whether individually or collectively as state legislators or others in government, to make such personal decisions for someone else.” - Sarah Weddington

14. “Societies in which women have lots of autonomy and authority tend to be decidedly male-friendly, relaxed, tolerant, and plenty sexy. Got that, fellas? If you're unhappy at the amount of sexual opportunity in your life, don't blame the women. Instead, make sure they have equal access to power, wealth and status. Then watch what happens.” - Cacilda Jethá

15. “Then I will speak upon the ashes.” - Sojourner Truth

16. “Blindness separates people from things;deafness separates people from people.” - Helen Keller

17. “Conservatives, who have presumed that the key to preventing AIDS is abstinence-only education, and liberals, who have focused on distribution of condoms, should both note that the intervention that has tested most cost-effective in Africa is neither... Secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause.” - Nicholas D. Kristof

18. “I find it strange that practicing law in a comfortable well-heated office is considered too demanding an occupation for women, yet laboring from dawn's first light in crowded, drafty, ill-lit sweatshops is not.” - Shirley Tallman

19. “The feminist story, she reminded me, is a counternarrative, a narrative of disobedience, a chronicle of battle, nto of surrender. Women who do not fit the mold are too often maneuvered, manipulated, and mangled into some culturally safe archetype. The makers of history transformed perpetua intoa cold, unfeeling mother - a villan of sorts. But who is to say that becoming a mother didn't also push Perpetua to become a martyr, didn't cause her to passionatley uphold her religious ideals because she wanted to offer her son the greatest gift she could - an ideal? Maybe, in the end, Perpetua's maternal instincts were precisely what gave her the strength to confront the burliest Roman gladiator and the to lie down with dignity?” - Stephanie Staal

20. “When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.” - Nicholas D. Kristof

21. “Skupljanje hrane nesumnjivo je bilo na prvom mjestu ženskih dužnosti budući da je taj zadatak održavao pleme na životu. Ni u jednom se trenutku pretpovijesne žene s djecom ili bez nje nisu oslanjale na svoje partnere, lovce, za nabavku hrane.” - Rosalind Miles

22. “Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?” - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

23. “It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord.” - Antonia Fraser

24. “Women in my country take their rights for granted and completely dissociate themselves from the women's rights movement and feminism. But I think anything's possible. If I don't help the women in Afghanistan, they won't be around to help me.” - Cheryl Benard quoting Lorrie

25. “I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

26. “...religions all have the same timeline...First the people feel the need to worship something. The sun or the giant corn of ear. That's the first thing. Then the guys say okay, now that we've got the giant corn thing going, how can we use it to oppress women?” - Carol Anshaw

27. “Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to recognise the gulf that separates them from us.” - Leo Tolstoy

28. “Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man’s attitude may be, that problem is hers — and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.” - Margaret Sanger

29. “When all you know is pain you don’t know that that is not normal. It is not a woman’s lot to suffer, even if we’ve been raised that way.It is not OK to miss a part of your life because of pain and excessive bleeding.It is not OK to be bed-ridden for two-to-three days a month.It is not OK to pain during sex.It is not OK to have major bloating or nausea."(Address, 2011 Endometriosis Foundation of America Blossom Ball)” - Susan Sarandon

30. “لا يمكن أن يخلق الله رجال من أرحام النساء , ثم لا يجعل لهن كرامة فوق كرامة الرجال” - محمد دهشان

31. “While sports are indisputably a positive source of strength and self-development for girls, they can accomplish this only if the environment in which female athletes throw their javelins, kick their soccer balls, and swim their fast and furious laps is an environment that respects girls and takes them seriously as athletes.” - Leslie Heywood

32. “Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers, ans scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of woman is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth.” - Simone de Beauvoir

33. “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.” - Maya Angelou

34. “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.” - Audrey Lorde

35. “Be careful if you make a women cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man’s ribs. Not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior, but from his side to be equal, under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.” - Matthew Henry

36. “The Rights Revolutions too have given us ideals that educated people today take for granted but that are virtually unprecedented in human history, such as that people of all races and creeds have equal rights, that women should be free from all forms of coercion, that children should never, ever be spanked, that students should be protected from bullying, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I don’t find it at all implausible that these are gifts, in part, of a refined and widening application of reason.” - Steven Pinker

37. “Behind tranquillity lies conquered unhappiness.” - J. William T. Youngs

38. “A fundamental error that I have noticed within a lot of independent women, is that by default, they must succeed. If not, their self-reflection in stagnation will overcome them. In striving to succeed immediately, they have failed successfully, and have fallen into the ocean of persistence and fluctuation. But it's not all in vain, for hope is a returning daydream. Unknown to them, their opposite is merely sleeping with time, awaiting the impending song of daybreak's bell.” - Lionel Suggs

39. “These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on women’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men’s card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it’s going in your bank account, and not your husband’s. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges.” - Caitlin Moran

40. “Consent to petting isn't consent to penetration.” - Kate McGuinness

41. “Perhaps you'll apprentice to a healer when you're older," Grete suggested. "I'd say you have the gift for it."Hen reddened, then seemed suddenly fascinated with a speck on her shoe. "Be nice to have a gift for something," she said after a moment. "But they don't let girls apprentice, now, do they?"Grete harrumphed. "A bunch of fools, the lot who came up with that system. You lose half the world's brainpower that way.” - Frances O'Roark Dowell

42. “I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I'm supposed to take when I one day leave this house.” - Eve Ensler

43. “It was hard not to feel resentment that men weren't forced into these choices. Some days she felt that she would spend all her time trying to forget her life before children because she loved them too much to be reminded of the heat of Rome in the summer and a beautiful girl who turned heads as she walked down an Italian strada.” - Whitney Otto

44. “Bah! Suffragettes. I've no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!” - Jennifer Worth

45. “I defend the authority of women and explore its meaning for them rather than assume they need to be more accommodating or sensitive.” - David Bedrick

46. “Women were born to be treasured.” - Lybian proverb

47. “When pockets were first added to women’s clothing in 1913, a Paris reporter wrote, “It’s all over with men’s superiority over women.” Pockets are indeed indispensable, and they come in two types: patch and set-in” - Claire B. Shaeffer

48. “The world will change when women reclaim their power as the sane, nurturing hands of love, which are ever reaching to cultivate a world of beauty, safety and harmony.” - Bryant McGill