Happy International Women’s Day. Across the globe, today is an opportunity to celebrate the hard-won achievements of women and press for change on the many challenges we still face.
In the UK, the gender pay gap persists, period poverty remains a major problem and rights groups are still rallying for the government to take action on an “epidemic” of violence against women.
This International Women’s Day, we’ve gathered empowering quotes from women both present and past.
Amanda Gorman, poet
“Hear me as a woman. Have me as your sister. On purpled battlefield breaking day, So I might say our victory is just beginning, See me as change, Say I am movement, That I am the year, and I am the era of the women.”
– from Won’t You Be My Sister?
Gloria Steinem, journalist
⪔Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.”â¬
– from Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
⪔From now on, no man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labour of women at home, or in the office.”
-from My Life on the Road
Bell Hooks, author
“For too long the term domestic violence has been used as a ‘soft’ term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the home. This is not so, since more women are beaten and murdered in the home than on the outside.”
– from Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
“Many of us were the unplanned children of talented, creative women whose lives had been changed by unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. We witnessed their bitterness, their rage, their disappointment with their lot in life and we were clear that there could be no genuine sexual liberation for women and men without better, safer contraceptives, without the right to a safe, legal abortion.”
– from Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Malala Yousafzai, activist
“I raise up my voice – not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard… We cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”
Emily Ratajkowski, model
“I wonder how many women you’ve disregarded in your life, written off, because you assumed they had nothing to offer beyond the way they looked. How quickly they learned that the stuff in their heads was of less value than the shape of their bodies. I bet they were all smarter than you.”
– from My Body
Maya Angelou, poet
“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court justice
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”
– from a 2009 interview with USA Today
“People ask me sometimes, when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the [Supreme] Court? And my answer is when there are nine.”
– speaking at Georgetown University in 2015
Rihanna, singer
“When women get pregnant, society tends to make it feel like you hide, hide your sexy, and that you’re not sexy right now [but] you’ll get back there and I don’t believe in that sh*t.”
– Refinery29 interview, February 2022
Dolly Parton, singer
“I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.”
-from Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business
Alice Walker, poet
“Be nobody’s darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm.”
– from Be Nobody’s Darling
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author
“We teach girls shame. ‘Close your legs. Cover yourself.’ We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up – and this is the worst thing we do to girls – they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”
– from We Should All Be Feminists
Munroe Bergdorf, model
“A woman can be masculine, a woman can be trans, a woman can be intersex… a woman can be whatever she identifies as. It doesn’t make her any less of a woman.
– Vogue, 2018
Halima Aden, activist
“I say this all the time, but my hijab, it really is my crown, and it’s something that I bring to the table. It’s something that makes me unique. It shows the world who I truly am.”
Angela Davis, activist
“When Black women stand up – as they did during the Montgomery Bus Boycott – as they did during the Black liberation era, earth-shaking changes occur.”
– from Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
Rebecca West, author
“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”
– from The Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, politician
“They’ll tell you you’re too loud, that you need to wait your turn and ask the right people for permission. Do it anyway.”
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex
“Women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases, where this is not available, they need to create their own table. We need a global understanding that we cannot implement change effectively without women’s political participation.”
Meryl Streep, actor
“You could make a case that, along with the technological revolution, the most provocative, upending, destabilising, thrilling change in the course of human history is that we’re finally in it… We’re here now, women are in the world, and we will not be bullied.”
– speaking at the 2016 Women in the World Summit
Ilhan Omar, politician
“They cannot stand that a refugee, a black woman, an immigrant, a Muslim, shows up in Congress thinking she’s equal to them. But I say to them, ‘How else did you expect me to show up?’”
Angelina Jolie, actor
“Wicked women” are just women who are tired of injustice and abuse. Women who refuse to follow rules and codes they don’t believe are best for themselves or their families. Women who won’t give up on their voice and rights, even at the risk of death or imprisonment or rejection by their families and communities. If that is wickedness, then the world needs more wicked women.”
– Elle, 2019
Serena Williams, tennis player
“The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up. Make sure you’re very courageous: be strong, be extremely kind, and above all be humble.”
Amy Schumer, actor
“I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story – I will.”
Kamala Harris, US Vice President
“No woman should be told she can’t make decisions about her own body. When women’s rights are under attack, we fight back.”
Emma Watson, actor
“I have experienced sexism in that I have been directed by male directors 17 times and only twice by women. Of the producers I’ve worked with, 13 have been male and only one has been a woman. But I am lucky: I have always insisted on being treated equally and have generally won that equality.”
–The Guardian, September 2015
Taylor Swift, singer
“My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet… is that they all realise their worth and ask for it.”
Betty Friedan, activist
“No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.”
Credit: Yahoo News