” There are a whole bunch of structural and systemic factors we need to address in order to move away from the model in which women really are still dependent on men. “
” Women are living independently, but we don’t yet have the social and economic policies behind us to support that independence. “
” In the nineteenth century, in part because a ton of American men moved west, in part because of the Civil War, and in part because of trepidation about marriage, which was then a very confining institution, there was a big population of women – mostly middle-class white women on the East Coast – who didn’t marry. “
” There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful, who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work. “
” When lawmakers start to make laws that hurt single women, often the women that they’re hurting the most are not the economically powerful ones. They’re not Sandra Fluke. They’re not Lena Dunham, who conservatives hate more than anybody. They’re hurting low-earning single mothers. “
” In some ways, privileged women who are closer to power wind up being able to exert their influence in ways that change public policy in ways that women with less power don’t have access to. “
” Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women’s ability to flourish in the United States. “
” In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. “
” Throughout America’s history, the start of adult life for women – whatever else it might have been destined to include – had been typically marked by marriage. “
” Since the late 19th century, the median age of first marriage for women had fluctuated between 20 and 22. This had been the shape, pattern and definition of female life. “
” Up until 1920, women couldn’t vote. Until 1974, married women couldn’t get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband’s professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife. “
” The vast majority of women who marry still take their husband’s name. And I’m not vilifying that behavior! But that’s a pattern where women are truly still taking on their husbands’ identities. “
” Blogs with feminist content, from ‘Feministing’ and ‘Jezebel’ to ‘Racialicious’ and ‘Shakesville’ and ‘Feministe,’ have opened up and changed the scope of the feminist universe for women who might never have encountered contemporary feminism. “
All 13 Rebecca Traister Quotes about Women in picture
Topics: Women quotes