Celebrate International Women's Day and discover the most empowering quotes by trailblazing women
Vaishnavi Pandey - Staff Writer•
From trailblazers like Maya Angelou, Malala Yousafzai, and Michelle Obama to activists and feminist thinkers like Emma Watson, Beyoncé and Meryl Streep – if there’s anything in common between these women, it’s their work and effort towards gender equality. And while that road to true equal rights and gender equality remains long and full of obstacles, we can vouch on today’s influential female voices to give us hope and to remind us that we’re heading in the right direction. So, to commemorate International Women’s Day, we’ve compiled 20 empowering feminist quotes to help you embrace the power of womanhood.
1. Maya Angelou
“Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”
Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first female black director, but eventually became most famous for her work as a writer, editor, playwright, and poet. Most of Angelou’s writing focuses on themes of womanhood and motherhood. This quote is first said to have appeared in a video endorsem*nt for Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2007, according to the New York Times.
2. Barbara Ehrenreich
“Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women’s liberation…none was more alarming than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.”
This quote is from a book called Nickel and Dimed book and was written by Barbara Ehrenreich. She was an American author and political activist, during the 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America alongside being an award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books.
3. Simone de Beauvoir
“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself – on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger. In the meantime, love represents in its most touching form the curse that lies heavily upon woman confined in the feminine universe, woman mutilated, insufficient unto herself.”
De Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. This quote is from her book ‘The Second Sex.’
4. Alice Walker
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Alice Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel ‘The Color Purple’ which is where this quote is taken from.
5. Dolly Alderton
“Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learnt from my long-term friendships with women.”
This quote is from ‘Everything I Know About Love,’ a 2018 memoir written by British journalist Dolly Alderton, who recounts the adventures of a woman navigating her 20s.
6. Rupi Kaur
“what’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn? / that since day one. she’s already had everything / she needs within herself. it’s the world that / convinced her she did not.”
Born in Punjab, India, Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, illustrator and author. She immigrated to Canada at a young age with her family and began performing poetry in 2009 rising to fame on Instagram. This piece of poetry is from ‘The Greatest Lesson.’
7. Malala Yousafzai
“I raise up my voice—not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. … We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.”
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani female education activist and is the world’s youngest Nobel Prize laureate which she won at the age of 17, the second Pakistani and the first Pashtun to receive a Nobel Prize. She survived an attack and returned to the classroom only a few months after being shot continuing to speak out against injustice and writing her 2013 memoir, I Am Malala.
8. Gloria Steinem
“Women are always saying, ‘We can do anything that men can do.’ But men should be saying, ‘We can do anything that women can do.'”
Gloria Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognised leader of feminism in the United States in the late 60s and early 70s. Steinem was also a columnist for New York magazine.
9. Michelle Obama
“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”
Michelle Obama is the former first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to former president Barack Obama.
10. Emma Watson
“The more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”
Aside of Emma Watson’s illustrious acting career, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015. In 2014, she was appointed a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and helped in the launch of the UN Women campaign HeForShe, advocating for gender equality. Additionally in 2018, she helped launch the Time’s Up UK campaign as a founding member.
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11. Meryl Streep
“You could make a case that, along with the technological revolution, the most provocative upending destabilizing 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.”
12. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a brilliant American lawyer who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020. She was known to have successfully fought against gender discrimination and helped in unifying the liberal block of the court.
13. Hillary Clinton
“To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”
Hillary Clinton is an American politician who served as the first lady of the U.S. to president Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, the United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013 and additionally as a U.S. senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009.
14. Virginia Woolf
“There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors. She was known to be the architect of the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device in her work.
15. Shirley Chisholm
“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
Shirley Chisholm was an American politician who became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress in 1968.
16. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer and this is an excerpt from her work ‘We Should All Be Feminists.’
17. Rihanna
“There’s something special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer.”
Rihanna is the founder of Clara Lionel Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2012, that funds groundbreaking education and emergency preparedness and response programs around the world. Rihanna was named Harvard University’s “Humanitarian of the Year” by the Harvard Foundation in 2017.
18. Audre Lorde
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, philosopher, feminist, poet and civil rights activist who was known for her account of her struggle to overcome breast cancer and mastectomy called ‘The Cancer Journals’ (1980).
19. Adrienne Rich
“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”
Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was considered “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.” She was additionally credited for her efforts in bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to light and the forefront of the poetic discourse.
20. G.D. Anderson
“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong, it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”
Anderson is an Australian feminist writer and founder of charity, The Cova Project, that provides safe sanitary care to women in developing communities across Africa.
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Tags:history, lgbtqia+, political, reading / literature
