Quotes about Gender

We were called, male and female, to do great works with separate approaches and separate assignments.

No, I don't have a feminine side. I've never been in touch with it. And the day I get in touch with my feminine side is the day I retire.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

Until the masculine role is humanized, women will tend to be much better at solving dangerous conflicts.

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

The distinction was nicely drawn by a study in which both men and women were asked about the minimal level of intelligence they would accept in a person they were "dating." The average response, for both male and female, was: average intelligence. They were also asked how smart a person would have to be before they would consent to sexual relations. The women said: Oh, in that case, markedly above average. The men said: Oh, in that case, markedly below average.

Few women would prefer an unemployed and rudderless man to an ambitious and successful one, all other things being even roughly equal; and few men would choose an obese, unattractive, and dull woman over a shapely, beautiful, sharp one.

It's like I'm managing to achieve all this success in spite of my affliction ... Would you ever put that in the headline for a male star?

This formation of man from soft clay, and of woman from a hard bone, also illustrated why man was so much more easily reconcilable than woman.

My father told us that our people had been slaves in the desert and because God had seen fit to set us free, none among us should ever own another man. It had been written that every man belonged to God and no one else. But did women belong to God or to the men of their family? They could not own property or businesses; only their husbands could have that honor.

The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: A girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something. What can she become? I asked. Why, she said, the mother of his children. But I am not the mother of anybody's children, I said, and I am something.

The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men.