EMPOWERING QUOTES FROM INSPIRING WOMEN

For 2022, the UN given theme is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”, which aims to recognise women who are working to build a more sustainable future.

International Women’s Day became mainstream after it was adopted by the United Nations in 1977. 

Every year, March 8th is celebrated as International Women’s Day around the globe. While Women’s Day traces its history to feminist movements in Europe and America in the early 1900s, the day became mainstream after it was adopted by the United Nations in 1977. 

In 1996, the UN announced “Celebrating the past, planning for the future” as the theme for Women’s Day. Since then every year a theme is given to mark the celebrations and gender rights advocacy work. For 2022, the UN given theme is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”, which aims to recognise women who are working to build a more sustainable future. 

 The values of their theme as, “A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated.” 

Interestingly, people are also symbolising this theme with the “Wakanda Forever” gesture which was taken from the 2018 movie Black Panther. The sign, that is made by crossing one’s hands in an X shape in front of one’s chest, has come to denote excellence, pride, and power. 

Women’s rights are human rights!

We are all entitled to human rights. These include the right to live free from violence and discrimination; to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; to be educated; to own property; to vote; and to earn an equal wage.

But across the globe many women and girls still face discrimination on the basis of sex and gender. Gender inequality underpins many problems which disproportionately affect women and girls, such as domestic and sexual violence, lower pay, lack of access to education, and inadequate healthcare.

For many years women’s rights movements have fought hard to address this inequality, campaigning to change laws or taking to the streets to demand their rights are respected. And new movements have flourished in the digital age, campaign such as 'Me Too' which highlights the prevalence of gender-based violence and sexual harassment.

Through research, advocacy and campaigning, Amnesty International pressures the people in power to respect women’s rights. 

Women are trailblazers who have embraced the power of their womanhood and who will inspire you to do the same.

"I want to build a community where women of all races can communicate and ... continue to support and take care of each other. I want to give women a space to feel their own strength and tell their stories. That is power." - Beyoncé

"You don't have to be pretty. You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked 'female.'" - Erin McKean

"There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish." - Michelle Obama

There's something so 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

“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.” - Meghan Markle

"Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in." - 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"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." - Maya Angelou

"Women are leaders everywhere you look—from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women, and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes." Nancy Pelosi

"Whether I am meant to or not, I challenge assumptions about women. I do make some people uncomfortable, which I'm well aware of, but that's just part of coming to grips with what I believe is still one of the most important pieces of unfinished business in human history—empowering women to be able to stand up for themselves." - Hillary Clinton

"We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored." -  Sheryl Sandberg

“My movement is my movement. When all the dust has settled on the groundbreaking-ness, I’m going to still be doing this. I’m not going to suddenly change. I’m going to still be telling my life story through music. And if that’s body-positive to you, amen. If that’s feminist to you, amen. If that’s pro-black to you, amen. Because ma’am, I’m all of those things.” - Lizzo

"We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead." - Beyoncé

"No woman should be told she can't make decisions about her own body. When women's rights are under attack, we fight back." - Kamala Harris

"Women will be hidden no more. We will not remain hidden figures. We have names. … It was woman that gave you Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was woman that gave you Malcolm X. And according to the Bible, it was a woman that gave you Jesus. Don't you ever forget it." - Janelle Monáe

"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." - Amy Schumer

"For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; we deserve lipstick, if we want it, AND free speech; we deserve to be sexual AND serious—or whatever we please. We are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution." - Naomi Wolf

"In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders." - 

Sheryl Sandberg

"It's important to teach our female youth that it's OK to say, 'Yes, I am good at this,' and you don't hold back.” - Simone Biles

"Maybe it just boils down to: I'm a woman who's really into her career, so I'm obsessed with the craft of my work. … There's a romance in that for me.” - Mitski

"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another." - 

Toni Morrison

“I don’t think about beauty. I wake up and I want to be a smarter person, that’s my focus. … I’m encouraging certainly my girls that if they can make their inside and who they are really, really stunning then everything falls together.” - Angelina Jolie

"'It is impossible for you to do it,' was the terrible verdict. 'In the first place you are a woman and would need a protector, and even if it were possible for you to travel alone you would need to carry so much baggage that it would detain you in making rapid changes. Besides you speak nothing but English, so there is no use talking about it; no one but a man can do this.'

"'Very well,' I said angrily, 'Start the man, and I'll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.'" - Nellie Bly

"I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days." - Jane Austen

"Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe you must become its soul." -  Coretta Scott King

"I'm tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay." - Madonna

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?" -

Sojourner Truth

"More and more women are realizing that only collective strength and action will allow us to be free to fight for the kind of society that meets basic human needs." - 

Roxanne Dunbar

"I hear a lot of people saying, when talking about girls' empowerment and women as well, you'll often hear people saying, 'You're helping them find their voices', I fundamentally disagree with that. Women don't need to find their voice. They need to feel empowered to use it and people need to be encouraged to listen." - Meghan Markle

"By propagating women's nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society." - 

Anuradha Ghandy

"Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn't be that women are the exception." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society." - Angela Davis

"For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action." - Audre Lorde

"A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man." - Assata Shakur

"When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?" -  Chanel Miller

"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind." -

Virginia Woolf

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man.” -

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself." -

Roxane Gay

“Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift of reason?” - Mary Wollstonecraft

“I don’t want to think about what I’m leaving. I just think about who I am every single day behind closed doors and behind cameras. And that’s what I focus on.” -

Serena Williams

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” - Virginia Woolf

“Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power." -

Gloria Steinem

“I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.” - Dolly Parton

“I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can't be both, you've been lied to.” -

Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

"I am a woman / Phenomenally / Phenomenal woman / That's me." - Maya Angelou

"Feminism is layered and its power comes from its diversity.” - Scarlett Curtis

“Behind every great woman... is another great woman." - Kate Hodges

"A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman." -  Melinda Gates

"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

"Feminism is for everybody." - bell hooks

Happy International Women's Day!