Legislative proposals that would enable an employer to determine whether or not a woman's insurance would cover the cost of birth control strikes women as particularly bizarre. Is the boss going to take care of the children that are conceived accidentally? Stop treating us like children. Women are grown ups.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the absurdity of allowing employers control over women's reproductive health decisions.
Madeleine M. Kunin expresses concern over legislative proposals that would enable employers to dictate whether women's insurance covers birth control. She emphasizes the absurdity of this situation by questioning why employers should have such authority, suggesting that it infantilizes women and disregards their autonomy and responsibility as adults. The quote calls for recognizing women as capable individuals who should make their own health decisions without external imposition.
In practice
This quote can be used in a women's rights advocacy speech to highlight the importance of bodily autonomy.
It's time for male leaders to not only ask for binders of qualified women, but to re-write the definition of 'qualified.' The best man for the job, may in fact, be a woman, whose biography is not traditional, but is rich with experiences and skills that are not necessarily learned either in school or on the job.
It's time for women to wake up, to use the power of the vote, to honor the suffragists who chained themselves to the White House fence so that women could vote.
When women and men can shed an equal quantity of tears in public, that's when we'll have equal power.
Any smart executive understands that to find the best talent she has to explore new territory that lies beyond familiar geography. That applies not only to gender, but also to race, religion, background and age.
What works for a man, still does not work for a woman - both in terms of how they see themselves and how we see them.
What some men don't understand is that by opposing policies to reduce violence, promote equal pay and universal healthcare and voting to limit access to contraception and legal abortion, they are relegating women to another century, a time when men ruled exclusively and women were considered property and had to be guided by a firm masculine hand.
People behave more on the basis of how they feel than how they think; unless there are good feelings between people, it is almost impossible to reason intelligently.
It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn't stand seeing them hurt like this.
For listening to the stories of others ... is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
Ruth hadn't talked to my sister since before my death, and then it was only to excuse herself in the hallway at school. But she'd seen Lindsey walking home with Samuel and seen her smile with him. She watched as my sister said yes to pancakes and no to everything else. She had tried to imagine herself being my sister as she had spent time imagining being me.
The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.
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