National NOW Times >> Fall 2008  >> Article

Quotable Quotes from the 2008 NOW Conference

- Mónica Alemán -
"I am putting forth . . . inter-culturality as a political process that seeks to build societies and states that are respectful of diversity and the rights of different cultures in ways that groups that have been historically excluded can be allowed to positively contribute to the building of a truly democratic state."

- Marie Cocco -
"Basically what I confronted for the whole time I've been a syndicated columnist is the quota of one. Typically if an editor is already running [one woman], they will not run another woman. . . . Let me know when you meet the first editor that says, 'Aw gee, I already have a white male, I just can't take another one.'"

- Hon. Donna Edwards -
"... I think that for so many women who run for political office and may lose that first time, you may never see them again because they don't run that second time. The lesson for me was to get up and start running again."

- Erika Falk -
"By framing women candidates as not serious, not viable, and by giving extra measure to their hair, appearance and what they wear, the press may dissuade potential women candidates from entering the political arena."

- Barbara Hillary -
"[W]hat did negative people tell me? They said 'Barbara, you'll never reach the North Pole, you are a lung cancer survivor. You'll lungs will never take it.' . . . Others told me, 'You would be eaten by polar bears.' . . . regarding polar bears: if a polar bear decides to eat me, I cannot blame him for wanting to taste some good soul food."

- Kim Gandy -
"The next president needs to make economic equality for women a priority. This includes promoting educational opportunity, workplace equality, ending job segregation, educational segregation and promoting participation in good paying careers, like the STEM careers -- science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- and making sure that we have universal high quality childcare so that we can pursue those opportunities."

- Jehmu Greene -
"How will you organize [young women]? It's not about doing everything online. You have to find this generation many times online, but it is up to NOW . . . to take them offline and get them engaged in the streets."

- Lilly Ledbetter -
"Here I am, here today, in 2008 . . . trying to get a bill passed for equal pay for equal work . . . when Title VII was passed in 1964, and Equal Pay was passed in 1963. So why are we still struggling? We should not have to do this."

- Hon. Carolyn Maloney -
"The misogyny that existed and was tolerated in our country [about Hillary Clinton]....people didn't say a word. What national leader? . . . how many of them stood up and said that this unfair, and wrong, and stop it? None!"

- Hon. Heather Mizeur -
"So often the journalists want us to only think about politics and the election in terms of personalities and platitudes. But there are real fundamental issues on how our country is going to work based on who gets elected to the White House and what decisions get made on our behalf."

- Patricia Ireland -
"What [NOW has] done is nothing short of magnificent. We have had extraordinary brilliant breakthroughs, and wonderful, literally magnificent, things that we've done together. It is such an outrageously wonderful way to live that now of course I want everyone to be an activist. I'm not just a feminist organizer, I'm a messianic."

- Carol Jenkins -
"We're 51 percent of the population and we have only 3 percent of the clout positions [in media] . . . so 97 percent of everything you know about who you are, what your country is about, and your place in the world comes from the male perspective."

- Irshad Manji -
"Being unified is not about being uniform. Unity is about working for a common goal yet feeling free to express diversity of thought in pursuit of that goal."

- Nancy Redd -
"Everything for this generation is just about why you suck as you are, why you aren't good enough, how can you become better. You see it not just in magazines or in movies or TV, but in everyday girls. They're expected to look exactly like [airbrushed images]. And what they don't know is 'exactly like that' isn't even real!"

Read and see more about the conference.