Alan Alda and his wife Arlene are two of the most life-affirming people I've ever met. He espoused equal rights for women while producing, writing, acting in and directing 'M*A*S*H'; he used to commute between the set and home because he didn't want ...
It's an amusing idea to some, this feminism thing - this audacious notion that women should be able to move through the world as freely, and enjoy the same inalienable rights and bodily autonomy, as men. At least, that's the impression given when fem...
I first saw 'The Dinner Party' in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angeli...
For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now ap...
Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy th...
'Wild Swans' showed me there are Chinese traditions that still affect my life. For example, it's not that women are inferior, exactly, but my dad and my brother are the most important men in my life and I would do anything for them. I feel like I sho...
When my mom ran for the Senate, my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, 'Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?'
I have six brothers and one sister, and I was an ice hockey player when I was younger. I think my dad thought I was going to be in the women's league for ice hockey. But, I totally fell in love with drama in grade school, and I asked my mom if I coul...
What do women do when they get together? We sit around and talk! Men, not so much. My theory is that this difference is genetic and dates back to the hunter-gatherer societies, when the men had to be quiet as they hunted, lest they scare away the bis...
We face a choice this election. President Obama is fighting for changes that grow the economy from the middle out and help all Americans succeed - jobs, education, health reform, the DREAM Act, equal pay for women. He is moving us forward with opport...
Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually ...
We don't know how Cleopatra spent her days, but we do know how other Hellenistic monarchs spent their days. There has been a great amount of scholarship in the last 30 years about education in the Hellenistic world and women in the Hellenistic world....
I think women's wrestling has had a hard time because of GLOW. When GLOW came out, it looked like somebody was ripping off the male industry. Everybody made fun of it. WOW is a great product. It's produced right. It's got a little story line, and it'...
I love how the men stand around cooking the barbie while the women have done all the work beforehand doing the marinade and making the salads and then everybody says, 'what a great barbie' to the guy cooking. A barbecue is just the ultimate blokes' p...
I have worked with a lot of really great women directors: Ana Kokkinos; Cate Shortland, who just recently directed a film called 'Lore;' another director, Rachel Perkins - she's an Aboriginal director, and I've worked with her three times now, and sh...
Generally speaking, I don't think people know a great deal about the Viking culture, apart from the label that is usually attached to them, either pillagers or deviants who came and brought back loot to Norway. It was an incredibly sophisticated, com...
In the '60s, when I was growing up, one of the great elements of American culture was the protest song. There were songs about the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, the antiwar movement. It wasn't just Bob Dylan, it was everybody at...
I don't understand executives that pit women against each other, the fact that they brought in 'Body of Proof,' Dana Delaney is a friend of mine, and the two of us were just rolling our eyes, it's like, of course, you finally have two great female le...
Divorce is challenging. When your kids go through things, it's tough. But it's no different for any other woman. And I have great compassion for single moms. It's lousy out there for them. I had the ability to work. I have always been the provider an...
People will say, 'I really don't like romance,' or, 'I don't read it - at all!' So how do they know? Weirdly, I think that the 'Fifty Shades of Grey' phenomenon introduced women to romance who would never have read it. And that means that they then g...
The bottom line is, until we're helping people to stop smoking, screening for breast cancer, giving Pap smears, giving prenatal care to pregnant women, we should not go into publicly paying for the artificial heart, which will benefit at great cost o...
