We Should All Be Feminists Quotes

“All of us - women and men - must do better.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“O problema da questão de gêneros é que ela prescreve como devemos ser em vez de reconhecer como somos. Seríamos bem mais felizes, mais livres para sermos quem realmente somos, se não tivéssemos o peso das expectativas do gênero.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word—and I don’t know if there is an English word I dislike more than this—emasculation.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“La cultura no hace a la gente. La gente hace la cultura. Si es verdad que no forma parte de nuestra cultura el hecho de que las mujeres sean seres humanos de pleno derecho, entonces podemos y debemos cambiar nuestra cultura.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“All of us - women and men - must do better.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“She didn’t want to speak up because she didn’t want to seem aggressive. She let her resentments simmer. What struck me—with her and with many other female American friends I have—is how invested they are in being “liked.” How they have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this “likable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. But”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Still, I was struck by this. Because I am female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don’t teach boys to do the same? I”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“And so girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. Who silence themselves. Who cannot say what they truly think. Who have turned pretence into an art form. I”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“teach a writing workshop in Lagos and one of the participants, a young woman, told me that a friend had told her not to listen to my “feminist talk”; otherwise she would absorb ideas that would destroy her marriage.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We police girls. We praise girls for virginity but we don't praise boys for virginity.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“they have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is somehow acceptable. We”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“(...) it is one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to feel it emotionally.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I know a family who has a son and a daughter, a year apart in age, both brilliant at school. When the boy is hungry, the parents say to the girl, ‘Go and cook Indomie noodles for your brother.’ The girl doesn’t like to cook Indomie noodles, but she is a girl and she has to. What if the parents, from the beginning, taught both children to cook them? Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have. I’ve never thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing – the ability to nourish oneself – in the hands of others.
I know a woman who has the same degree and same job as her husband. When they get back from work, she does most of the housework, which is true for many marriages, but what struck me was that whenever he changed the baby’s nappy, she said thank you to him. What if she saw it as something normal and natural, that he should help care for his child?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“And I was worried that if I looked too feminine, I would not be taken seriously. I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt, but I decided not to. I wore a very serious, very manly, and very ugly suit.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Both men and women will say: “I did it for peace in my marriage.”
When men say it, it is usually about something they should not be doing anyway. Something they say to their friends in a fondly exasperated way, something that ultimately proves to them their masculinity—“Oh, my wife said I can’t go to clubs every night, so now, for peace in my marriage, I go only on weekends.”
When women say “I did it for peace in my marriage,” it is usually because they have given up a job, a career goal, a dream.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands.
So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“He told me that people were saying my novel was feminist, and his advice to me—he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke—was that I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak-- a hard man.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be. I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas. I am girly. I am happily girly. I like high heels and trying on lipsticks.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak—a hard man. Of course, because of their historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure of proving their masculinity by material means. But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“What struck me—with her and with many other female American friends I have—is how invested they are in being “liked.” How they have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this “likable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“It is easy to say, ‘But women can just say no to all this.’ But the reality is more difficult, more complex. We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization. Even”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists