Gender Roles Quotes

“A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“It's my choice to be beautiful. It's my choice to be ugly. And it's my choice to decided what those words actually mean.”
― Virginia Petrucci

“As for the boys..."vulnerable fathers turn to time-honored defensive responses to maintain the function that father knows best' Parents, especially fathers, teach their sons to obey authority no matter what.”
― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

“Men die in battle; women die in childbirth.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen

“In the midst of these fine gentlemen with their great names and their ancient traditions of respectability, the two women sat face to face, exchanging tender glances, triumphant and supreme in the tranquil abuse of their sex, and their open contempt for the male. And the gentlemen applauded them.”
― Émile Zola, Nana

“People don’t believe women who fight back. When a man lashes out, people say he’s lost control of his temper or made a terrible mistake. When a woman does it, she’s a psychopath.”
― Amy Tintera, Listen for the Lie

“They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after was a positive event to them, and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries, still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish-–something they heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and he believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries––perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“The only feeling that a closer intimacy has created in him for his wife is that of indulgent contempt. As there is no equality between man and woman, so there can be no respect. She is a different being. He must either look up to her as superior to himself, or down upon her as inferior. When a man does the former he is more or less in love, and love to John Ingerfield is an unknown emotion. Her beauty, her charm, her social tact--even while he makes use of them for his own purposes, he despises as the weapons of a weak nature.”
― Jerome K. Jerome

“She was flabbergasted by the backward thinking of humankind. The damaging double standards that fueled gender disparity infuriated her.”
― Wiss Auguste, The Illusions of Hope

“She was a real no-nonsense girl. Just didn’t have time for any shit, you know? I’ve always admired that about her. I was so concerned with whether or not everyone liked me at that age.
And people hate that quality in a young woman, don’t they? They don’t know what to do with a girl who isn’t looking for their approval. They feel like they have to bring her down a peg.”
― Amy Tintera, Listen for the Lie

“Roughing it builds a boy's character, but only certain kinds of roughing it.”
― Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips

“I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence. I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.
"I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“Men and women are different. One is not inferior or superior, nor is one isn’t lesser or greater. Rather we are complementary. We are serving each other to complete each other. What we lack the other sex fills. Where we excel the other sex lacks.”
― George Fisher

“Society believes that every man comes out of the womb with a PhD in 'Fixing Stuff 101”
― Anubha Saxena

“Lucy, didn’t you want to be a writer once?” Keith peers at me as if I’ve disappointed him, this relative I barely know. “What ever happened to that?”
I wasn’t that good, I guess, is what I should have said. People love that sort of shit—humility and honesty, tied together to make everyone feel more comfortable after a rude question.
I smile. “Well, you know. No one wants to read a book from a murderer.”
― Amy Tintera, Listen for the Lie

“Früher war Blau die Farbe der Jungfrau Maria und galt als fein und elegant. Sie war ausschließlich Mädchen vorbehalten. Jungs hingegen waren über viele Jahrhunderte gerne in Rosa gesehen. Die Signalfarbe Rot galt in vielen Kulturen als die Farbe der Stärke und "das kleine Rot" Rosa galt als Jungsfarbe. Der Wandel kam erst im 20. Jahrhundert, ...”
― Saskia Michalski, Lieben und lieben lassen: Gefühle passen in keine Schublade

“Barbie"
Through my many and long travels
I’ve come across many who read books
On planes, buses, and on trains…
Over the years, three titles caught my attention
of books in the hands of women
who either looked like or tried to look like the Barbie doll…
I don’t remember the exact titles of these books,
But I remember that one of them was something along the lines of
“how keep your husband or preserve your marriage.”
The other was something about “signs that he is cheating on you.”
And the third was something on how to get rid of him and move on!
It was as if these titles summarized the lifecycle of every woman
who lets herself to play the role of a Barbie…
And I often wondered if reading books on
“How to stop playing the Barbie role” in love and life
is not just enough to solve all the problems
the other three books are claiming to address…


[Original poem published in Arabic on May 16, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako

“Oh sure, because my chromosomes totally dictate my ability to park a car.”
― Anubha Saxena

“She was running for all those ordinary, fragile souls whose bodies had been shamed like hers. In them, she had found herself. And so she ran for them, for those who, like her, had found comfort only in cut-out posters of clownfish. Now they had a different poster they could dream about: an athlete, an international star, her body neither fully boy nor fully girl, but simply the body of Johanna Venter, Girl Wonder.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“I was beginning to learn the gendered rules for behavior. My parents did not want a steely-eyed warrior for a daughter- they wanted someone obedient and kind. She didn't have to be a quivering sack of hysteria, but she should at least crack at FBI-interrogator levels. I would have to do better. I would try to be softer.”
― Heather Gay, Bad Mormon: A Memoir

“for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of family, and the difference citation of occupation are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of family, and the differentiation of occupation are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“He was so used to men's usage
and had so rejected women's ways
that little was lacking for him to be a man.
Whatever one could see was certainly male!
But there's more to this than meets the eye -
the he's a she beneath the clothes.”
― Heldris de Cornualles, Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance

“I was trying to make life easy for myself,
but I have a mouth too hard for kisses,
and arms too rough for embraces.
One could easily make a fool of me
in any game played under the covers,
for I'm a young man, not a girl.”
― Heldris de Cornualles, Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance

“I suppose I've always done my share of crying, especially when there's no other way to contain my feelings. I know that men ain't supposed to cry, but I think that's wrong. Crying's always been a way for me to get things out which are buried deep, deep down. When I sing, I often cry. Crying is feeling, and feeling is being human.”
― Ray Charles

“Muchas veces he dudado -dijo Catherine con aire pensativo- de que la mujer sepa escribir cartas mejor que el hombre. En mi opinión, no es en este terreno donde debemos buscar nuestras superioridad”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The first of these new impulses is the stronger: if the roles of man and woman are shuffled, then the cards must immediately be dealt again, the order tampered with must be restored, for outside it a man no longer knows who he is or what is expected of him. That sword is not a woman’s attribute, it is a usurpation. The knight would never take advantage of an adversary of his own sex, surprising him unarmed, and still less would he steal from him secretly, but now he crawls among the bushes, approaches the hanging weapons, grasps the sword with a furtive hand, takes it from the tree, and runs off. “War between man and woman has no rules, no loyalty,” he thinks, and he does not yet know, to his misfortune, how right he is.”
― Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies

“The sorry truth is that, whatever one's natural inclination and personality type, when it comes to an abysmally unpleasant chore, it is the woman and not the man who ends up taking care of it in 99 per cent of cases.”
― Sophie Hannah, A Game for All the Family

“Nature favoured the male and the female coming together as a lasting and stable family unit and bringing up children in such a way because males and females form a complementary pair. Both the male and female are different, physically and mentally, both bringing different skills and attributes to the relationship. When a male and female come together they create a union that is more rounded and balanced than either individual, and ultimately a couple can be seen as more than the sum of its parts.”
― Mark Collett, The Fall of Western Man

“If the male can be described as the 'head of the house', the female could easily be described as the 'heart of the home'. The loving and motherly female was as much a central component of Western society and the nuclear family as the male, and her role as the compassionate, supportive, nurturing and loving influence on the child is as important as the discipline, the order and the authority imparted by the male.”
― Mark Collett, The Fall of Western Man