This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Too many women in too many countries speak the same language, of silence.
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
I dust a whole shelf of books on pregnancy, breastfeeding, the first six months, the first year, the first two years — and I wonder what the child care-deprived Maddy makes of all this. Maybe there's been some secret division of the world's women into breeders and drones, and those at the maid level are no longer supposed to be reproducing at all. Maybe this is why our office manager, Tammy, who was once a maid herself, wears inch-long fake nails and tarty little outfits — to show she's advanced to the breeder caste and can't be sent out to clean anymore.
Deborah Tannen, fully Deborah Frances Tannen
It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship. I think it's because women really are struggling, because it's a very important relationship in your life.
Important | Relationship | Think |
In the last few years, we've seen major breakthroughs in research and effectiveness of contraceptives. For example, Plan B is a new emergency contraceptive that can prevent a pregnancy after another contraceptive has failed or after unprotected sex. I fought for years to get Plan B on the market, so that fewer women will face the choice of abortion. It is now available for over-the-counter use by adult women. I have proposed Prevention First, a bill that focuses on prevention of unwanted pregnancies through comprehensive education, emphasizing responsible decision-making and expanded access to contraception. With these efforts, it's my hope that the abortion rate will fall further.
It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape.
Rights |
From my own personal experience, I have been in countries that have taken very different views about this profoundly challenging question [of abortion]. I went to China in 1995 and spoke out against the Chinese government’s one child policy, which led to forced abortions and forced sterilization because I believed that we needed to bear witness against what was an intrusive, abusive, dehumanizing effort to dictate how women and men would proceed with respect to the children they wished to have. And then shortly after that, I was in Romania and there I met women who had been subjected to the Communist regime of the 1970s and ‘80s where they were essentially forced to bear as many children as possible for the good of the state. And where abortion was criminalized and women were literally forced to have physical exams and followed by the secret police and so many children were abandoned and left to the orphanages that, unfortunately, led to an AIDS epidemic.
Children | Effort | Good | Men | Question | Respect | Witness | Respect | Child |
There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.
Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.
When I defend my pro-choice position in the debate over abortion in our country, I frequently refer to Romania, where pregnancy could be monitored on behalf of the state, and to China, where it could be forcibly terminated. One reason I continue to oppose efforts to criminalize abortion is that I do not believe any government should have the power to dictate, through law or police action, a woman’s most personal decision. [The Romanian dictatorship in the 1980s] banned birth control and abortion, insisting that women bear children for the sake of the state. Women told me how they had been carted from their workplace once a month to be examined by government doctors whose task was to make sure they weren’t using contraceptives or aborting pregnancies. I could not imagine a more humiliating experience. In Romania and elsewhere, many children were born unwanted or into families that could not afford to care for them. They became wards of the state, warehoused in orphanages.
Birth | Care | Children | Control | Government | Law | Position | Power | Reason | Government |
Like it or not, women are always subject to criticism if they show too much feeling in public.
Mother Teresa had just delivered a speech against abortion, and she wanted to talk to me. Mother Teresa was unerringly direct. She disagreed with my views on a woman's right to choose and told me so. Over the years, she sent me dozens of notes and messages with the same gentle entreaty. Mother Teresa never lectured or scolded me; her admonitions were always loving and heartfelt. I had the greatest respect for her opposition to abortion, but I believe that it is dangerous to give any state the power to enforce criminal penalties against women and doctors. I consider that a slippery slope to state control in China and Communist Romania. I also disagreed with her opposition--and that of the Catholic Church--to birth control. However, I support the right of people of faith to speak out against abortion and try to dissuade women, without coercion or criminalization, from choosing abortion instead of adoption. Mother Teresa and I found much common ground in many other areas including the importance of adoption.
Birth | Coercion | Control | Faith | Mother | Opposition | People | Power | Respect | Right | Speech | Respect |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.
Many women have told me they remember where they were when they read the book, and how they felt suddenly that what they really thought or felt about things made sense.
In many parts of the world, women and girls are especially vulnerable to HIV/AIDS because they lack control over most aspects of their life. Cultural expectations and gender roles expose women and girls to violence, sexual exploitation and far greater risk for infection.
Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behavior and lowers corruption.
Behavior |
While men represent powerful activity as assertion and aggression, women in contrast portray acts of nurturance as acts of strength.
We don’t have enough support for maternal leave and the kinds of things that some of the European countries do. So we still make it hard on women to go into the work force and feel that they can be good at work but then doing the most important job, which is raising your children in a responsible and positive way.
We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.
Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world.
Control | Example | Focus | Health | Mystery | Religion | Rights |