Women, You Say?

They talk about a woman's sphere,
As though it had a limit.
There's not a place in earth or heaven,
There's not a task to mankind given ...
Without a woman in it. Kate Field

In Democratic Republic of Congo, in Sudan and Somalia women and girls are gang-raped as an act of war.

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful,or intelligent but because they are themselves. Amiel

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been named to the UN Commission on the Status of women.

A compliment for a woman in love is like a sudden warmth falling around her - it is intoxication - it is like strong wine, one grows drunk with it. Henry Bernstein

In Iran women can be charged with threatening "national security", "propaganda against the state", and "membership" in human rights organizations and that is a seriously punishable offence. Those women can be incarcerated for a very long time. In prison they can be tortured and raped. They will be denied access to a lawyer. They will be unable to talk with family members even on a telephone. Their voices will be silenced.

Never will you find a woman who spares the man who loves her; for though she be herself aflame, she delights to torment him. Juvenal

In Iran women can be beaten for not wearing a hijab.

Women hate revolutions and revolutionists. They like men who are docile, and well-regarded at the bank, and never late at meals. H.L. Mencken

Iranian women like Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani are sentenced to death by stoning for allegedly committing adultery.

Whether they give or refuse, it delights women to have been asked. Ovid

A Dutch-Iranian woman, Zahra Bahrami, was arrested for taking part in post-election demonstrations in 2009. Authorities hanged Zahra without warning, despite appeals from Dutch authorities and the European Union.

Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sun puff'd up with winds
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire? William Shakespeare

Women now outnumber men on university campuses, they have lower high-school dropout rates. Last year women with similar degrees were earning 68.3% of what their male counterparts earned: Statistics Canada.

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her guilt away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her love,
And wring his bosom, is - to die. Goldsmith

In China, with its one-child policy, and in India, with its traditional customary dowry system, girls babies are not as highly regarded as boy babies. Abortion and infanticide are commonly used to balance the equation in favour of boys.

The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts. Oscar Wilde

In many Islamic societies women and girls are murdered in family "honour killing" if they are suspected of having brought shame to the family or the clan or the tribe by consorting with an unrelated male in public, or become the victim of a rape.

I hate a woman who is forever poring over the Grammar of Palaemon, who observes all the rules and laws of language, who quotes from ancient poets that I never heard of, and corrects her unlettered friends for slips of speech that no man need trouble about: let husbands at least be permitted to make slips in grammar! Juvenal

If a Muslim girl or woman is raped she must find male witnesses to the event, to testify on her behalf, otherwise she is considered to have been at fault in tempting the man beyond his capacity to resist.

For a woman glory can only be a splendid mourning for lost happiness. Madame de Stael

Today, in 67 of 120 nations around the world, women earn more degrees than men. Women still earn less money than men; unmarried women without children out-earn their male counterparts in 147 of the largest 150 American cities.

Love and grief and motherhood,
Fame and mirth and scorn -
These are all shall befall
Any woman born. Margaret Widdemer

Women in Western societies who work outside the home still perform far more hours of unpaid domestic work than do their husbands and partners.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The only nourishment I get. Elinor Wylie

In a recent rape case in Canada the presiding judge claimed that "sex was in the air", because the woman who was raped was wearing brief and revealing clothing, thus inviting her own rape.

In the beginning, said a Persian poet - Allah took a rose, a lily, a dove, a serpent, a little honey, a Dead Sea apple, and a handful of clay. When he looked at the amalgam - it was a woman. William Sharp

In most societies a large segment of the poor are comprised of single mothers and their children.

The life of woman is full of woe,
Toiling on and on and on,
With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
And silent lips, and in the soul
The secret longings that arise,
Which this world never satisfies!
Some more, some less, but of the whole
Not one quite happy, no, not one! Longfellow

Young women on college and university campuses report inappropriate touching, suggestion, physical violence and rape at an alarming rate.

In every marriage two things are allowed,
A wife in wedding-sheets and in a shroud;
How can a marriage state then be accurst,
Since the last day's as happy as the first? Unknown

In North-East Africa, the Near East and Southeast Asia girls are routinely subjected to female genital mutilation (female circumcision; female genital mutilation; clitoridectomy, labiaplasty, vaginoplasty).

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild...
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four ....
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all:
They cried - "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!" Keats

The glass ceiling has long been shattered; women are now represented as CEOs, as heads of state, an active and valuable part of many countries' legislative bodies.

The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness...
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The virgin fancies of the heart. Whittier

Women physicians and surgeons are now increasingly offering their professional services, and do so charging less on average than their male counterparts.

Women may be whole oceans deeper than we are, but they are also a whole paradise better.
She may have got us out of Eden, but as a compensation she makes the earth very pleasant. John Oliver Hobbes

If it was woman who put man out of Paradise, it is still woman, and woman only, who can lead him back. Elbert Hubbard