Women

"In Japan, Dr. Tenrei Ota, born in 1900, began pioneering intrauterine contraception in the 1930s. Once his country had joined the Axis and contraception was forbidden, Dr Ota became a political target, changed his name and finally went into hiding. As a consequence, knowledge of the Ota Ring would reach the Western world only after the end of World War II. Dr Ota had initiated his experiments in intrauterine contraception by inserting objects made from a great variety of materials and shapes, from gold spheres to coils of human hair. Since the rudimentary IUDs were expelled too easily, he decided, in 1933, to modify the Gräfenberg Ring (of which he had heard but never seen). He stiffened the Silver Ring by providing it with a central disc attached to the outer ring by spokes. Dr Ota called his silver or gold IUD the 'Precea Ring', ‘precea' being Anglo-Japanese for 'pressure'. The Pressure Ring was to remain popular in Japan well into the 1980s. Less well-known is that Dr Ota may have been the first physician to devise a plastic IUD. However, the inferior quality of plastic material put at his disposal ruined the idea."

"In the 1940s, alarm about the worlds burgeoning population, and the naive belief that the phenomenon could be curbed by the introduction of improved contraceptive methods, led to extensive research in the USA. The results of these endeavors were the pill and the plastic IUD. Plastic devices solved the problem inherent in the insertion and retrieval of the Rings of Gräfenberg and Ota. Made of thermoplastics, the new IUDs were given a memory of their original shape, could be straightened to fit inside a narrow straw-type inserter tube and regained their initial contour after introduction into the uterus. The notion that intrauterine contraception is safe and effective was proven in the early 1960s by the medical statistician Dr Christopher Tietze (1908-84), a Jewish emigrant to the USA, and a great admirer of Gräfenberg (Figure 2). Having collected and analyzed clinical results obtained with the Gräfenberg and Ota Rings, Dr Tietze organized the first international symposium on intrauterine contraception in New York City in 1962, sponsored by the Population Council. At the conference, the pioneers of the plastic devices, Dr Margulies and Dr Lippes, were invited to demonstrate their invention and report preliminary clinical results."

"Dr J. Lippes (Figure 3) is an example of the thoroughbred American (born at Buffalo, NY in 1925), who since 1957 has been Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the State University of New York at Buffalo. Although he had become acquainted with the Gräfenberg Ring in 1952, he had not dared to use it for fear of being accused of malpractice. Seven years later, two papers on intrauterine contraception appeared, both in English. The first, written by the Japanese gynecologist Ishihama and published in the Yokohama Medical Journal, gave an enthusiastic clinical assessment of the Ota Ring. In the second paper, Dr W. Oppenheimer of Jerusalem overviewed the results of three decades of personal experience with the modified Silk Ring. The fact that the latter paper had been accepted by the authoritative American journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology was perceived by Dr Lippes as a sign that intrauterine contraception had become a discussable subject in his country. That same year he started inserting Silk and Presea Rings under the auspices of the Buffalo PIanned Parenthood Center. The former device being too flexible, and the latter too stiff, Dr Lippes decided to remove the spokes from the Ota Ring and affix a piece of monofilament nylon to the IUD to facilitate removal and to allow the wearer to check that the device was still present. However, the modified Ring tended to rotate in utero and to wind the marker thread into the cavity, eliminating its intended uses. Therefore, to prevent IUD rotation, a radical change of shape was needed. After many experiments, the double-S Loop (the Lippes Loop) emerged in 1961. Due to its particular shape (trapezoid), the Lippes Loop fits the (relaxed uterine cavity snugly. The Lippes Loop was to become extremely popular and, of all first-generation IUDs, had the greatest worldwide impact."

"In fact, Dr Lippes had a predecessor in this field; Dr Lazar C. Margulies (Figure 4). Dr Margulies was born in Galicia (now part of Poland) in 1895. As a medical student, he had served in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. Following the armistice, he graduated from the University of Vienna in 1921, where he specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. He started practising in Vienna, but, expelled from the hospital, this Jewish gynecologist emigrated to the USA in 1941. In New York City he joined the staff of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in 1954 and was promoted to Associate Professor 9 years later. Dr Margulies died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1982. His Chief at Mount Sinai, Dr Alan Guttmacher, who had opposed intrauterine contraception during Gräfenberg's life (Gräfenberg himself had practised at Mount Sinai for a decade and a ha1f) encouraged Dr Margulies to attempt to improve the Silver Ring. Most certainly, Guttmacher's change of mind was prompted by the alarm over the world's demographic surge, and was reinforced by the 1959 IUD papers from Israel and Japan. Gambling on the use of thermoplastics, Dr Margulies conceived his famous spiral-shaped IUD in 1960, the Perma-Spiral, marketed by the Ortho Pharmaceutical Company as Gynecoil. To insert the Margulies Spiral, the unwound device was introduced into a thin plastic tube and expelled with a plastic plunger. Dr Lippes later borrowed this technique for the insertion of his Loop IUD."

"In subsequent years, resourceful investigators produced scores of originally (and sometimes peculiarly) shaped plastic IUDs. One of these was the notorious Dalkon Shield fitted by the inventor (Dr H.J. Davis, 1970) with a soft sheath filled with hundreds of nylon filaments instead of the usual stiff monofilament polyethylene thread. Serious, and even lethal, infections were observed, and it was claimed that the tailpiece of the Shield IUD acted as a wick conveying bacteria from the vagina upward into the uterine cavity. The thousands of lawsuits which followed discredited the inventor of the Dalkon Shield, caused financial ruin to the producer ( A.H. Robbins Corporation) and had a deleterious effect on the practice of intrauterine contraception."

"Because the first intrauterine contraceptive device proposed by Dr Richard Richter in 1909 was ignored, the Silver Ring of Dr Ernst Gräfenberg (1928) is currently labeled as the prototype of modern IUD generations. The Ring of Gräfenberg, however, was proscribed in the 1930s, and, although the basis for the condemnation was more political than scientific, three decades had passed before the rebirth and general acceptance of intrauterine contraception. The development of the plastic IUDs, announced by Dr Lazar Margulies and Dr Jack Lippes in 1960-61, solved the insertion problem of metallic IUDs, but did not eliminate the main side-effects, that is, bleeding and pain. In 1969, the first copper-bearing device was introduced by Dr Jaime Zipper and Dr Howard Tatum. The metallic contraceptive adjuvant, though allowing reduction of the platform size, did not solve the menorrhagia problem. This was achieved by Dr Tapani Luukkainen thanks to the invention of the gestagen- releasing IUD (Ng Nova-T) in 1977. The final step in IUD engineering was the invention of the GyneFix, a flexible, frameless copper-bearing IUD anchored permanently to the uterine tissues, which the inventor (Dr Dirk Wildemeersch) calls an intrauterine contraceptive implant or IUCI."

"Over the last couple of decades a reduction of estrogen by at least 80% in combined oral contraceptives (OCs) and much research have resulted in effective and safe contraception. We still do not know longterm effects of OCs however. OCs may protect against endometrial and ovarian cancer. A link between current OC use and liver cancer exists in areas where liver cancer is rare. An association between OC use and cervical cancer disappears when researchers control for sexual activity and barrier method use. Some research shows OC use increases the risk of breast cancer, while other research does not. There does appear to be an increased risk of breast cancer developing in women younger than 46 years of age and who have used OCs for at least 10 years. Women who have a preexisting cardiovascular condition and/or smoke should not use OCs. OC progestogens may impair glucose metabolism in healthy women, but just for 6 months. Women with diabetes mellitus can use OCs, but may need to increase insulin intake. OCs can cause hypertension in 4-5% of healthy women and worsen hypertension in about 9-16% of hypertensive women. Progestogen-only OCs have fewer systemic side effects than combined OCs, but often cause menstrual changes. Their long term effects are not yet known. Injectables containing a progestogen cause few, if any, adverse effects. The subdermal implant, Norplant, tends to cause menstrual disturbances, but is safe and effective. Progestogen - only vaginal rings are as effective as progestogen-only OCs, but menstrual irregularities are common. Failure rates for combined vaginal rings match those of combined OCs. Long-term effects of vaginal rings are not known. Postcoital contraception does not cause serious side effects, but may cause vomiting and menstrual irregularities. A levonorgestrel-releasing IUD is effective and reduces menstrual blood loss, sometimes resulting in amenorrhea. Hormonal injections in men are unlikely in the near future."

"In the early 20th century, Margaret Sanger became one of the most avid proponents of contraception in the United States. By 1950, she and Katharine McCormick had contracted with biologist Gregory Pincus to develop an effective birth control pill. A collaborative effort by Pincus and other researchers led to trials of the pill in Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Mexico between 1956 and 1957, which pro-vided the basis for an application to the Food and Drug Administration for approval of the first oral contraceptive."

"The large influx of poor immigrants and advocacy by women's rights groups provided the impetus for the birth control movement of the early 1900s. The subsequent development of the oral contraceptive pill gave women, for the first time, the ability to control their fertility."

"In 1961, when the pill was introduced to Britain, women pushed their, often reluctant, doctors to give them the drug. By the late 1960s, young women were talking about a revolution in women’s sexual attitudes, but since then the suggestion that the pill just meant women couldn’t say no has been widely repeated, alongside negative assessments of the ‘sexual revolution’. As early as the 1880s, there had been suggestions that fear of pregnancy gave wives an excuse for denying their husbands their conjugal right of sexual intercourse. By the early 1990s, over 80 per cent of British women of reproductive age since the early 1960s had taken the pill."

"[T]he pill did produce a situation in which these pre-existing social conditions led to a new twist on male sexual exploitation of young single women in the 1960s. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the family, the Church, and later schools had attempted to supervise and control unmarried women’s sexual behavior. In this social setting women might have had to struggle against persuasive male arguments and persistent groping but they had the entire weight of society, backed up by the ulti-mate sanction of pregnancy, supporting them if they did not wish to have intercourse. In the 1960s the arrival of the pill meant that for the first time women could have confidence that they would not get pregnant. There is a new sense of excitement and possibilities present in many accounts by heterosexual women who were young and single at this time. In choosing to reject the control of their sexual be-haviour they saw themselves as rejecting control over their lives as a whole However, abandoning the traditional moral position left many confused, with no substantial arguments against casual or dishonest male sexual exploitation. By the early 1970s, men assumed fashionable young women were on the pill and statistics show that well over half actually were."

"Years of disappointment had taught Pincus that it wasn’t always the science that determined an experiment’s success; it was often the forces surrounding the science, including public sentiment. Now that Pincus had settled roughly on the hormone progesterone as the key to his pill, he needed to build the team to do the scientific work, forge alliances with manufacturers, conduct his trials, and, if all went well, spread the news of the coming invention so that it might have a chance at acceptance. He knew that his progestins (synthetic forms of progesterone) stopped ovulation in rabbits and rats. The next step was to test them on women. And to do that, he would have to add a player to his team—a doctor who could reassure patients they were safe and would convey to the drug companies supplying the drugs that no one would be harmed. There had never been a medicine made for healthy people before—and certainly not one that would be taken every day. The risks were enormous. Pincus settled on a physician named John Rock, a gynecologist respected by his peers and adored by his patients. Rock looked like a family physician from central casting in Hollywood: tall, slender, and silver-haired, with a gentle smile and a calm, deliberate manner. Even his name connoted strength, solidity, and reliability. Rock had one more thing going for him: He was Catholic."

"The rapid increase in the world population makes it mandatory to develop new contraceptive methods. Disseminating reversible inexpensive and practical hormonal methods to developing countries is a target of many international agencies and funds."

"In 1965, a brand called Oracon became the first to include placebo pills in its packaging. Oracon's most documented motivation behind the first placebo pills was to help women ensure that they were taking their pills correctly: Inactive pills meant that women now took a pill every single day, thus putting them on a more routine schedule and making it easier to notice if they'd missed one. Of course, the pill's engineers could have just as easily added an extra week of active pills so that women were still taking one a day. That, however, would have meant that women no longer bled once a month, and the 60s weren't quite ready for that. This formula—three weeks of hormonal pills, followed by one withdrawal week, complete with the requisite bleeding—remained unchanged for over 40 years. Then, in 2003, the drug company Barr released Seasonale. This was the first oral contraceptive to give women the option of foregoing monthly withdrawal bleeding; it contained 84 hormone pills and seven placebo pills. Women using this method would ex-perience withdrawal bleeding just four times a year—or once per season, as the drug name intimated. Four years later, the FDA approved Lybrel, the first oral contraceptive to offer continuous active pills with no breaks for withdrawal bleeding whatsoever."

"Today, the science is more settled, though there hasn't been a long-term study on the continuous use of oral contraceptives yet. But based on data from the long-term use of non-extended cycle birth control pills, which are chemically the same as extended cycle contraceptives, gy-necologists have largely reached the conclusion that the practice is safe. "At this point, I can't think of any OB/GYNs that would have a problem with [extended cycle oral contraception]," says Dr. Lauren Naliboff, a fellow at the American Con-gress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. A study by the Cochrane organization found that women on extended cycle pills "fared better in terms of headaches, genital irritation, tiredness, bloating, and menstrual pain" than those on pills with monthly bleeding. A peer-reviewed article by Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica acknowledged that long-term studies are lacking, but ultimately concluded that continuous use oral contraceptives showed no unique side effects beyond increased spotting, and still resulted in less "bleeding days" than non-continuous birth control pills. Philosophical and scientific debates aside, perhaps the largest barrier between women and their right to decide whether or not they want to bleed is a lack of information. Many women are una-ware that consistently skipping withdrawal bleeding is an option, let alone that extended cycle pills ex-ist, or that menstrual suppression can also be accomplished with hormonal IUDs, NuvaRing, birth control injections, and contraceptive patches."

"The invention of the pill was one of the most significant advancements in the fight for reproductive agency; it allowed us, as a society, to dramatically reconceptualize sexuality and gender relations. At the same time, our relationship to this groundbreaking medical technology has been shaped and con-strained by our own conceptions of what's "natural" and what defines a woman. Similar reproductive and sexually liberating advancements that target men—Viagra, for instance—have not led to similar debates on what it means to be a man, or to have an "unnatural" hard-on. And while Viagra is covered by insurance, Dr. Naliboff says that most insurance companies do not cover extended cycle birth control to this day, even in cases where patients are on the pill for medical issues like primary ovarian insufficiency or endometriosis. The discrepancy in education and affordable access is telling: The normalization of placebo pills and subsequent withdrawal bleeding means that even in 2017, many women do not know that extended cycle pills exist, let alone that menstrual suppression is a safe option. Combined with the fact that the percentage of schools teaching students about contraception has declined drastically since 2000, this means that many women are likely to stay in the dark about their options when it comes to choosing whether or not they want to bleed once a month."

"What Pike discovered in Japan led him to think about the Pill, because a tablet that suppressed ovulation—and the monthly tides of estrogen and progestin that come with it—obviously had the potential to be a powerful anti-breast-cancer drug. But the breast was a little different from the reproductive organs. Progestin prevented ovarian cancer because it suppressed ovulation. It was good for preventing endometrial cancer because it countered the stimulating effects of estrogen. But in breast cells, Pike believed, progestin wasn’t the solution; it was one of the hormones that caused cell division. This is one explanation for why, after years of studying the Pill, researchers have concluded that it has no effect one way or the other on breast cancer: whatever beneficial effect results from what the Pill does is cancelled out by how it does it. John Rock touted the fact that the Pill used progestin, because progestin was the body’s own contraceptive. But Pike saw nothing “natural” about subjecting the breast to that heavy a dose of progestin. In his view, the amount of progestin and estrogen needed to make an effective contraceptive was much greater than the amount needed to keep the reproductive system healthy—and that excess was unnecessarily raising the risk of breast cancer. A truly natural Pill might be one that found a way to suppress ovulation without using progestin. Throughout the nineteen-eighties, Pike recalls, this was his obsession. “We were all trying to work out how the hell we could fix the Pill. We thought about it day and night.”"

"Today, a growing movement of reproductive specialists has begun to campaign loudly against the standard twenty-eight-day pill regimen. The drug company Organon has come out with a new oral contraceptive, called Mircette, that cuts the seven-day placebo interval to two days. Patricia Sulak, a medical researcher at Texas A. & M. University, has shown that most women can probably stay on the Pill, straight through, for six to twelve weeks before they experience breakthrough bleeding or spot-ting. More recently, Sulak has documented precisely what the cost of the Pill’s monthly “off” week is. In a paper in the February issue of the journal ‘’Obstetrics and Gyne-cology’’, she and her colleagues documented something that will come as no surprise to most women on the Pill: during the placebo week, the number of users experiencing pelvic pain, bloating, and swelling more than triples, breast tenderness more than doubles, and headaches increase by almost fifty per cent. In other words, some women on the Pill continue to experience the kinds of side effects associated with normal menstruation. Sulak’s paper is a short, dry, academic work, of the sort intended for a narrow professional audience. But it is impossible to read it without being struck by the consequences of John Rock’s desire to please his church. In the past forty years, millions of women around the world have been given the Pill in such a way as to maximize their pain and suffering. And to what end? To pretend that the Pill was no more than a pharmaceutical version of the rhythm method?"

"In the 1960s, manufacturers of the new birth-control pill imagined their ideal user as feminine, maternal and forgetful. She wanted discretion. She was married. And she wanted visible proof that her monthly cycle was normal and that she wasn’t pregnant. In 2019, the user of the pill is perceived as an altogether different person. She’s unwed, probably would prefer to skip her period and is more forthright about when it’s that time of the month. As such, many birth-control brands now come in brightly colored rectangular packs that make no effort to be concealed. But one part of the equation remains: the week of placebo pills, in which hormones are abruptly withdrawn and a woman experiences what looks and feels a lot like her regular period — blood, cramps and all — but isn’t. Physicians have widely described this pseudoperiod as medically unnecessary. So why do millions still endure it? That’s largely the legacy of two men: John Rock and David Wagner."

"In 1961, Wagner had concerns that his wife, Doris, wouldn’t reliably take her new birth-control pills, which came in a glass bottle with a complex set of instructions. She was to begin taking a five-milligram tablet on the fifth day of her period, continue taking one a day for 20 days, then take five days off, at which point her bleeding would start. “I was constantly asking her whether she had taken ‘the pill,’ and this led to some irritation and a marital row or two,” he later recalled. So Wagner, a product engineer for Illinois Tool Works, came up with a solution: a pill dispenser in the shape of a round plastic disc, which could be rotated to reveal the dose you were to take on any given day. It held 20 pills, plus a week’s worth of pill-size dimples that indicated the off week. His jerry-built design — he fashioned it out of a child’s toy, sheets of clear plastic and double-sided tape — was quickly picked up by Ortho Pharmaceuticals, and in 1963, the company began selling the pill in a Dialpak, a round foil blister pack with pills labeled with the days of the week. “The package that remembers for her,” the company advertised in 1964. “Easy for you to explain ... for her to use,” another ad promised."

"As more companies bought into the idea, the week of placebo pills was here to stay. Doctors liked that they made explaining the instructions to women easy. Women liked having one fewer thing to remember about their birth control. Few questioned why women on the pill should be having a “period” at all. Today there are a small handful of options that reduce or eliminate monthly bleeding: Seasonale, a form of the pill sold in packets of 84 active pills and seven placebos that make it so bleeding happens just four times a year, became available in 2003. In 2007, the F.D.A. approved Lybrel, the first oral contraceptive to provide continuous active pills, with no breaks for withdrawal bleeding. Doctors agree that a menstrual cycle can be a useful indicator of overall health, and yet it still isn’t necessary. When Dr. Lori Picco’s patients ask if they can skip the inactive pills, she says she tells them to go right ahead. “It’s completely fine — there’s no medical concerns,” says Dr. Picco, a gynecologist at Capital Women’s Care in Washington and a fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Honestly, I would think people would want to do it all the time.”"

"Ludwig Haberlandt is the 1st great name in hormonal contraception. As early as 1919 he was conducting studies which showed that transplants of tissues or extracts of these tissues (now known to contain progesterone) could produce infertility in rabbits and mice. In 1930 Reiprich of Breslau suggested that the antifertility action of estrogen might be the result of pituitary inhibition. In 1938 ethinyl estradiol was synthesized and 1 year later Dodds and his group reported the synthesis of a series of nonsteroidal estrogens (stilbestrol, hexestrol, and dienestrol). None of the clinical trials conducted in the 1940s could have demonstrated the superiority of 1 estrogen over another with respect to ovulation inhibition at equivalent estrogenic dosage. Studies of this aspect lagged until the 1960s. At that time it was clearly demonstrated that the ethinyl side-chain imparted an augmented pituitary inhibiting potency to estradiol as compared either to other natural estrogens or to other synthetics. It was a fortunate accident that the early clinical preparations of contraceptive progestins contained about 1% contamination with mestranol from the process of manufacture. While this quantity appeared trivial to the chemists, the presence of about 150 mcg of mestranol in the original 10 mg doses of the 19-norprogestins could have accounted totally for their contraceptive efficacy. It was not until several years later than estrogen-free norprogestins were prepared and their intrinsic antiovulatory action proven. When these purified progestins were used for contraceptive therapy, an increased incidence of menstrual irregularities appeared. One standardized quantity of ethinyl estrogen was reincorporated into contraceptive preparations for the control of menstrual regularity, but without any idea that a contribution was being made to contraceptive effectiveness. Clinical studies with continuous low-dose progestin only formulations have demonstrated that their effectiveness in inhibiting ovulation is substantially lower than that of sequential or combination type preparations. A progestational agent added to a baseline estrogen dose appears to produce a greater suppression of plasma gonadotropins than estrogen by itself. While cyclic estrogen administration is capable of inhibiting ovulation with a high degree of efficiency, such a therapeutic regimen is impractical from the point of view of menstrual regularity. The entire matter of cardiovascular hazards related to OC use has been called into question by studies of mortality statistics in the U.S., Great Britain, and Taiwan. In none of these studies is the predicted mortality from cardiovascular disease in OC users confirmed."

"In a sector where there is systemic failure and worker-management relations are turbulent, putting the onus of worker safety and security in the hands of the management alone can be risky. Moreover, it is well-known that in supply chains the brands call the shots. Involving them in discussions on worker dignity and equality is important. Omitting workers and trade unions from discussions about the amendment is also seen by the workers as a short-sighted measure. Women garment workers are concerned that while the amendment has stipulated many 'new' guidelines amidst the plethora of unaddressed concerns, allowing night shifts would only extend daytime exploitation."

"Coronavirus child-care crisis will set women back a generation. [o]ne out of four women who reported becoming unemployed during the pandemic said it was because of a lack of child care—twice the rate among men."

"They spend billions of hours cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. Unpaid care work is the 'hidden engine' that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving. It is driven by women who often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run, and who are therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy."

"The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave."

"Women are in HR to clean up men’s messes."

"Our economy cannot fully recover unless women can participate fully. I believe, I think we all believe, this is a national emergency — women leaving the workforce in these numbers is a national emergency, which demands a national solution."

"It must be admitted that, although I possessed a certain degree of ambition, like every other active human being, I was never animated by the desire to obtain "a post." For me "what I am" was always of less importance than "what I can," that is to say, what I was in a position to accomplish. In this way I, too, had my ambition and it was especially noticeable there where I stood with my whole heart and soul in the struggle, where the issue was the abolition of the slavery of working women."

"On November 20, the issued a notification allowing women to work night shifts (7 p.m. to 6 a.m.) in all factories registered under the Factories Act, 1948. [...] In principle, this is a welcome move. However, several concerns have been voiced by women garment workers who are estimated to constitute over 90% of the five garment workers in Karnataka (according to data by Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a global coalition of trade unions). The amendment suggests that night shifts for women will only be allowed if the employer ensures adequate safeguards concerning occupational safety and health, protection of dignity and honour, and transportation from the factory premises to points nearest to the worker’s residence. The amendment stipulates 24 points related to occupational rules and regulations, most of which have been in existence for years. Yet, women workers fear that when there is no safety or dignity in the workplace even during daytime, how will employers ensure all this during night shifts?"

"Aurat March is a sham...Khalilur Rehman Qamar sahab is a modern day philosopher and I don’t think she (:w:Marvi Sirmed) should have used women’s rights to further her own agendas.."

"We will, hopefully by next year, introduce a core syllabus for all schools that will be mandatory for students apart from the additional subjects each institution chooses to teach. This is how you create a nation. This is how you end rival cultures from developing. The that just happened… a different culture was visible in it. this is a cultural issue and this comes from the schooling system."

"... And if we are keen to make so many allowances for foreign women to experiment in the public space in Pakistan, why do we come down so hard on the local female organisers of the ?..."

"“The Aurat March is the need of the hour because it is a voice against extremism....It showed the men in power back then that you cannot trample over women,..”"

"Urdu: “Hum humesha aurat card he kyun kheltay hain? Har roti hui aurat sachi nahi hoti.”"

"The link between power and gender, as expressed through the gender hierarchy of men/masculinity over women/feminity, becomes especially pronounced in times of war. War fighting and masculinity are both 'symbolically and practically linked'. The masculinity that is promoted and privileged is a militarized masculinity: 'how masculinities and men become militarized, [and] about the ways in which masculinity and the military become linked'. Men, as citizen-warriors, go to war to protect innocent civilians, namely women and children. Women, of course, also matter for the state in times of war as daughters, mothers and wives of soldiers. thereby reinforcing their domestic identity."

"The assumption that it is the men who should be warriors seems to be almost universal through time and across cultures and, while there are examples of women warriors, the overwhelming majority of those who have fought are men. And when rules of war have developed in different societies, women, along with old people, children and, sometimes, priests have been classified as non-combatants. The reasons why men have largely done the fighting and women have not are as much debated as the origins of war itself, and again the explanations range from the biological to the cultural. If gender differences are averaged, men come out higher on the scale of strength and size and possibly aggression, but there are many big strong women who can match and surpass men. The fact that men have more testosterone than women may make them more prone to being aggressive – although scientists are far from reaching a consensus – but there are many men who are gentle by nature and do not want to fight. Militaristic societies such as Sparta or the military through the ages would not have spent so much time on training which inculcates the ‘right’ attitudes if the great majority of men were natural-born killers. Women, when they choose or are obliged to fight, can be as fierce as men."

"Perhaps the existence in different cultures of war-making goddesses – Astarte, Athena, Kali, the Valkyrie – or the legends surrounding warrior queens such as Zenobia of Palmyra is a recognition of women’s potential. It is also a way of limiting it to divine or perhaps unnatural women. From Boudicca, the British queen of the first century ad, who is often portrayed in her war chariot, to the Rani of Jhansi, who led her troops against the British in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, many cultures have stories, some legend and some based on fact, of individual women warriors. Some have fought as women but many disguised themselves as men, including Deborah Sampson, who was in the American War of Independence, and Lizzie Compton and Frances Hook in the American Civil War, who kept reenlisting when their identities were discovered. Just like the women warriors in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wonder Woman and Kill Bill, however, they are exceptions, seen as outside the normal order of things where war is the male sphere."

"We have been so consumed with seemingly objective discussions of politics, tactics, weapons, dollars and casualties. This is the language of sterility. [...] We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women."

"There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means."

"They are women who are standing on their feet in spite of their circumstances, not because of it. Think of how the world can be a much better place if, for a change, we have a better equality, we have equality, we have a representation and we understand war, both from the front-line and the back-line discussion."

"We know that conflict is gendered: that men and women have different experiences and play different roles. We also know that although women are often politically, economically and socially marginalised, they still play a significant role in peace and stability."

"The Prophet passed by me at a place called Al-Abwa or Waddan, and was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, "They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans)." I also heard the Prophet saying, "The institution of Hima is invalid except for Allah and His Apostle.""

"And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb Of your dear mother England, blush for shame! For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids Like Amazons come tripping after drums, Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts To fierce and bloody inclination."

"Urdu "Ainey ne aaj naya chehra dikha diya / merey wajood ko aurat ka naam de diya / husn, haya, ada, wafa aur chaah / in lafzon ko mera zevar bana diya”"

"Shaadi mein sabse important cheez kya hoti hai ... maang bharna ... aur aadmiyon ka toh kaam hi hai aurat ki har maang bharna"

"English Translation: ...Women are not a cheaters (to their husbands), and the ones who cheat on (their husband), are not women"

"Original urdu language quote: "...Jo aurat hoti hai woh bewafa nahi hoti, aur jo bewafa hoti hai woh aurat nahi hoti’ ." Ref"

"Translation: She is true woman who feels shame in this world; In this world honor shame (laj) is the only duty of a woman; One who lives with honor only can die with honor."

"Translation: "..You are a woman Chandramukhi, recognize yourself.Woman can be mother,sister, wife or friend. When she is nothing else then she is courtesan, you can be something else Chandramukhi..""