Women Activists From The United States

"There’s a structural sexism problem, full stop. If you look at the numbers, they don’t lie. There’s just not as many women leading, in that sense – running the organisation, being the figurehead."

"So many people feel connected to the climate change movement and it’s important for everyone who’s involved, whether they’re a school teacher in the UK or a farmer in Burundi, to see themselves in this movement. So the more leaders who reflect the diversity of the movement, the broader, the bigger, the stronger the movement will be."

"All of our stories are important."

"I was one of those kids who ran lemonade stands to raise money for [animal rights group] Peta on the weekends. I was really into activism, I still am. To be part of a community who share this passion, this set of values, is what I want for my life."

"We are blessed so that we may be a blessing to others.""

"There is a measure of creating the culture that happens with proximity,” Harris told The Informer,” proximity breeds familiarity, and familiarity fosters mentorship.”"

"To address climate change, we must make gender equity a reality. And in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge, women and girls are a fierce source of possibility."

"GENDER AND CLIMATE are inextricably linked"

"There's greater risk of displacement, higher odds of being injured or killed during a natural disaster. Prolonged drought can precipitate early marriage, as families contend with scarcity. Floods can force last-resort prostitution as women struggle to make ends meet. These dynamics are most acute under conditions of poverty."

"I think about the feminine as the life-giving energy that circulates through the world. It’s an appreciation for interdependence and the connectedness of all things. It’s about working with the living systems of the planet rather than trying to conquer or wrangle them. The Feminist Climate Renaissance is not a revolution or a takeover or a war, but rather an upwelling of a better way to do climate-oriented work."

"I got sort of politicized around environmental issues broadly in high school and kind of carried that student activism into my undergraduate years. And I remember at some point ... I want to say, maybe my second year or so in college, I realized that if I wanted to work on environmental issues, that probably meant working on climate change. I learned a lot from a friend of mine in college, Billy Parish, who really got the youth climate movement going. He was kind of my entry point."

"In my experience, to have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart every day."

"Women are the primary farmers of the world,”They produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in lower-income countries."

"Instead of clear-cutting new land, why not work to make the existing farms run by women more efficient? “Close that gap and farm yields rise by 20 to 30 percent."

"Support women smallholders, realize higher yields, avoid deforestation, and sustain the life-giving power of forests."

"If women’s farms yielded as much on average as farmers run by men across the world, it would stop approximately 2 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere between now and 2050. “That’s on par with the impact household recycling can have globally."

"I think a lot about how we welcome in people who are committed feminists but have not seen themselves as climate feminists or have felt like the climate space is not super welcoming. Like, if you don’t have a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, then thanks, we don’t need you. And of course, that couldn’t be couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re going to be a feminist on a hot planet, you have to be a climate feminist."

"The climate crisis is not gender-equal or gender-neutral."

"I think it’s part of why I’ve really chosen to focus on communication of various stripes and culture-making of various stripes as at least a good chunk of what I do professionally, and what I do on on climate, because I think that whether it’s poetry, whether it is film, any number of mediums can take us to a place that we might otherwise feel antsy about or resistant to. And we kind of settle in around story. There’s something, I don’t know whether it reminds us of childhood in some cases, whether it feels like some kind of ancient practice in some cases, but I think it helps us see differently. It helps us feel into different experiences, different scenarios."

"That what could go right is “in the onslaught of the quest for power and profit and prestige, that maybe these things could actually be replaced with care and courage and connection and community and creativity."

"If you’re going to be a feminist on a hot planet, you have to be a climate feminist."

"The “different kind of leadership that women are bringing in droves on climate”"

"That “at our very best, we as human beings are active and generative collaborators with lifeforce… in these relationships of reciprocity and almost play with the planet’s living systems.”"

"That dialog about solutions is often about scale and speed; yet, we would benefit from considering solutions at depth with “heart-centered wisdom” and love as a powerful leverage point"

"The value of “making our hearts public”, bringing feelings and stories into climate conversation."

"The acknowledgment of how much has been and will be lost in our current systems, but still showing up for the work of what we can save in “this hard and magnificent moment”"

"Curbing growth of our human population is a side effect,” she says---one that would reduce global emissions."

"More than 130 million women worldwide are denied access to school. Yet the more education a woman attains, the fewer children she has. From a conservation perspective, empowering women to have smaller families is an objectively positive outcome. “The right to go to school effects how many human beings live on this planet."

"Gender equity is on par with wind turbines and solar panels and forests,” Wilkinson says, adding, “This does not mean women and girls are responsible for fixing everything. But we probably will."

"It costs nothing to make space for me. It costs nothing to cc me in. It costs nothing to empower other people to achieve their goals."

"I’m not a helper. I’m not an assistant. I’m not an optional part of the story. Sleeping Giants wouldn’t be what it is today without me."

"These bad actors have made a business out of publishing increasingly extreme and hateful content because it makes them money."

"What sets me and my organization apart is that we deeply understand how these business models work. And we have the time and patience to dismantle them, one piece at a time."

"Scientific advancements over the past three decades have greatly improved our understanding of the causes, nature, and treatment of many diseases and disabilities, including mental illnesses. Attention to the social determinants of health has led to the identification of risk factors and underlying causes of disadvantage and illness. Technology has made possible unparalleled public access to information so that more and more Americans know that treatments work and are available. Additionally, social networking provides multiple platforms from which advocates and consumers can organize and unite efforts to improve quality of life and address issues such as resiliency and recovery."

"I have already seen the butterfly garden, and I'd like to thank everybody who made that possible. And the movie, and I'm sentimental already. I have known Jimmy Carter for most of my life — I think for all of my life except when I was very small. He likes to say that he was my next-door neighbor when I was born, and he looked through the bars on the cradle and saw me. I didn't recognize him then."

"I wanted to take mental illnesses and emotional disorders out of the closet, to let people know it is all right to admit having a problem without fear of being called crazy. If only we could consider mental illnesses as straightforwardly as we do physical illnesses, those affected could seek help and be treated in an open and effective way."

"Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished."

"I hope that no one will ever tell a girl that there is something she can’t do because she is a girl. I hope that women have and embrace the power to change things, so that every person can choose a life that offers them respect from others and deep satisfaction for themselves. I hope that equal education and equal opportunities are available for women to grow to their maximum potential, whatever that is. I hope women will use political power to make the world a better place and claim a natural role as the world’s peacemakers."

"Thirty years is a long time in the history of caregiving as an issue in our country. The world was a very different place then. We used push-button phones, not cell phones, and had big word processors, not personal computers. There were social clubs, not social media, and people took care of each other because of a sense of familial responsibility. You didn’t hear much about “caregivers,” not because they didn’t exist but because what they were doing was quite common, and it was expected."

"Compassion is what makes our nation great. When we invest in the health and happiness of our fellow Americans, we reap dividends that pay off for generations. We urge our leaders to support all those Americans who are seeking to restore and maintain their physical and mental health. We can think of no better way to strengthen our economy, our communities, and our families."

"We need to end the silence and put pressure on governments and the private sector to prioritize mental health care reform. And the reform process needs to be guided by informed decision-making that includes the voices and stories of people with lived experience."

"Speaking up about this subject can be difficult. But the time has come for people who have lived with mental health disorders to make sure their voices are heard."

"American women have increasingly realized — as have men — the impact our opinions have in the voting booth and the marketplace. We have united to impact politics and policy, but also importantly to use our influence to help the poor, the oppressed, and those who suffer from mental or physical illnesses."

"And what will that future hold? Perhaps none have a greater right to ask that question than the young people of this country, and none are more qualified to answer. The ten teenage essay winners who participated in the opening ceremony had been asked: "How will women have changed this country by the year 2087?" Although they came from places as diverse as Dorchester, Alaska and the Bronx, New York, each was chosen because she or he had expressed a unique opinion or insight into the future role of women in our society."

"Maybe a hundred years from now we can say "We the People" and include all of the people of this great country of ours. If what we heard from each other and from our young people is an example of changing attitudes, we can truly look forward to the future as a golden age for women."

"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."

"I want people to know that mental illnesses can be diagnosed, can be treated. The overwhelming majority of people can live full and productive lives in the community. People don’t know that. That’s one reason I wrote the book. But I want everybody to know what I know, so we can get over the stigma and go on to do what is good and right for people with mental illnesses."

"Recovery is one prevalence. Mental illness affects all of us. They touch every family in our country. One in four Americans is diagnosed with mental illness every year, one in four. This is one reason why I cannot understand why stigma is still so bad because everybody knows somebody, if not a family member, a close friend, living with a mental illness. Stigma is the third thing. Stigma is the greatest barrier to seeking care for individuals who have mental illness, the greatest barrier for a person with a mental illness. And it’s the greatest barrier for those of us in the field who are trying to do something about it."

"To neglect those who, through no fault of their own, are in need, runs counter to our values, our decency and equality. Today, with our knowledge and expertise, we have a great opportunity to change things forever, for all people with mental illnesses, with what we know now, to move forward to a new era of understanding, care and respect."

"So maybe the one biggest thing you can do is to get politically engaged, because behavioral change is really slow. Too slow to stop runaway climate change."