Women S Rights Activists

"I was advised not to go for it because every information about the company and people behind it was a screaming scam. That’s how I was saved from the unknown intentions of the crooks"

"I have felt like having a debt of telling youth that the path of life is not straight and that they should never give up until they get to their dreams ."

"I am happy on a personal level but also grateful that it’s Rwanda that took the award out of so many other people from different countries."

"dream is to see the documentary go beyond Rwanda and its neighboring countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda."

"I have travelled to Tanzania to organize Miss East Africa and more about the beauty competition will be aired through a press conference in Tanzania ."

"Even though much has been done to equalize gender imbalances, Unfortunately the glass ceiling is still present and it is not easy for a woman 2 hit the level where they hve enough influence to hve any impact. Beauty pageants is a way for a young woman to do that #MIssEastAfrica2021."

"I want to sensitise the Rwandan Diaspora, especially the youth about embracing Rwandan values as their identity because wherever they are, they portray Rwanda’s image ."

"This is a prime opportunity to lift up my country’s flag worldwide. Though it’s a stiff competition, I’m prepared to try my best and do whatever it takes at the apex of my ability. Hope for the best because a competition remains a competition ."

"When speaking to women about equality, it was a total awakening. When they said they have no recourse if their husbands beat them, I explained their constitutional, legal and human rights. We learned how to link the political, economic and social problems that affect women’s lives. They have the capacity to change. But real change must happen within communities. Everyone must teach each other and learn that what is good for women and girls is good for the community."

"There is no prescription. You make a commitment, then everything you do speaks to you if you are willing to listen. For social change, you must go to the people, to really listen to them and learn from them. It is all about commitment. As a young girl when I spoke to elders, I had to look at their feet, not their faces. As an adult, I stood in front of a congregation of 800 men, women and children. I said female genital mutilation is not prescribed in the Bible or the Koran. So where did the practice come from? Why are we ‘correcting’ God’s work? Everything is contextual."

"I will keep doing it whether you put me in jail, or you kill me. I'll die doing what I believe."

"I tell them my own story—how I grew up, went to school, how I struggled, and how I was mutilated."

"In the long run, stronger women create stronger communities, stronger women create a stronger nation, and stronger women create a stronger Africa."

"From birth they need equal opportunities to help them understand that their intrinsic value is the same as men. Education is key, even though they are expected to follow in their mothers’ footsteps and perform household chores for their entire lives. It’s working. Just last week we awarded 390 girls with above a 3.5 grade point average. They will go to university. If a girl is given an equal footing, she will find her own space and voice in life."

"Daddy, you lived your time. This is our period, our children’s period. We don’t want to kill our children. I hope you are wise enough to accept that."

"Women were regarded as no better than the cows they milked, My mother’s life was a nightmare. I don’t know how she survived. She was a very intelligent, very wise woman, but all her life she was abused and beaten – for nothing. She had her back stooped, her legs broken, her jaw broken, even though she did everything right."

"I am from them. I speak from reality. I touch their reality."

"Yes, I could have had a better house and gone jogging on the beach or gone to a spa every weekend, But is that what life is all about? Could I have stayed there knowing my sisters were being cut and abducted and turned into servants?"

"The women of Kenya have made Kenya proud through our athletes, the late Wangari Maathai, and the rest. I am so overjoyed because the women have done it."

"I asked her] if she really thought colored women would be allowed to vote if the ballot privilege was conferred on them, as it is to the colored men of the South. She assured me that if it were made the law that women might vote, the right would not be denied them"

"I am American. I am Black. And I am proud that I’m Black"

"My world is compressed. Warris Road, lined with rain gutters, lies between Queens Road and Jail Road: both wide, clean, orderly, streets at the affluent fringes of Lahore."

"What is happening with the Talibanization is really frightening [in the FATA and NWFP] – it’s scary because the brunt seems to fall on the women. When people talk of religion they often think in terms of “a woman shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that.” It’s not only Islam or in Islamic countries – in America the issue becomes the “woman doesn’t have right over her body,” etc. And in Pakistan, we go through a cycle of hope and despair. Right now we are in a place where we don’t know where we are headed…"

"[about the Partition of India] The roar of the mobs appeared to be a constant in my life; even as a 7 year old I knew it was an evil that threatened our lives. I couldn’t make out the words although I vaguely realized they were shouting religious slogans as they set fire to houses and harmed people. The memory of smoke and fire and fear and the sudden appearance of hoards of bedraggled refugees in my neighborhood are still vivid."

"Globalization has its advantages. To be translated and read in several countries is immensely satisfying; after all a writer - this writer at least - is driven by the impulse to communicate. Conversely, globalization exposes one to wonderful writers from diverse cultures."

"Being iconoclastic is only acceptable and desirable if the public—or at least a specific segment of society—is open to it. A literature that the public cannot relate to in any form will not endure. I have been iconoclastic, but I’ve never broken my ties with Iran’s past literature. No one can create a noteworthy work without knowing the tenets of their own language and literature. Language is renewed but it never changes its essence, because the contracts that have come about over time for communication cannot be rescinded so easily. It takes a thousand years before a word, among the thousands of words, dies away in a language or changes its meaning. Literature rests on language. It is a linguistic art. So it cannot sever its relationship with the past. But it can create new methods and styles that differ in structure, form, and content from the past."

"Bapsi Sidhwa has blossomed into Pakistan's best writer of fiction in English...Cracking India deserves to be ranked as amongst the most authentic and best on the partition of India.""

"A ground-breaking writer, whose works have lost none of their freshness, humour or heart"

"Despite my age, I can almost say that I have never put pen to paper without worrying about censorship. The nightmare of censorship has always cast a shadow over my thoughts. Both under the previous state and under the Islamic state, I have said again and again that, when there is an apparatus for censorship that filters all writing, an apparatus comes into being in every writer’s mind that says: “Don’t write this, they won’t allow it to be published.” But the true writer must ignore these murmurings. The true writer must write. In the end, it will be published one day, on the condition that the writer writes the truth and does not dissemble. Of course, whenever censorship is stringent, most writers resort to metaphor and figurative and symbolic language. And this can help stimulate the imagination. But taking comfort from this fact doesn’t lessen the writer’s dream of attaining freedom."

"Bapsi Sidhwa's voice - comic, serious, subtle, always sprightly, is an important one to hear."

"One of the great comic novels of the 20th century"

"One of the finest responses made to the horror of the division of the subcontinent."

"The Shāhnāmeh is the greatest epic in history. It is a treasure trove of ideas, wisdom, advice, help, guidance, and rites. With this immense work, Ferdowsi revived the spirit of serenity, magnanimity, and pride in the Iranian nation, which had lost itself under the weight of the Arab conquest of Iran. It empowered divided Iranian peoples to unite. Most of our poets, even those who worked as tyrannical kings’ eulogists, have used their poems to remind rulers of the right way to run the state, practice justice, and uphold the welfare of the people…In any age, writers have produced works which were in keeping with their society’s needs and which helped and guided the nation."

"You cannot write a non-political book anywhere in the world. Because politics colours each character’s way of thinking, way of relating to other people and so on. You see, each time there has been a regime change in Pakistan, I have felt myself changing. During the time of Bhutto, the women around us felt very energised. I was joining women’s committees, we were doing progressive things. And when Zia came, we sort of wilted and all the energy just drained away from us. Then Benazir came, and we all felt different. So it influenced us, as people, as characters. It influences how men look at us. You see? So the dynamics between people change. It’s all related to politics, to culture, to your environment. It all influences you."

"There is no comparison between what Partition was to what today is. Partition was a time of too much chaos. I am the only old woman in this room who remembers that time. I was seven or eight. And I remember the roar of the mob from a distance. I couldn’t make out the words. But later, I was able to decipher the “Hare Hare Maha Dev”, the “Allahu Akbar” and the “Sat Siriye Kaal”. Even back then, I could understand that they are killing each other. I knew it was evil. And there was no comparison to what’s happening today."

"The Parsi community has been on the brink of extinction ever since I can remember, but it seems to be holding its own and still flourishing in Mumbai, Karachi, and recently in America and Britain. Of course, Parsi youth are marrying outside the community and many of the children born to these marriages are not accepted as Parsi, but this too is changing. I think this dodo bird of world religions will continue to exist -- at least I hope so!"

"Writer’s narratives are woven into the fabric of life and history – it makes people aware of where they stand in relation to each other and the rest of the world. The word, as we understand it, may mutate, but it will always count."

"Basically where you come from in your writing is what you have experienced yourself, have internally absorbed as part of your adventure of life and I think that’s the best you can do… is writing about things that you know intimately."

"Sidhwa's triumph lies in creating characters so rich in hilarious and accurate detail, so alive and active, that long after one has closed the book, they continue to perform their extraordinary and wonderful feats before our eyes."

"the more sincere and intimate the relationship between a work and its reader, the better. So the countries that don’t have walls don’t need windows either, because the entire world is their field of vision and they can establish an unmediated relationship with their readers. I, in turn, envy them their free world."

"Balochistan was a free country and we will get our freedom back. Whether it will take 100 years or 1000 years, Baloch will take back their country, we have made the decision. We cannot remain in the slavery of anyone."

"If there is any entity and the most anti-muslim entity on this earth is Pakistan...They made Muslims of India vulnerable actually. And killing Balochs, the one who taught them how to say Kalma they are killing baloch with impunity. And not only Baloch, but they also killed the founders of Pakistan – Bangladesh. 30 million Bangladeshis they have killed and in Afghanistan 4 million Afghans they have killed. So, they are Muslims. Even, they killed Muslims in Jordan. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as a Pakistani mercenary has killed 25,000 Palestinians. 10,000 of them were killed in one night. I repeat that if anyone is more anti-Muslim in this world, it is Pakistan. So, they can’t be champions of Islam. They are the manipulators. They are good actors."

"Each coming together of man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure; each winning should necessitate a fresh wooing."

"Marie Stopes, the great apostle of contraception in interwar Britain, was also—like many among the progressives of the time—a keen eugenicist. In 1935, she attended a Congress for Population Science in Nazi Berlin. In August 1939, she even sent Hitler a volume of her dreadful poems, accompanied by a treacly epistle about love. Yet all this has been forgotten amid continuing progressive admiration for Marie Stopes’s embrace of what are nowadays known as "reproductive rights.""

"From the body of the loved one's simple, sweetly colored flesh, which our animal instincts urge us to desire, there springs not only the wonder of a new bodily life, but also the enlargement of the horizon of human sympathy and the glow of spiritual understanding which one could never have attained alone."

"An impersonal and scientific knowledge of the structure of our bodies is the surest safeguard against prurient curiosity and lascivious gloating."

"In its most beautiful expression and sublimest manifestations, the celibate ideal has proclaimed a world-wide love, in place of the narrower human love of home and children. Many saints and sages, reformers, and dogmatists have modeled their lives on this ideal. But such individuals cannot be taken as the standard of the race, for they are out of its main current: they are branches which may flower, but never fruit in a bodily form."

"Each heart knows instinctively that it is only a mate who can give full comprehension of all the potential greatness in the soul, and have tender laughter for all the childlike wonder that lingers so enchantingly even in the white-haired."

"At sixteen I was vain because someone praised me. My father said: "You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. If you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your own soul's doing. Then you may be proud of it and be loved for it.""

"We are not much in sympathy with the typical hustling American business man, and we have often felt compunction for him, seeing him nervous and harassed, sleeplessly, anxiously hunting dollars, and all but overshadowed by his over-dressed, extravagant and idle wife, who sometimes insists that her spiritual development necessitates that she shall have no children. Such husbands and wives are also found in this country; they are a growing produce of the upper reaches of the capitalist system. Yet such wives imagine that they are upholding women’s emancipation."