"In an opening speech of one of her lectures, May Ziyadeh described poverty as 'illness, indolence and enslavement' and she continued as follows: "No society can enjoy good health when its members are ill... and no nation can enjoy independence if its citizens are enslaved. An attribute of the rich is a virtue but for the poor it is a flaw. ... Women can be a cause for poverty but can also be a cause for prosperity"...In her speech at one of her conferences, May Ziyadeh emphasized the role of women in a civilized society to stand in opposition to the traditional culture in the following statement: "We should free the woman, so that her children won't grow up to become slaves. And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover that there is a great meaning to life"...May Ziyadeh criticizes male-dominated society and addresses men that "if you are the material, the women are the soul, if you are the fiction, the women are the prose""