Bella Abzug
Full Name: Bella Savitzky Abzug
Nickname: Battling Bella
Birthdate: July 24, 1920
Birthplace: Bronx, New York, U.S.A.
Date of Death: March 31, 1998
Occupation: Activist, Actor, Author, Lawyer, Politician, and Women's Movement Leader
Profile: The first Jewish woman elected to Congress in 1970.
Website: https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/8276
Number of Quotes: 21
A woman's place is in the house - the House of Representatives.
All of the men on my staff can type.
As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because
the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo.
I am not a centrist.
I began wearing hats as a young lawyer because it helped me to establish my professional
identity. Before that, whenever I was at a meeting, someone would ask me to get coffee.
I prefer the word homemaker
because housewife
always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.
I spend all day figuring out how to beat the machine and knock the crap out of the political power structure.
I'm a politician. I run for office. That's my profession.
Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of
consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments.
Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein
get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.
Our struggle was political, ideological and economic, and we felt we couldn't
make something of ourselves unless we bettered society. We saw the two together.
The establishment is made up of little men, very frightened.
The test for whether or not you can hold a job should not be the arrangement of your chromosomes.
They used to give us a day-it was called International Women's Day. In 1975 they gave us a year, the
Year of the Woman. Then from 1975 to 1985 they gave us a decade, the Decade of the Woman. I said at the
time, who knows, if we behave they may let us into the whole thing. Well, we didn't behave and here we are.
We are affirming human rights for all women and girls, acknowledging the full
range of diversity that exists, and detailing actions to prevent violence.
We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the
institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didn't craft them. They didn't let us.
We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.
When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a
secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.
Women will change the nature of power, rather than power changing the nature of women.
Women will not simply be mainstreamed into the polluted stream. Women are changing the stream, making it
clean and green and safe for all - every gender, race, creed, sexual orientation, age, and ability.
Working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously.
Last on Earth
