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Germaine Greer has argued that modern feminism is “ageist” in a panel discussion to celebrate International Women’s Day .
Regarded as a prominent feminist voice of the mid-20th century, the 76-year-old academic criticised what she sees as a focus on young women at the Sydney Opera House event on Sunday.
“Give me the right to grow up, let me age,” she said, according to the Guardian . “In our society, elder women have no respect.”
Greer went on to accuse Australia’s current Abbott Government of attacking pensioners and stripping people in residential aged care of their civil rights.
“They are incarcerated and they have committed no crime,” she said, adding that women working in the elderly care sector were drastically underpaid and only doing the job “out of mercy”.
Show all 22 1 /22Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Katharine Hepburn “I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Betty Friedan “No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Maya Angelou “I want to be representative of my race - the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be…”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Emmeline Pankhurst “I want to say to you who think women cannot succeed, we have brought the government of England to this position, that it has to face this alternative: either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Patricia Arquette "To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights, it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America."
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Nawal El Saadawi “They said, “You are a savage and dangerous woman. I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Margaret Fuller "It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Germaine Greer “All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Naomi Wolf “A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Rebecca West "I myself have never able to find out precisely what a feminist is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Margaret Atwood “Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Susan B. Anthony "I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Sylvia Plath "Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Hillary Clinton "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Lena Dunham "The idea of being a feminist—so many women have come to this idea of it being anti-male and not able to connect with the opposite sex—but what feminism is about is equality and human rights. For me that is just an essential part of my identity. I hope [Girls] contributes to a continuance of feminist dialogue"
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Bette Davis “When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Jane Austen “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Gloria Steinem “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Anais Nin “I hate men who are afraid of women's strength”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Elizabeth Warren “I have a daughter and I have granddaughters and I will never vote to let a group of backward-looking ideologues cut women’s access to birth control. We have lived in that world, and we are not going back, not ever”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Malala Yousafzai “In Pakistan, when we were stopped from going to school, at that time I realized that education … Is the power for women, and that’s why the terrorists are afraid of education”
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Feminist quotes from the icons to inspire you Virginia Woolf "As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world"
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Greer emphasised that there was “heaps” more pressure on women to conform to society’s physical and behavioural standards today than when she wrote The Female Eunuch in 1970, and shamed Kim Kardashian as being of “no help” in changing attitudes.
Greer also voiced her concern over gender equality being such a major goal in modern feminism. “Everyone thinks they understand [equality] but no one understands it…it’s an illusory goal,” she said, drawing on the pay gap that remains alive and kicking .
“I’m a liberation feminist, not an equality feminist. Equality is a profoundly conservative aim and it won’t achieve anything.”
No doubt actress Emma Watson , UN Goodwill Ambassador for Women, will have her own view on Greer’s comments when she hosts a live Q&A on her He For She campaign in London later this afternoon.
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