"What if more women, mothers, gave birth as an ecstatic celebration of female sexuality? Mothers who do will often declare, "Now I can do anything!" What would the world look like if half of our population felt empowered to make a difference with their lives?"
Where your Mona Lisa Smile, and hold all your mystery.
What woman worth her femininity has ever told all of her story? As the gods do, we reveal ourselves - if we reveal ourselves at all - to whom we choose and in our own good time.
She's a woman. like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows it's her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work.
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invaribly they are both disappointed.
The three glues that hold humankind together are the courage of women, the compassion of men and the laughter of children.
"The True Man wants 2 things: DANGER & PLAY. For that reason he wants Woman, as the Most Dangerous Plaything"
I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
If you understand women's consumer DNA and implement strategies that ring with authenticity, you will improve all of your marketing efforts. If you make it women-friendly, you make it everybody-friendly.
Normal men, speak, listen and than think.
Wise men, listen, think and then speak.
Wise women, listen, think and speak all at the same time.
While normal women don't seem to think or listen at all,
to normal men that is.
Of the 50 largest companies in the United States, you are the only woman CEO. Why?
That’s a good question. I think there should be many other women CEO s. It feels natural to be a CEO of WellPoint, and part of the reason may be that women may be drawn to healthcare as a profession. Women make 70 percent of all healthcare decisions. Women are currently available—ready, willing, and able—to be CEOs of major Fortune 50 or 500 companies. And I expect them to emerge as such over the days, weeks, and months ahead.
It is of no consequence of what parents a woman is born as long as she be a woman of merit.
"The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall, so she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local color. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot, or in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded millet or, as in yet another rendering—so prodigious is Man’s inventiveness, she wiped her kitchen hands in the Sky’s face. Whatever the detail of Woman’s provocation, the Sky moved away in anger, and God with it.
‘Well, that kind of candid chauvinism might be ok for the rugged taste of the Old Testament. The New Testament required a more enlightened, more refined, more loving even, strategy—ostensibly that is. So the idea cam to Man to turn his spouse into the very Mother of God, to pick her up from right under his foot where she’d been since Creation and carry her reverently to a nice, corner pedestal. Up there, her feet completely off the ground, she will be just as irrelevant to the practical decisions of running the world as she was in her bad old days. The only difference is that now Man will suffer no guilt feelings; he can sit back and congratulate himself on his generosity and gentle manliness.
‘Meanwhile, our ancestors out here, unaware of the New Testament, were working out independently a parallel subterfuge of their own. Nneka, they said. Mother is supreme. Let us keep her in reserve until the ultimate crisis arrives and the waist is broken and hung over the fire, and the palm bears its fruit at the tail of its leaf. Then, as the world crashes around Man’s ears, Woman in her supremacy will descend and sweep the shards together.
‘The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.
We certainly noted that when given the opportunity, women handle money more efficiently. They have long term vision, they manage money more carefully. Men are more callous with money. Their first reflex is to blow it by getting drunk in a pub, or on prostitutes or gambling. Women, on the other hand, are endowed with a tremendous sense of self-sacrifice and try to get the best out of the money, for their children, but also for their husbands.
Yes, you can get a man to do just about anything, and you know it. So, what are you going to attract him into doing? Buying you a nice house? Giving you the space to guide your own life? Or, offering his deepest gifts to you and all beings while opening his heart to God?
Are you a selfish witch, a self-sufficient witch, or a witch for the sake of drawing your man and all beings open as a gift for all?
From the first moment a woman dared to speak that hope - dared to believe that the American Dream was meant for her too - ordinary women have taken on extraordinary odds to give their daughters the chance for something else; for a life more equal, more free, and filled with more opportunity than they ever had. In so many ways we have succeeded, but in so many areas we have much work left to do.
When you educate a woman, you set her free. Had I not had books and education in Mississippi, I would have believed that's all there was.
"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get use to the idea."
For most women, beauty and body issues are the easiest path to awakening, because the pain is so very close to the surface and the inner critic’s voice is the easiest to hear. The beauty of awakening is getting this, down to your bones, so that the world no longer needs to play our internal dramas on the backdrop of life. We can watch the drama as it comes and goes, maybe making a genuine wise crack, or just laughing at our own antics.
We stop looking to manifest abundance; we are abundance. Even without a job. Even when you give away the majority of what you create. Even when there is no one but ourselves standing at the finish line to thank us for doing out part to help save the world.
Any man who claims that he understands women is either a fool or a liar.
To what do you attribute the success you've had?
When I was growing up my mom was home. She wanted to go to work, but she waited. She was educated as a teacher. The minute my youngest sister went to school full-time, from first grade, mom went back to work. But she balanced her life. She chose teaching which enabled her to leave at the same time we left, and come home pretty much the same time we came home. She knew how to balance.
When I got married and had a child and went to work, my day was all day, all night. You lose your sense of balance. That was in the late '60s, '70s, women went to work, they went crazy. They thought the workplace was much more exciting than the home. They thought the family could wait. And you know what? The family can't wait. And women have now found that out. It all has to do with women, or the homemaker leaving the home and realizing that where they've gone is not as fabulous, or as rewarding, or as self-fulfilling as the balance between the workplace and the home place.
All Women Are beautiful creatures...each created in a way that is uniquely amazing!
It's not that I believe women are more ethical. I will say that one of women's greatest weaknesses is probably our greatest strength. We are incredibly hard on each other. We ask all the questions. Men are more easygoing. If you've ever been in a group of women, you'll recognize this: Nobody gives one woman the opportunity to lead the way without asking a whole lot of questions.
So when I say that I think we would have a different ethical level, particularly in corporate America, if there were more women involved, I mean that what women are best at is asking questions. Women ask questions over and over again. It drives men nuts. Women tend to ask the detailed questions; they want to know the answers.
Now, on the other hand, if we booted all the men out of corporate America, and we had all women there, quite honestly I think they'd be just as corrupt as what we have right now. I think it's best to have diversity and different points of view.
During the Q&A periods after my speeches, it is the men who say to me, "Help me understand how I am going to balance my work and my family." Now, let me tell you why I believe they see it that way. Because when they look around the room, they see the women who are going to be in their lives, the choices they will have for a spouse. And they realize that these women are educated, ambitious, and have every intention of having careers of their own.
Being smart young men, they say to themselves, "I want to get married, have a family, and I understand my wife wants to work too. Do you, Vicki, know how to help us do that?" Because they're no longer looking at that prospective wife, saying, "Well this is wonderful, you're getting educated, but of course as soon as we get married, you're going to stay home and make babies."
Those days are long gone. But our corporations haven't caught up with it. Our law firms, our higher education system, and our medical institutions haven't figured out how this family policy is going to work. Men are tired of the 80- to 100-hour work week as well.
Modern paintings are like women:
You'll never enjoy them, if you try to understand them..
The company was actually founded on creating earnings opportunities for women, even before it went into skincare, lipstick, and fragrance. The founding Avon principle, before women could vote and when basically only men were working, was to allow women to get out of their homes and to create an entrepreneurship opportunity for them.
That was very much ahead of its time back in the 1880s and, not surprisingly, it was met with some resistance. [I]f you fast forward to today and the fact that we're the single largest source of employment for women (broadly speaking, as the reps are independent contractors), we've been an important creator of entrepreneurship for women.
Women spend 80 cents of every dollar in the marketplace. We could be the most powerful force for economic and environmental change in the 21st century if we focused our money where it could make the biggest difference. If a million people did that, it would have a $1 billion impact.
"Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them."
Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The difference is that is not all she longs to be.
"When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal."
Madame de Merteuil
