Sarah Gavron Quotes

My awakening to the fight for women's votes came when I was 13, and the BBC screened a drama called 'Shoulder to Shoulder' about the suffragettes, with the great Sian Phillips as Emmeline Pankhurst. It made a huge impression on me - not just the history, but because of the debates it triggered at home.

A few British suffragettes everybody laughed at started the cause of equality between men and women.

I have made speeches urging women to adopt methods of rebellion such as have been adopted by men in every revolution.

It's time for women to wake up, to use the power of the vote, to honor the suffragists who chained themselves to the White House fence so that women could vote.

When I started giving talks about women's history, one of the things that bothered me was the tendency to say, 'Well, everybody was totally oppressed and suddenly in 1964 we rose up, got our freedom, and here we are.' It dismisses the women who fought for rights for several hundred years of our history up to that point.

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

In no sense of the word am I in sympathy with women’s suffrage ….I have no vote and I’ve raised hell all over this country.

As Suffragettes we could not be pacifists at any price.

Vote for Women – Vote Communist!

I have joined the 'suffragettes' - the militant party on the woman suffrage question.

The suffragettes endured 50 years of broken government promises and not being heard. The press never reported on their activities.

The suffragettes were women of action. Their motto was 'Deeds not Words,' and the film reflects that with a number of big set pieces, from the smashing of windows in central London to a riot at the Houses of Parliament.

It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement.

There's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology.

Women's history is the primary tool for women's emancipation.

People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning.

We will have gone from men telling us condescendingly to not bother our pretty little heads about important things like politics, to not bothering our pretty little heads without even being told not to! The suffragettes struggled and suffered so much on our behalf; what a travesty of everything they stood for, if we simply look away as though we can't be bothered.

I remember as a child going around with "Votes For Women" balloons. I learnt early what it is to be snubbed for a good cause.

I stand on the shoulders of women who marched before me.

I had wanted to make this film [Suffragette] for over a decade. There has never been a cinematic rendition of this story. I had not been taught any of the history of the movement at school, and the version I had gleaned had been the Mary Poppins story of women in large hats, petitioning. There was another version.

I think Pussy Riot is amazing. I'm honored that they were inspired by riot grrl, and obviously they're making history around the world.

Unfortunately, as obsessed as I am with all of those Grimm's slash Disney princesses, I do think women have evolved socially in so many ways.

Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don't know how much history young women today know about those battles.

I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.

In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less.