Melanne Verveer Quotes
We know that the most dangerous places in the world are more often than not the most dangerous places for women, where women are denied their rights and oppressed. These are the places that are unstable and where extremism often takes hold.
Verveer, Melanne. "Remarks on Women and Global Security." U.S. Department of State, 2010.
Many leaders of nations are in denial about this problem which exists almost everywhere. In Israel, the problem is compounded because the very orthodox Jews and Muslims both come from a tradition where women are allocated a place subservient to men in many ways and to some (like some Christians) there is a perceived duty to discipline wives and daughters. So reform involves religious tradition and theology.
The universality of the fundamentalist extremists desire to control women is a fascinating observation that appears not to have been made before.
The following year, women got the right to vote, the first nation to reach that level of enlightenment.
See {592434} for more on ‘honor killings’ where male relatives kill females who have been accused of sexual activity. This is perceived to dishonor the family by many Muslims. She was responding to an Egyptian judge who was arguing that men who commit honor killings should not be punished to harshly as the men were in great emotional states at the time because they were so upset.
Note, that like other feminist leaders of the time, she viewed the fetus as a person. However, between the economic pressures and the illegality of birth control devices and information provision, abortion was a critical decision that had to be faced by many women. Later, feminist leadership had to come to grips with the issue of who makes the decision in these areas, and placed the right of the woman to make these decisions, as opposed to husbands, fathers and government, as the highest priority. Then, when the drivers for abortion could not be eliminated, it was women who were criminalized. Feminists then fought for the right of abortion and the right of the woman to make decisions, but feminine leadership has never—in America—been advocates of abortion as opposed to the right of abortion, a subtlety that often is lost.
He was a major critic of French Quebec Separatism and some elements of French Canadian culture including his perception of sexism. His French Quebec Separatist enemies translated passages of this work into French and (some say deliberately) mistranslated this line to read: Quebec women are sows. The quotation was bandied about Canada in the original version as well as the mistranslation.
Melanne Verveer is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security at Georgetown University, a founding partner of Seneca Point Global, a global women strategy firm, and a co-founder of Seneca Women. She is also the co-author with Kim Azzarelli of the book Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose.
