My father respected and admired my mother and was a person who was always standing by my side encouraging me to do more and believed in my capacity. So in that sense my own experience was very good in becoming an empowered woman. From early on I carried that strong message: 'You can do it.' So I never had any doubt that women can do a lot.

There's full consensus in the military that women shouldn't be in person-to-person combat. I don't know if we have enough experience to know whether this is the right approach. But women can be elsewhere. We have mandatory military service in Chile. I pushed for women in all areas.

Women artists need to break barriers in order for women's experience to be valuable.

Men and women who have served in harm's way experience higher rates of divorce and suicide. Many battle the debilitating effects and stigma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad - experience how people look what they bring to the job. But there's no question women are paid less. Women don't ask.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

You know it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope someday we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

I had the experience last year of directing my first feature while I had a 1-year-old son and while I was also pregnant so I am now well aware of the difficulties women who are rearing children face when they're also trying to make headway in mainstream of film.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal or having any import to the world at large as opposed to men's work which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

You can't leave out half the world's experience and expect to address all the problems. Women communicate differently and process information differently which leads them to resolve conflicts differently.

That's not to say that women's priorities are better than men's. Rather when women are empowered when they can speak from the experience of their own lives they often address different previously neglected issues. And families and whole communities benefit.

Women love working together. That's my experience anyway.

There is no more lively sensation than that of pain its impressions are certain and dependable they never deceive as may those of the pleasure women perpetually feign and almost never experience.

Most men are very attached to the idea of being male and usually experience a lot of fear and insecurity around the idea of being a man. Most women are very identified with their gender and also experience a tremendous amount of fear and insecurity.

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

Demands for equality for women are threats to men's self-esteem and sense of sexual turf.

The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.

The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.

Obviously my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene.

I think men are allowed to be fat and bald and ugly and women aren't. And it's just not - there is no equality there.