‘What can your kids teach you?’ Well, I believe something different about kids. We don’t own them, they have their own knowledge. From the start you have to make the choice to listen. – Faye Wattleton
One of the sad commentaries on the way women are viewed in our society is that we have to fit one category. I have never felt that I had to be in one category. – Faye Wattleton
The deal is that women have entered the workforce, but they have not been relieved of the domestic responsibilities. – Faye Wattleton
Being a person who has had plastic surgery and goes to the gym five days a week to work my muscles up so they don’t look atrophied as a 60-year-old, I don’t disparage people who want to maintain their appearance. But what I don’t want is a society that tells me I have to. – Faye Wattleton
Many African-American men are incarcerated. And so African-American women do carry an enormous burden. And traditionally have carried a greater burden than perhaps their white counterparts. – Faye Wattleton
My mother was from Mississippi, or is from ‘Mississippi;’ my father was from Alabama. He speaks about conditions in Mississippi and Alabama. They were really the poster children for the bad public laws that segregated, according to race, in our country. – Faye Wattleton
The recognition of rights for women and minorities became a large part of my understanding of what this country is all about. – Faye Wattleton
We have a very long way to go to really penetrate the power structure. Until that happens, you will not see stability among the workforce, among women – in the workforce among women. – Faye Wattleton
My mother taught me a lot of things, but they had big presuppositions built in – like her expectation that I’d be a missionary nurse in a religious order. – Faye Wattleton
I do not make any apologies for my manner or personality. I come from a long line of very strong, black African-American women who neither bend nor bow. I haven’t had very good modeling in submission. – Faye Wattleton
A woman who places a high priority on performance and excellence is seen as imperial. A man is seen as demanding and tough. – Faye Wattleton
Affirmative action has been generally cast in terms of race. I think women themselves are not as cognizant of the role affirmative action has played in opening the doors for women. – Faye Wattleton
This is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people, so I think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don’t matter is not quite the way our history would define it. – Faye Wattleton
In 1985, I saw a tape of myself where my eyes were puffy. I looked very tired and bedraggled and not as youthful as I would like to have been. – Faye Wattleton
