Women's history is women's right-an essential, indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long range vision.
Gerda Lernernursing was regarded as simply an extension of the unpaid services performed by the housewife - a characteristic attitude that haunts the profession to this day.
Gerda LernerThe system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its courseโit no longer serves the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy, and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth. What will come after, what kind of structure will be the foundation for alternate forms of social organization we cannot yet know. We are living in an age of unprecedented transformation. We are in the process of becoming.
Gerda LernerThe effect on men has been very bad, too, of the omission of women's history, because men have been given the impression that they're much more important in the world than they actually are. It has fostered illusions of grandeur in every man that are unwarranted. If you can think as a man that everything great in the world and its civilization was created by men, then naturally you have to look down on women. And naturally, you have to have different aspirations for your sons and for your daughters.
Gerda Lerner