You can hardly open a newspaper without seeing that a woman has been killed by a man for clearly gender-related reasons.

As an activist, you do find yourself directed more toward public action. But I've always tried to use stories from my own life in my writing for instance. It has always been clear to me that the stories of each other's lives are our best textbooks. Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. So, if we've shared many experiences, then it probably has something to do with power or politics, and if we unify and act together, then we can make a change.

Women, we tend to become whole people by venturing outside of the home, learning to aspire, to achieve, to deal with conflict - all these qualities that are wrongly called masculine.

That's a huge fear for middle-class women. It's not so much a fear for poor women, because poor women have always assumed that they are going to have to support themselves. It's middle-class women who have this fantasy that somebody else is going to support them.

Of course, we can change. We're very adaptable. But it takes a while.

A movement happens when people are inspired by somebody, but they do it themselves. You don't wait for someone else. You do it yourself.

We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.