Things are very rudimentary as far as women's rights really go here, and it seems fine, but once you start scraping the surface, you start to see the ripple effect of how not having equal rights is so detrimental and how many mothers are single parents trying to raise their families.
Patricia ArquetteThere's no doubt that there's a struggling in birth, and a beauty and a horror and fear and joy too.
Patricia ArquetteHippy people had a hopeful idea of what they wanted the world to be like, then most of them changed into corporate Yuppies. But I still have that hippy thing underneath somewhere.
Patricia ArquetteWhen I talk to different lawmakers, I'm trying to get them to reach across the aisle. There's legislation out there that would be helpful for women and families, but like with the Paycheck Fairness Act, legislation has been on the floor many times, and voted down many times. It's something we need to get passed already.
Patricia ArquetteThere are so many issues that impact women. When we talk about prison reform, for example, women were [once] sterilized in women's prisons. When they were giving birth, they were asked to sign paperwork but they weren't even completely conscious of what they were signing. That sounds like something that would never happen in America, but it was happening, not just in America, but in [California], one of the most progressive states in the United States.
Patricia ArquetteIt concerns me when people frame the conversation about equal pay about the entertainment business. I don't want the wage gap issue to be viewed as this myopic problem, because it's not. It's in 98 percent of all businesses, and it's easy for people to dismiss this conversation when they think it's around white women entertainers. But this is about all women in America.
Patricia Arquette