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Women’s empowerment is discussed more and more these days, but what does it really mean?
At its core, female empowerment means giving women as much control over their own lives as men to make their own choices, determine their destiny, and live their truth. It means being respected as equals, in the workplace, in the home, and in society as a whole. And in many countries, it means having basic access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunity.
Empowering women economically, socially, and politically is critical to achieving gender equality worldwide. Here are 150 inspiring quotes on female empowerment to help inspire you. I hope they bring you hope, strength, and determination.
Short women’s empowerment quotes
- A girl should be two things: Who and what she wants. – Coco Chanel
- A strong woman looks a challenge in the eye and gives it a wink. – Gina Carey
- A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. – Eleanor Roosevelt
- A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. – Irina Dunn
- Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim. – Nora Ephron
- Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else. – Judy Garland
- Behind every great woman… is another great woman. – Kate Hodges
- Cinderella never asked for a prince. She asked for a night off and a dress. – Kiera Cass
- Equality for women is progress for all. – Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
- Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. – Marie Shear
- “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere. – Mae West
- I am a woman and a warrior. If you think I can’t be both, you’ve been lied to. – Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar
- I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it. – Estée Lauder
- I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done. – Lucille Ball
- I’m a feminist. I’ve been a female for a long time now. It’d be stupid not to be on my own side. – Maya Angelou
- I’m tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay. – Madonna
- In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders. – Sheryl Sandberg
- Little girls with dreams become women with vision. – Unknown
- My coach said I run like a girl. And I said if he ran a little faster, he could too. – Mia Hamm
- No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. – Eleanor Roosevelt
- She believed she could, so she did. – Unknown
- She overcame everything that was meant to destroy her. – Rumi
- She remembered who she was and the game changed. – Lalah Deliah
- She wore her scars as her best attire. A stunning dress made of hellfire. – Daniel Saint
- Societies that empower women are less violent in every way. – Steven Pinker
- Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. – Gloria Steinem
- Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart. Just be you. – Brene Brown
- Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic. – Rosalind Russell
- The fastest way to change society is to mobilize the women of the world. – Charles Malik
- The most beautiful thing a woman can wear is confidence. – Blake Lively
- The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. – Estée Lauder
- The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me. – Ayn Rand
- Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness. – Oprah Winfrey
- This is your moment. Own it. – Oprah Winfrey
- We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. – Malala Yousafzai
- Well-behaved women rarely make history. – Eleanor Roosevelt
- When they go low, we go high. – Michelle Obama
- Women are the real architects of society. – Cher
- Women hold up half the sky. – Mao Zedong
- You are more powerful than you know; you are beautiful just as you are. – Melissa Etheridge
- You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. – Shonda Rhimes
- Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. – Timothy Leary
- Sometimes it’s the princess who kills the dragon and saves the prince. – Samuel Lowe
- You don’t have to play masculine to be a strong woman. – Mary Elizabeth Winstead
- The best protection any woman can have is courage. – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man; when a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch. – Bette Davis
Women supporting women quotes
- You can always tell who the strong women are. They are the ones you see building one another up instead of tearing each other down. – Unknown
- As women, we have to start appreciating our own worth and each other’s worth. Seek out strong women to befriend, to align yourself with, to learn from, to collaborate with, to be inspired by, to support, and enlightened by. – Madonna
- I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet. – Isabelle Allende
- A strong woman stands up for herself. A stronger woman stands up for everyone else. – Unknown
- You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone. – Tina Fey
- I raise up my voice – not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard. … We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. – Amal Clooney
- Every woman’s success should be an inspiration to another. We’re strongest when we cheer each other on. – Serena Williams
- The worst thing that we can do as women is not stand up for each other, and this is something we can practice every day, no matter where we are and what we do – women sticking up for other women, choosing to protect and celebrate each other instead of competing or criticizing one another. – Jane Fonda
- The glass ceiling will go away when women help other women break through that ceiling. – Sara Blakely
Women’s empowerment quotes
- I am not ashamed to dress ‘like a woman’ because I don’t think it’s shameful to be a woman. – Iggy Pop
- A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty. – Rudyard Kipling
- To all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful, and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams. – Hillary Clinton
- We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons … but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters. – Elle Macpherson
- There’s nothing a man can do that I can’t do better and in heels. – Ginger Rogers
- The true worth of a race must be measured by the character of its womanhood. – Mary McLeod Bethune
- Women are always saying,’We can do anything that men can do’ but men should be saying,’We can do anything that women can do. – Gloria Steinem.
- Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. – Audre Lorde
- Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to be themselves. – Betty Friedan
- You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men. – MacKenzi Lee
- We’ve heard a lot about the Internet of Things – I think we need an Internet of Women. – Christine Lagarde
- A strong woman understands that the gifts such as logic, decisiveness, and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts. – Nancy Rathburn
- The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. – Roseanne Barr
- For I conclude that the enemy is not lipstick, but guilt itself; we deserve lipstick, if we want it, and free speech; we deserve to be sexual and serious—or whatever we please. We are entitled to wear cowboy boots to our own revolution. – Naomi Wolf.
- We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. – Kavita Ramdas
- Stop waiting to find the light at the end of the tunnel and be the light for yourself. – Unknown
- Love who you are, embrace who you are. Love yourself. When you love yourself, people can kind of pick up on that: they can see confidence, they can see self-esteem, and naturally, people gravitate towards you. – Lilly Singh
- There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself. – Hannah Gadsby
- The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. – Alice Walker
- I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself – Simone de Beauvoir
- A successful woman is one who can build a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at her. – Unknown
- Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn’t mean it does not exist. – Margaret Cho
- You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female. – Erin McKean
- And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anaïs Nin
- She was a wild one. Always stomping on eggshells that everyone else tip-toed on. – Kaitlin Foster
- You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. – Tina Fey
- Feminism isn’t about making women strong. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength. – G.D. Anderson
- Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That’s my life motto. – Demi Lovato
- We need to live in a culture that values and respects and looks up to and idolizes women as much as men. – Michelle Obama
- Because God made me a woman is no reason to be such a woman as men wish to make me. – A.E. Chandler
- A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult. – Melinda Gates
- My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant to be your own person, be independent. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Women, we endure those cuts in so many ways that we don’t even notice we’re cut. We are living with small tiny cuts, and we are bleeding every single day. And we’re still getting up. – Michelle Obama
- I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. – Mary Shelley
- Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others. – Amelia Earheart
- You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. – Maya Angelou
- Feminism is about giving women choice. Feminism is not a stick with which to beat other women with. – Emma Watson
- I always wanted to be a femme fatale. Even when I was a young girl, I never really wanted to be a girl. I wanted to be a woman. – Diane von Furstenberg
- Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior. – Socrates
- Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women. – Maya Angelou
- Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change. – Shannon L. Alder
- Elegance is a statement, an attitude. Elegant women are women of character with confidence. – Elie Saab
- Women need a seat at the table, they need an invitation to be seated there, and in some cases, where this is not available, they need to create their own table. We need a global understanding that we cannot implement change effectively without women’s political participation. – Meghan Markle
- The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights. – Gloria Steinem
- When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. – Audre Lord
- Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in. – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
- No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens. – Michelle Obama.
- Feminism is not just about women; it’s about letting all people live fuller lives. – Maya Angelou
- She has been through hell, so believe me when I say, fear her when she looks into fire and smiles. – E. Corona
- It’s not about how many times you get rejected or fall down or are beaten up, it’s about how many times you stand up and are brave and you keep on going. – Lady Gaga
- Dignity will only happen when you realize that having someone in your life doesn’t validate your worth. – Shannon L. Alder
- Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- The world needs strong women who will lift and build others. Who will love and be loved. Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce; women of indomitable will. – Amy Tenney
- A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men. – Gloria Steinem
- Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me. – Arianna Huffington
- And one day she discovered that she was fierce, and strong, and full of fire, and that not even she could hold herself back because her passion burned brighter than her fears. – Mark Anthony
- Women need to shift from thinking “I’m not ready to do that” to thinking “I want to do that- and I’ll learn by doing it. – Sheryl Sandberg.
- Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation. – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom. – Rosa Luxemburg
- Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice. – Bethany Hamilton
- I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story – I will. – Amy Schumer.
- Women have to harness their power – it’s absolutely true. It’s just learning not to take the first ‘no’. And if you can’t go straight ahead, you go around the corner. – Cher
- I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. – Audre Lodre
- When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated, and ambitious. – Sheryl Sandberg
- It’s okay if you fall down and lose your spark. Just make sure that when you get back up, you rise as the whole damn fire. – Colette Werden
- How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself – Anaïs Nin
- There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no as an answer. – Coco Chanel
- Women don’t need to find a voice, they have a voice, and they need to feel empowered to use it, and people need to be encouraged to listen. – Meghan Markle.
- So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women. – Harriet Beecher Stowe
- The strongest action for a woman is to love herself, be herself, and shine amongst those who never believed she could. – Unknown
- Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. – Virginia Woolf
- If women understood and exercised their power they could remake the world. – Emily Taft Douglas
- After all those years as a woman hearing, ‘not thin enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not thin enough, not that enough,’ almost overnight I woke up one morning and thought, ‘I am enough. – Anna Quindlen
- Gender diversity is not just good for women; it’s good for anyone who wants results. – Gloria Steinem
- “You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself. There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. – Angela Merkel
- By propagating women’s nature as non-violent they are discouraging women from becoming fighters in the struggle for their own liberation and that of society. – Anuradha Ghandy
- In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits. – Arnold Schwarzenegger
- If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman. – Margaret Thatcher
- Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. – Mary Anne Radmacher
- What’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn? That since day one, she’s already had everything she needs within herself. It’s the world that convinced her she did not. – Rupi Kaur
- You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation. – Brigham Young
- Some days, she has no idea how she’ll do it. But every single day, it still gets done. – Unknown
- The biggest barrier for women is the thought that they can’t have it all. – Cathy Engelbert
- Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. – Viola Davis.
- There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers. – Susan B. Anthony
- A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform. – Diane Mariechild
- The people that truly love us in life don’t fight for us to remain a doormat for others. – Shannon L. Alder
- Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. – Tina Fey
- A strong woman can also be vulnerable. Just because there’s a crack in your armor, don’t doubt your strength for one moment. – Unknown
- I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion… Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage. – Anne Frank
- I believe the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century. – Hillary Clinton
- I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. – Rebecca West
- There’s something so special about a woman who dominates in a man’s world. It takes a certain grace, strength, intelligence, fearlessness, and the nerve to never take no for an answer. – Rihanna
- Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world. – Hillary Clinton
- We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead. – Beyonce
Women’s empowerment words
- Accomplished
- Adventurous
- Ambitious
- Audacious
- Authentic
- Brave
- Captivating
- Charismatic
- Classy
- Clever
- Compassionate
- Confident
- Consistent
- Courageous
- Creative
- Curious
- Cedicated
- Cetermined
- Driven
- Engaging
- Fearless
- Feisty
- Fierce
- Free
- Graceful
- Heroic
- Honest
- Humble
- Inquisitive
- Inspirational
- Intelligent
- Leader
- Mindful
- Motivated
- Passionate
- Perceptive
- Phenomenal
- Positive
- Powerful
- Purposeful
- Radiant
- Reflective
- Sassy
- Sensational
- Smart
- Soulful
- Spirited
- Strong
- Successful
- Tough
- Unstoppable
- Valuable
- Visionary
- Wise
- Worthy
Woman’s empowerment articles & essays
- Women’s Movements and Feminist Activism
- 5 Powerful Ways Women Can Empower Other Women
- Empowering Women Is Smart Economics
- The Side Of Female Empowerment We Aren’t Talking About Enough
- Women Hold Up Half the Sky: An Essay on Women Empowerment and Leadership
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