Women are brought up to depend on a man and to feel naked and frightened without one. We have been taught to believe that as females we cannot stand … - Colette Dowling

Female physical frailty is not a reality but a myth with an agenda.

If girls could do nothing else in this world, they were supposed to be able to keep their blood from showing.

We have only one real shot at "liberation," and that is to emancipate ourselves from within. It is the thesis of this book that personal, psychological dependency—the deep wish to be taken care of by others—is the chief force holding women down today. I call this "The Cinderella Complex"—a network of largely repressed attitudes and fears that keeps women in a kind of half-light, retreating from the full use of their minds and creativity. Like Cinderella, women today are still waiting for something external to "transform their lives".