Patricia Ireland

I want to reach young women and to get them involved in the mission of the YWCA, economic empowerment of women and girls, and ending racism.

My answer to those who oppose my appointment as CEO is that this is really a decision of the YWCA. They want to strengthen their grassroots to advocate on behalf of women's and children's empowerment and ending racism.

Violence may be a good focus to organize around, but we have to look at women's lives in our entirety.

I come from a Christian faith. I am not going to give you insight into my particular beliefs.

I want to organize so that women see ourselves as people who are entitled to power, entitled to leadership.

In any grass-roots campaign, building an ongoing base of support is as important as winning the ultimate goal.

I just have that sense this is the reason we got Sandra Day O'Connor on the Court in the first place is because Ronald Reagan was running for President.

When I started law school I was shocked to learn that our legal system traditionally had the man as the head and master of the family. As late as the '70s and '80s when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, states like Louisiana still had a head and master law.

Most of us see Justice O'Connor as something of an icon, although we do not agree with all of her decisions.

Some of us may just, in one-on-one conversations with our family, with our friends, over the back fence with our neighbors, talk about the reality of our lives and realize that we're not alone, that we have a right to be physically safe and emotionally safe in our own homes.

Extremely strong, effective, tenacious, and powerful political networks can be built when you fight losing battles as well as when you win.

We have to stop this violence. We have to make the political nature of the violence clear, that the violence we experience in our own homes is not a personal family matter, it's a public and political problem. It's a way that women are kept in line, kept in our places.