[michelej1]

The thing about Stevie is, lest we forget, she was born in 1948 and some of her ideas are from that era. But I think she has evolved some over the years. There's no question that she supports other women and believes in shaping the independence of those who come after her. I think Sheryl, Vanessa and Taylor Swift are all examples of that. But sometimes with these people (Christine too) you just have to follow the pattern of equality they set with their LIVES and ignore some of their words, because the words sometimes don't conform to their achievements. And Stevie does -- or maybe she's outgrowing it now, but she did -- have a tendency to want women to be feminine, because she felt that helped them advance without challenge.

“I tend to get dressed up every single night so that everybody knows that when I walk in that this is serious. I don’t ever go to the studio in jeans and tennis shoes, ever. I always dress up because I know that if I walk in there, even if I’m ten pounds overweight, and I’m dressed up and I look pretty, then everyone in that room says ‘wow, she must have really thought she was going somewhere cause look at the rest of all of you.’ And I insist upon it with the girls too because if you don’t look like you care after these guys have been around you for a couple of months you are going to become like an old shoe. I am never going to become like an old shoe to any of the men in my life, ever. So they are always going to take me serious on that basis and it’s unfortunate that you have to do that, it’s a big game, but it works.”

"It says in the Highwayman, ‘she considers slowing down,' but then he would never win. She purposely lets him win because it’s easier to let him win. She gets a lot further if she just lets him win. And I learned that a long time ago if I was going to be accepted as anything, as a songwriter, as a person, as anything that I would have to be very quiet, unaggressive around them, feminine and trick them to death. And it worked. See I love them and I respect them so much, and they are, as far as I’m concerned the greatest songwriters and all I ever wanted from them was a pat on the back saying ‘not bad Stevie.'”

Or saying that men should know women are strong:

"And maybe if they fed that a little bit, all of this women's liberation would go away and everybody would be happy. If men gave us just a little more credit and an extra hug and said, "Good job," that would solve a lot of it. Women want to be beautiful, sweet, feminine and loving. But they also want to be thought of as intelligent and necessary. And even if your woman is not all those things, you should want her to feel good about herself, to believe in herself."

"I lived in a world of men. I had very few girlfriends. I mean Lindsey and I from the very beginning lived in a room maybe this size with his ten or eleven friends and me. And in order to be accepted as anything else other than as Lindsey's pretty girlfriend, the one who makes coffee for us, or pours us a glass of wine, or makes sure we have food if we are hungry, you know the one who keeps this place looking really nice. In order for me to be accepted by them as anything more than that, I had to be very careful, walk very quietly, say very little, and observe, and so I did. And that went right straight into Fleetwood Mac, I did the same thing. And that went straight into meeting The Eagles and all the other bands that I met, or the men in the bands that I met, that in order to be accepted as a musician, singer, songwriter, poet, I couldn't say too much and if I did I would instantly get thrown out.