"I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to"
About this Quote
The subtext is both empowering and revealing. By treating rights as something you “claim,” she shifts agency onto the individual, implying liberation is partly a matter of nerve and self-respect. That’s a galvanizing message for fans who see in her a self-made global figure who crossed language, class, and industry barriers. But the bite comes from the word “stupid,” which smuggles in a moral hierarchy: women who don’t fight back are not just constrained; they’re culpable. It’s a rhetorically efficient move because it converts a political struggle into a personal litmus test.
Context matters: celebrity feminism often has to perform clarity in a noisy media ecosystem. A sharp binary travels farther than a nuanced diagnosis of social risk, economic dependence, violence, family pressure, or legal barriers that can make “claiming” rights dangerous or impossible. The quote works because it’s combustible - it dares listeners to identify with the “intelligent” camp. It also exposes the limits of empowerment talk when it mistakes survival strategies for consent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Shakira. (2026, January 16). I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/
Chicago Style
Shakira. "I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I always believed that women have rights and that there are some women that are intelligent enough to claim those rights. There are some others that are stupid enough not to." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-always-believed-that-women-have-rights-and-that-130451/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.







