Leadership Quote by Agnes Macphail

Macphail skewers a whole ideology with the flick of a halo. The "angel of the home" wasn’t a compliment in her mouth; it was a trap dressed up as virtue, a way to turn women into moral mascots for domestic labor and political silence. By refusing the role outright, she rejects the bargain that says women can have respectability if they surrender power.

Her phrasing is shrewdly tactical. "I want for myself what I want for other women" links personal desire to collective politics, denying critics the chance to dismiss her as merely ambitious or "unfeminine". Then she lands the core demand: "absolute equality". No soft-focus rhetoric about harmony between the sexes, no incrementalism. Equality is not the reward for good behavior; it’s the precondition for any sincere talk about roles, virtues, or family.

The kicker is the final clause: "After that is secured, then men and women can take turns being angels". It’s a joke with teeth, exposing how gendered ideals are always asymmetrical. If being an "angel" is so noble, why is it assigned almost exclusively to women, and why does it map so neatly onto unpaid work and self-erasure? Her "take turns" reframes domestic care as shared civic responsibility rather than feminine destiny.

In the context of early 20th-century Canadian politics - when women were still fighting for full legal and economic personhood - Macphail’s line reads like a refusal to let equality be postponed behind sentimental mythmaking. It demands rights first, romance later.