Leadership Quote by Agnes Macphail

Macphail’s line lands like a refusal to negotiate with polite injustice. “I want for myself” is almost disarming in its candor, a deliberate move in a political culture that expected women to plead altruistically rather than claim power personally. She starts with the “I” to expose the double standard: men are allowed self-interest as a civic virtue; women, historically, are asked to earn rights by proving they’ll be selfless with them. Macphail won’t play that game.

The pivot - “what I want for other women” - turns the statement from private ambition into collective ethic. It’s a rhetorical bridge between individual dignity and movement politics: if a right is legitimate for one woman, it must be non-negotiable for all women. There’s also a quiet rebuke embedded here to the era’s incrementalism and “special protections” that often smuggled in control. She’s not asking for exceptions, accommodations, or chivalry. She’s demanding parity.

“Absolute equality” is the clincher, and it’s intentionally uncompromising. Not “greater opportunity,” not “a fair chance,” not “respect.” Absolute is a challenge to the entire architecture of public life that treated women as dependents or auxiliaries. Coming from a politician in early 20th-century Canada - when women’s voting rights were new, uneven, and racially exclusionary - the phrase reads as both aspiration and indictment. It makes the listener confront how far the system is from anything resembling “absolute,” and how absurd it is to ask women to be grateful for partial citizenship.