I don’t think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

Taken at face value, Lessing is distinguishing between political or legal gains and what she sees as deeper questions of temperament, ethics, or personal development—“character” in the older moral sense. The remark implies skepticism that a collective movement, even one that expands rights and opportunities, necessarily improves individuals’ inner resources (self-knowledge, resilience, responsibility) or the quality of relationships between women and men. In Lessing’s public commentary, she often resisted ideological conformity and was wary of movements becoming dogmatic; read in that light, the line functions less as an anti-women statement than as a critique of what she perceived as feminism’s tendency to substitute slogans for difficult personal and social work. It also invites debate about whether “character” is an appropriate or fair metric for judging liberation movements.