Patricia Arquette, who won the Best Supporting Actress award at last night’s Oscars, is feeling the heat this morning. The Boyhood actress, who received a standing ovation from fellow nominee Meryl Streep as she called for equality for women, didn’t get the same reaction from fans on Twitter.

Backstage she went on to elaborate further on her comments, arguing that it’s time people of colour and the LGBTI community to fight for women’s rights, like women have fought for theirs.

“It is time for women – equal means equal. And the truth is, the older women get, the less money they make. The more children… the highest percentage of children living in poverty are female-headed households.

And it’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t… one of those Superior Court justices said two years ago in a law speech at a university ‘We don’t have equal rights for women in America and we don’t because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women’.

So the truth is, even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America, right under the surface, there are huge issues that are applied that really do affect women. And it’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of colour that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

Patricia Arquette

The reason for the criticism, is that many believe she ignored the unique struggles of women who are from ethnic minorities and LGBT with her comments, especially when she then went on to ask for gay people and people of colour to join the fight.

What she failed to recognise is this is a battle many are already facing, but I guess she did bring the debate to table and shine a massive spotlight on something that needs to be said.

Women still get the rough deal, be they gay, bi, ethnic, mothers, grandmothers, daughters… young or old. It is still a tough society to live in, and as a collective we all need to fight as one. Its hard to make changes as individuals, but unified we can do anything.