Gloria Steinem, a pioneering feminist, journalist, and activist, has been a towering figure in the fight for gender equality for over five decades. Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, Steinem’s impassioned advocacy has reshaped societal perceptions of feminism and women’s rights around the globe. Her insightful words have served as guiding beacons, inspiring generations to challenge ingrained inequalities and strive for a more just and equitable world.
As a co-founder of Ms. magazine and a prominent voice in the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s, Steinem fearlessly tackled issues ranging from reproductive rights to workplace discrimination, consistently advocating for the empowerment of women in all spheres of life. Her eloquent articulation of complex ideas and unwavering dedication to social justice have earned her widespread acclaim as one of the most influential feminist voices of the 20th century. With her sharp wit and profound wisdom, Gloria Steinem continues to inspire individuals worldwide to confront systemic injustices and work towards a future of equality and inclusivity. Here, you will find a collection of Gloria Steinem quotes that encapsulate her enduring legacy and offer timeless insights into the ongoing struggle for gender equality.
Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one. Gloria Steinem
It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate. Gloria Steinem
The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn’t exist in every culture. Gloria Steinem
Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences. Gloria Steinem
A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means. Gloria Steinem
Perfect is boring: Beauty is irregular. Gloria Steinem
The Native American cultures on this continent, most of them, were matrilineal, and some women were the chiefs. Societies were about balance. Gloria Steinem
If you hear a statistic, you will make up a story to go with it, because our brains are organized on narrative. And you may very well make up a wrong story because you only have one fact, which is a statistic. Gloria Steinem
The only thing I can’t stand is discomfort. Gloria Steinem
There is nothing more fundamental than the idea that the government does not have a right to decide when and whether we have children. Gloria Steinem
It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous. Gloria Steinem
Perfectionism attaches to what is valued in the culture. Gloria Steinem
The state of female artists is very good. But the very definition of art has been biased in that ‘art’ was what men did in a European tradition and ‘crafts’ were what women and natives did. But it’s actually all the same. Gloria Steinem
After feminism, I suddenly realised: not everyone has to live the same way. Imagine that! Gloria Steinem
There’s no shortage of great young activists. Gloria Steinem
Men may feel just disempowered by intimacy, by being close to a woman, and also by feeling the tender feelings that they’re ashamed of. Gloria Steinem
A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after. Gloria Steinem
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. Gloria Steinem
Law and justice are not always the same. Gloria Steinem
Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described – and will be, after our deaths – by each of the family members who believe they know us. Gloria Steinem
The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. There are many ways of supporting that, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all caregiving and making that amount tax deductible. Gloria Steinem
I’m lucky I don’t make my living in front of the camera. Gloria Steinem
We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach. Gloria Steinem
What I’ve learned is that unless it’s an emergency, like a fire or brain surgery, hierarchy is not necessary and may be damaging. If you have a hierarchy, you’re repeating the strengths and weaknesses of one person without allowing for the accumulative strength of a group. Gloria Steinem
Logic is in the eye of the logician. Gloria Steinem
The thing about aging is all your old lovers, pretty much if they were really friends, become your family. It’s great. You have those terrible feelings of possessiveness and uncertainty go out the window. You have what you shared. You know you would help each other in times of trouble no matter what. Gloria Steinem
The electoral system is not where change starts – it usually starts in communities and from the bottom up – but it is where change can be stopped. Gloria Steinem
I’ve yet to be on a campus where most women weren’t worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I’ve yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing. Gloria Steinem
What has the women’s movement learned from Geraldine Ferraro’s candidacy for vice president? Never get married. Gloria Steinem
If you say, I’m for equal pay, that’s a reform. But if you say. I’m a feminist, that’s a transformation of society. Gloria Steinem
If women have young children, they are one man away from welfare. Gloria Steinem
The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving. Gloria Steinem
You can compel fear. You can even make someone feel they’re in love if they’re isolated and dependent for long enough. But laughter is free. Gloria Steinem
Obviously there is no such thing as race, and in many ways, sex is a continuum, not a binary. So it doesn’t make sense to label people in that way. Gloria Steinem
Most women are one man away from welfare. Gloria Steinem
Unless we include a job as part of every citizen’s right to autonomy and personal fulfillment, women will continue to be vulnerable to someone else’s idea of what need is. Gloria Steinem
We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth. Gloria Steinem
Pop culture shapes our ideas of what is normal and what our dreams can be and what our roles are. Politics, of course, decides how the power and the money in the country is distributed. Both are equally important, and each affects the other. Gloria Steinem
Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before. Gloria Steinem
Work is valued by the social value of the worker. Gloria Steinem
The question of whether one has one’s own political power or goes to work for someone else is not only a feminist question. Gloria Steinem
If you ask men about their body image, they will tell you they look better than they do. And if you ask a woman, she’ll tell you she looks worse. Gloria Steinem
Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, ‘Just wait.’ Gloria Steinem
The mark, to me, of a constructive argument is one that looks at a specific problem and says, ‘What shall we do about this?’ And a nonconstructive one is one that tries to label people. Gloria Steinem
Nothing changes the gender equation more significantly than women’s economic freedom. Gloria Steinem
If you’re going to have a male-dominant system, to maintain the system, you have to teach men to dominate. Gloria Steinem
Whatever each individual woman is facing – only she knows her biggest challenge. Gloria Steinem
I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, ‘Beware: Deconstruction Ahead.’ Gloria Steinem
I think if women are visible in the media, truly visible, in an empowered role, it empowers us to be more visible in any area of our lives. Gloria Steinem
Women’s progress has been a collective effort. Gloria Steinem
To say ‘radical feminist’ is only a way of indicating that I believe the sexual caste system is a root of race and class and other divisions. Gloria Steinem
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? Gloria Steinem
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. Gloria Steinem
Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women – from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace. Gloria Steinem
As long as working women also have to do the work of child and family care at home, they will have two jobs instead of one. Perhaps more important, children will grow up thinking that only women can be loving and nurturing, and men cannot. Gloria Steinem
For twenty years, not a week went by when I wasn’t on a plane. Gloria Steinem
The Miss America Pageant reinforces a belief that women are merely how they look and how they please. Gloria Steinem
The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party. Gloria Steinem
Being misunderstood by people whose opinions you value is absolutely the most painful. Gloria Steinem
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. Gloria Steinem
The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen’s skin. Gloria Steinem
Society certainly encourages women to be victims in every way. Gloria Steinem
We’re never going to have democratic countries or peaceful countries until we have democratic or peaceful families. Gloria Steinem
Like so many women, I was living out the unlived life of my mother – so I wouldn’t be her. But the price I paid was that I distanced myself internally. Gloria Steinem
I was never against marriage per se. Before feminism, I didn’t think you had any choice. In fact, for a long time I always assumed I would get married. I just didn’t see any marriages I wanted to emulate, so I kept putting it off. Gloria Steinem
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. Gloria Steinem
These poor women in academia have to talk this silly language that nobody can understand in order to be accepted, they think. Gloria Steinem
All women, and men of color – we were owned like tables and chairs. We spent a hundred years getting a legal identity as human beings. That’s a big thing. Gloria Steinem
America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people. Gloria Steinem
Because I have work to care about, it is possible that I may be less difficult to get along with than other women when the double chins start to form. Gloria Steinem
What’s so valuable about HBO is they tell stories. We learn from stories. Gloria Steinem
We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs. Gloria Steinem
No man can call himself liberal, or radical, or even a conservative advocate of fair play, if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home, or in the office. Gloria Steinem
There’s no greater gift than thinking that you had some impact on the world, for the better. Gloria Steinem
Anger is energising. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward. Gloria Steinem
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. Gloria Steinem
In my own mind, I am still a fat brunette from Toledo, and I always will be. Gloria Steinem
Most women’s magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers. Gloria Steinem
I was the first woman to speak ever at the National Press Club, and they gave me a necktie. Gloria Steinem
I think Hefner himself wants to go down in history as a person of sophistication and glamour. But the last person I would want to go down in history as is Hugh Hefner. Gloria Steinem
Gerda Lerner was fierce, brilliant and unique. She lived history by her bravery, restored history by her scholarship, and democratized its study by her activism. Gloria Steinem
Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life. Gloria Steinem
Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father. Gloria Steinem
For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable. Gloria Steinem
I didn’t go to school a full year until I was 11 or 12, so I lived in books. I really was an observer of life. Gloria Steinem
I’d like to be played as a child by Natalie Wood. I’d have some romantic scenes as Audrey Hepburn and have gritty black-and-white scenes as Patricia Neal. Gloria Steinem
Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie. Gloria Steinem
Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself. Gloria Steinem
The most hurtful thing is not what comes from our adversaries, it’s what comes from our friends. Gloria Steinem
When I was little, I knew that I was not adopted, but I actually imagined and hoped that I was – and that my real parents were going to come get me. Gloria Steinem
If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot? Gloria Steinem
God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back. Gloria Steinem
People start to talk about post-racist, post-feminist. What does that mean? We’re clearly not post either. Would you say post-democracy? Clearly we haven’t reached true democracy yet. Gloria Steinem
If you are not a feminist in love, you fail to recognise someone who does not love you. Feminism makes love easier. Otherwise, there is the danger of feeling romantically drawn to someone who does not see you as an equal. Gloria Steinem
Until the masculine role is humanized, women will tend to be much better at solving dangerous conflicts. Gloria Steinem
Men should think twice before making widow hood woman’s only path to power. Gloria Steinem
The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary. Gloria Steinem
If technology and medicine are used by women to have children or not to have children or to have healthier children – that’s one thing. But if it’s used to say, ‘You’re not a real woman unless you have a child; therefore, take all these dangerous hormones and have one at 54,’ then it’s another story. Gloria Steinem
I will no longer be referred to as Miss Steinem of Ms. magazine. Gloria Steinem