Gloria Steinem Quotes

If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled.

The point of the feminist movement wasn't simply to set our underwear on fire and muscle into small spaces in the male-dominated workplace, but to create a world where the contribution of both sexes was equally valued and no one's worth was judged on their take-home salary.

Today, unless women gain jobs and athletic scholarships commensurate with their percentage of the population, feminists scream discrimination.

[T]he great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment.

We demand that, in the strange new world that is arising alike upon the man and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are assuming new shapes and new relations, that in this new world we also have our share of honored and socially useful human toil, our full half of the labor of the Children of Women. We demand nothing more than this, and we will take nothing less. That is our ‘Woman’s Right’.

… it is not sufficient to change laws, institutions and customs. It is essential that women acquire ‘a new skin’. This can occur only through a collective effort while women suffer and loathe the oppression of men; it does not follow that her ovaries condemn her to be on her knees for eternity.

To every woman who gave birth, to every citizen and taxpayer, it's our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women of the United States of America!

Feminism is one way of attacking society as it now exists.

Feminism, as it stands, well... stands. It has ground to a halt.

We sought justice because equal pay for equal work is an American value. That fight took me ten years. It took me all the way to the Supreme Court. And, in a 5-4 decision, they stood on the side of those who shortchanged my pay, my overtime, and my retirement just because I am a woman.

It's great that Maryland is tied for having the lowest wage gap between our working men and women of any state in the nation, but there's more work to do to eliminate that gap entirely.

Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.

I think the Women's movement has had a major impact on everybody's lives in our nation and in the world as a whole.

Twenty years later, twenty years after I joined the women's movement, we're still talking about the same issues. We're still talking about reproductive rights for women, and we're still talking about getting equal pay for women. And that's just frustrating.

Women's issues have always been a part of my life. My goal is to bring the word 'feminism' back into the zeitgeist and reframe it.

And I spoke out on women's rights, like equal pay for equal work.

Let the politicians debate equal pay and pursue the folly of a war on women in America.

Some people are surprised that the Republicans are waging a war on women, or that they voted against equal pay for women. I'm not surprised at all. In some ways, it may be a good thing. They're defending the patriarchy, which is a wounded beast! And wounded beasts are always dangerous.

The women's movement is just a symptom of basic changes in the economy that are favoring women.

I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.

Sexism is alive and well! We were saying this forty years ago. I'm an optimist, so I like to think we've progressed in some ways - in Australia, we get equal pay.

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist…. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing

I remember when the feminist movement started. I was in Edmonton. There was no feminist movement in Edmonton.

You don't run a feminist agenda and achieve political power.

What we want is a little money. You men know that you get as much again as women when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have money enough in our own pockets; and maybe you will ask us for money.