Gloria Steinem Quotes

I am not prepared to accept the economics of a housewife.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family. But here again, because there is nothing to sell, there is a very general disposition to regard a married woman's work as no work at all, and to take it as a matter of course that she should not be paid for it.

You have to remember: the wife been home all day cleaning asses and feeding faces. Sometimes the opposite.

Do you know how hard it is to make a home?... That's something that a woman does from inside herself. You do it in the face of all sorts of opposition. Husbands are very appreciative when it works out well. But they're not that anxious to help. It's understandable. They don't know how.

Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a 'second shift' at home.

She thought about how marvelous is would be to have a wife keeping the house in order, the meals on the table. At the same time it seemed ridiculously unfair that she could never have a wife. In fact, if she married, she would be expected to be the wife.

A housewife deserves to be honored as much as a woman who earns her living in the marketplace. I consider bringing up children a responsible job. In fact, being a good housewife seems to me a much tougher job than going to the office and getting paid for it.

...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?

Each home has been reduced to the bare essentials -- to barer essentials than most primitive people would consider possible. Only one woman's hands to feed the baby, answer the telephone, turn off the gas under the pot that is boiling over, soothe the older child who has broken a toy, and open both doors at once. She is a nutritionist, a child psychologist, an engineer, a production manager, an expert buyer, all in one. Her husband sees her as free to plan her own time, and envies her; she sees him as having regular hours and envies him.

All work and no pay makes a housewife.

If a guy works, and he has children, it's good, and he doesn't feel the same guilt about not being there for the children as a woman would. With a woman, there's that pull: 'Oh, I should be home,' when she's at work, and 'Oh, I should be at work,' when she's at home.

Homemaking is whatever you make of it. Every day brings satisfaction along with some work which may be frustrating, routine, and unchallenging. But it is the same in the law office, the dispensary, the laboratory, or the store. There is, however, no more important job than homemaking.

When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could.

I don't usually say 'working mom' because I think all moms are working moms. I feel like that diminishes moms. People should say 'working dad' as opposed to working moms.

Women work and feel like they have to take care of so many details. Sometimes they don't get much help from their husbands.

For years, I was 'just' a stay at home mum and wife - which, by the way, is harder than any other job I've ever had.

It makes me angry to think that . . . female sanitation workers will spend their days doing a job most of their co-workers think they can't handle, and then they will go home and do another job most of their co-workers don't want.

A woman's place is in the home. Why should she go out and take away a workingman's pay instead of staying home and stealing out of his jacket like a good wife.

My husband taught me housekeeping; when I divorce I keep the house.

I am a working woman with a secret life: I keep house.

Many husbands today pitch in to help with household chores - it's called partnership.

In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own.

I never do the dishes, because my husband has an affinity for it. And I'm also not allowed to touch the coffeemaker.

Men have still not realized that letting women do so much of the work for so little reward makes a man in the house an expensive luxury rather than a necessity.