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The groundbreaking feminist and acclaimed writer has died aged 92 and leaves behind her a wealth of wit and wisdom
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Books — Guardian staff
Gloria Steinem, the boundary-pushing campaigner and author who spent her life fighting for greater rights for women, has died at the age of 92.
Throughout her career, she was known for her unfiltered honesty and from the 1960s forward, used her words to inspire and bring together women who also wanted to see a change in their lives.
Related: Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92
“Don’t think about making women fit the world – think about making the world fit women.”
“It’s alarming to me that women are still encouraged to blame themselves. No one can do it all.”
“Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just haven’t been a part of history.”
“Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.”
“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.”
“A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.”
“Men should think twice before making widowhood woman’s only path to power.”
“We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls.”
“We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.”
“I always tell younger women: ‘Don’t worry, eventually all your old lovers will be your friends.’”
“A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
“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?”
“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”
“[Abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could!”
“Every economics course ought to start not with production but with reproduction. It is way more important.”
“Listen, honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
“Patriarchy – or whatever you want to call it, the systems that say there’s masculine and feminine and other bullshit – is about controlling reproduction.”
“Politics is just unequal power. Who does the dishes is political. In the politics of commerciality, if you want to put it that way, the way women’s bodies are looked at, we’re supposed to be ornaments not instruments.”
“I never wanted to be a politician or elected person myself, so I loved to work for other women who did – and hope that more girls will do that. The problem is the feeling that we’re divided from politics, that our vote doesn’t count or what we do doesn’t count. In fact, everything we do counts.”
“They won’t take us seriously. We’re just talking wombs.”
“If you’re a woman, all they can think about your relationship with a politician is that you’re either sleeping with him or advising him about clothes.”
“We are the women our parents warned us against, and we are proud.”
“I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life.”
“After feminism, I suddenly realized: not everyone has to live the same way.”
“Either I am invisible, or someone I identify with is invisible, and it makes me so angry.”
“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.”
“Honesty about our age would help. I always try to say my age because I figure it’s a form of coming out.”
“I’m skeptical, but optimistic. I’m not pessimistic because I think pessimism defeats you before you start. I’m skeptical because it’s important to be realistic and use our energies well, but hope is a form of planning.”
Throughout her career, she was known for her unfiltered honesty and from the 1960s forward, used her words to inspire and bring together women who also wanted to see a change in their lives.
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Guardian staff. Published 3 Sept 2026, 01:07 pm.
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