I have me brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
Gloria SteinemRead
This idea of doing it all is the enemy of equality, not the path to do it. It's impossible to do two full-time jobs, and an impossible definition of success is just another way of making women feel like failures... Any definition of success has to include social policies that honor families and men who raise babies as much as women do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Success should include equal recognition for both men and women in family roles, rather than burdening them with unrealistic expectations.
In this quote, Gloria Steinem critiques the societal expectation for women to balance multiple full-time roles while maintaining traditional family responsibilities. She argues that this unrealistic standard of success primarily serves to undermine women's capabilities and contributions, framing it as a call for social policies that recognize and support both men and women equally in raising families and achieving professional success.
Themes
EqualitySuccessFamiliesWomenMen
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for workplace reforms to support parents.
More from Gloria Steinem
All quotes →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 SteinemRead
Age brings a freedom. When you're young, you're much more subject to the idea of what feminine is or how you should look or how you should behave.
Gloria SteinemRead
All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.
Gloria SteinemRead
Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Gloria SteinemRead
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 SteinemRead
Similar quotes
The day will come when men will recognize woman as his peer, not only at the fireside, but in councils of the nation. Then, and not until then, will there be the perfect comradeship, the ideal union between the sexes that shall result in the highest development of the race.
Susan B. AnthonyRead
I believe that never was a country better adapted to produce a great race of women than this Canada of ours, nor a race of women better adapted to make a great country.
Emily MurphyRead
I've said this before, and I'm sure there are people who disagree, but I feel like one of the reasons there aren't a lot more women in stand-up - and there are many more now; it's not parity, but it's getting there - is that women are not socialized to look stupid or silly. They're socialized to be pretty and precious.
Aisha TylerRead
For a female to write about her feelings, and then be portrayed as some clingy, insane, desperate girlfriend in need of making you marry her and have kids with her, I think that's taking something that potentially should be celebrated - a woman writing about her feelings in a confessional way - that's taking it and turning it and twisting it into something that is frankly a little sexist.
Taylor SwiftRead
When women and men can shed an equal quantity of tears in public, that's when we'll have equal power.
Madeleine M. KuninRead
Whether women are better than men I cannot say - but I can say they are certainly no worse.
Golda MeirRead