Gloria Steinem, In Her Own Words: The Quotes We’ll Keep Coming Back To

Gloria Steinem changed the way generations of women thought about equality, work, aging, ambition and themselves. But behind the aviator glasses was a woman who admitted to insecurity, fear and self-doubt. We remember her through some of the words she left behind.

Gloria Steinem always seemed so sure of herself.

For more than half a century, she was one of the most recognizable faces of the women’s movement, the woman in the aviator glasses challenging assumptions about what women could do, earn, say, choose and become.

But the Gloria behind the icon was more complicated.

She was terrified of public speaking. She struggled with self-esteem. She was insecure about her appearance and said those famous glasses and long hair were partly a way of hiding her face. Inside, she once wrote, she felt like “a plump brunette from Toledo, too tall and much too pudding faced.”

Perhaps that is part of what makes her words so enduring. Steinem wasn’t speaking from some perfect place of certainty. She was working many of these things out herself.

Here are some of the words we’ll keep coming back to.

“Self-esteem isn’t everything. It’s just that there’s nothing without it.”

— Gloria Steinem, quoted by The New York Times

For someone who spent her career encouraging women to recognize their own worth, Steinem was remarkably candid about struggling with hers.

She traced some of that insecurity back to childhood. After her parents divorced when she was 10, she spent years caring for a mother who was seriously unwell. Later, she described herself as a neglected child who had grown up feeling, on some level, that she barely existed.

She also understood something many ambitious women will recognize: achievement doesn’t necessarily cure insecurity. Steinem reflected that even social activism could become a way of avoiding what was going on inside, because external accomplishment couldn’t fill that internal emptiness.

The woman who became synonymous with female confidence had to build some of that confidence herself.

“I was never considered beautiful until I was a [well-known] feminist.”

— The Observer, 2016

There is an irony here that feels painfully familiar.

Steinem was insecure about her looks, yet other people constantly used those same looks to diminish her.

Early in her journalism career, an editor at Life told her he needed a reporter, “not a pretty girl.” Another editor propositioned her. Journalist Gay Talese characterized her as the latest “pretty girl” to arrive in New York pretending to be a writer.

Even her breakthrough undercover investigation at New York’s Playboy Club became part of the problem. Steinem exposed the degrading working conditions endured by its “Bunnies,” only to find the assignment later used by some to dismiss her as frivolous.

In 2016, she talked about the strange shift that happened once she became prominent in the women’s movement. Her appearance became part of the conversation about what a feminist was supposed to look like, and even a reason some people used to question why she wanted equality.

Women are still judged for how they look, then judged again for caring about how they look.

“When we started, there was not even a term for sexual harassment. It was just called life.”

— Gloria Steinem, quoted by The New York Times

It is hard to find a sentence that captures the scale of change Steinem helped bring about more succinctly.

Before women could challenge many of the things happening to them at work and at home, they first needed language for them.

Sexual harassment. Domestic violence. Equal pay. Reproductive rights. The vocabulary that now feels commonplace was part of a much larger shift in how women understood their experiences.

Steinem and the women around her helped name things women had long been expected to tolerate.

There is power in having the words.

“It’s alarming to me that women are still encouraged to blame themselves. No one can do it all.”

— The Observer, 2011

Steinem said this while discussing childcare, flexible working and the stubborn survival of the “superwoman” ideal.

Fifteen years later, it feels uncomfortably current.

Women are still encouraged to solve systemic problems by changing themselves. Work harder. Be more efficient. Set better boundaries. Build more confidence. The burden keeps landing on the woman, when often it is the expectations and structures around her that need to change.

“Do what you love so much you forget what time it is.”

— The Observer, 2016

This was part of Steinem’s advice to a teenage girl. Her broader message was to listen to your own voice and trust your instincts.

There is something particularly interesting about this coming from a woman who spent so much of her life working.

Steinem wrote constantly, organized, traveled, spoke, raised money and helped build institutions. Yet she was also hard on herself about the work she chose.

Looking back, she said she had spent too long doing things she already knew how to do rather than fighting for the stories that felt harder or more important.

“The wasting of time is the thing I worry about the most,” she said. “Because time is all there is.”

And writing? “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”

“Not everybody with a womb has to have a child.”

— Gloria Steinem, speaking at age 82

Steinem remained child-free by choice and, when asked at 82 whether she regretted it, answered: “Not for a millisecond.”

The full quote: “Not everybody with a womb has to have a child, like not everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.”

Her bigger point was about choice. Motherhood, she said, was a wonderful choice. But if everyone has to make that choice, it is no longer a choice.

She thought similarly about marriage for much of her life, fearing it would mean losing her independence. Then, at 66, she married social justice activist David Bale, (fun fact: he was also the father of actor Christian Bale). The marriage lasted until his death three years later.

Most importantly, Gloria Steinem allowed herself to change her mind.

“This is what 40 looks like!”

— Gloria Steinem, on turning 40

When a reporter remarked that Steinem didn’t look 40, she shot back:

“This is what 40 looks like! We’ve been lying for so long, who would know?”

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

— A line popularized by Gloria Steinem

Steinem had a gift for distilling an uncomfortable idea into one sentence.

She didn’t originate the underlying phrase “the truth will set you free,” which long predates her, but she popularized this version and later used it as the title of a 2019 collection of essays.

It also sums up much of what her work did. She told women that things they had been taught were normal weren’t necessarily normal at all. She asked who benefited from the rules everyone took for granted. She made people uncomfortable.

“I feel proud, and I feel mad as hell.”

— The New York Times, 2022

Steinem lived long enough to see changes that would have been almost unimaginable when the modern women’s movement began.

Women gained greater financial independence and legal protections. They entered professions and positions of power from which they had once been largely excluded. Ideas about marriage, motherhood and men’s roles at home shifted dramatically.

And still, in 2022, she told The New York Times:

“I feel proud, and I feel mad as hell. We are still dealing with the same issues.” She was proud of the progress and still angry about how much remained undone.

Keeping the torch

Late in life, people started asking Steinem whether she was “passing the torch” to the next generation.

She had a different idea.

“I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much, and I’m using it to light the torches of others.”

— Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

Gloria Steinem died at 92 after spending more than half a century pushing women to question what they had been told about themselves.

Her influence can be felt in hertelier, too. The belief that women’s experiences deserve to be heard, that naming a problem matters, and that women become stronger when they share what they know with one another runs through so much of what we do.

Steinem knew what it was to doubt herself. To worry about how she looked. To be frightened of speaking up. To wonder whether she was good enough.

And she spoke up anyway.