It used to be said that this country was a child-centered one. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children have been our lowest priority, both in economic and emotional spending.
Gloria SteinemSex and race, because they are easy and visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.
Gloria SteinemYou're a unique person. You should do what you're suited to do. We all should. It's the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It's external.
Gloria SteinemWe need to return and go forward to the understanding that there is God in all living things, not more in men than women, and not more in humans than in nature. To believe otherwise is only an excuse for dominating women and nature.
Gloria SteinemWe are still in various kinds of patriarchal systems. The very definition of patriarchy is that men control women as the means of reproduction, so the idea that a woman's main role is to have children often means society wants more workers, more soldiers. The idea that how many children we have should be controlled by the family, the church, the nation - by anyone but women themselves - is still very deep and very strong.
Gloria Steinem