Why Gloria Steinem Says She and Jennifer Aniston Are in ‘Deep Sh*t’
GS: In a community center in India once, somebody said, ‘aren’t you sorry you don’t have children?’ And I thought if I answer truthfully, I will lose them, because it was a very different culture and a different place. And then I thought what’s the point of not answering truthfully? So I told them the truth — I said not for a millisecond. And they all applauded [laughs]. Because they’re living in a culture where they had to have children.
JA: In the President’s State of the Union speech recently, it was very exciting to hear him talk about equal pay for women. Do you think that it is a true priority or that he will be able to move the dial on that issue?
GS: It’s sort of up to us as much as it is to him. I was grateful to hear him say it in a speech and he also talked about Gay and Lesbian and Transgender issues. No president has ever done that before. But I think that we have to demand it. We have to say it. Men have to say you’re not paying this woman equally, so I’m leaving. We all have to work on it.
We also have to understand that equal pay for women is not just for women — it would be the greatest economic stimulus this country could possibly have. If you just paid women equally to men for the work we’re already doing, it would be $200 billion more a year into the economy. Women are not going to put it in a Swiss bank account. They are going to spend it. It’s going to create jobs. But when you hear about economic stimulus, you hear about rescuing crooked bankers. You don’t hear about equal pay for women.
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