Daily Inspiration Quote by Gloria Steinem

It’s a warning dressed as a simple piece of advice: if a society only takes women seriously once they’ve buried a husband, something is profoundly broken in the way power gets distributed. Steinem’s line lands because it flips the usual script. Instead of asking women to be patient, resilient, or “strong,” it puts the burden back on the structure that rewards women primarily through proximity to men, then through the tragedy of losing them.

The phrasing “think twice” is doing quiet rhetorical work. It’s not a plea; it’s a threat of consequence, moral and political. Widows have historically been granted a strange, conditional authority: in monarchies, in political dynasties, in social life where a husband’s name functions like a passport. The widow becomes legible because she is seen as having paid a price that “neutralizes” her ambition. She’s safe now: desexualized, unclaimed, less likely to disrupt male status. Steinem is pointing to that bargain, and calling it grotesque.

The subtext is also about how feminism gets caricatured. If the only culturally acceptable route for a woman to lead is to arrive via grief, then women’s agency is being smuggled in under the cover of mourning. That’s not empowerment; it’s a rationing system.

Contextually, the line fits Steinem’s long-standing critique of institutions that grant women power as inheritance, exception, or aftermath, rather than as a normal right. The cynicism is measured, but the indictment is sharp: a culture that needs a death to authorize female authority is confessing its own fear of women alive and autonomous.