I've yet to be on a campus where most women weren't worrying about some aspect of combining marriage, children, and a career. I've yet to find one where many men were worrying about the same thing.

Gloria Steinem made this observation in the context of her long-running work as a feminist journalist and speaker, especially during the 1970s–1990s when she frequently visited college campuses to discuss women’s rights, workplace equality, and reproductive freedom. The remark reflects what she reported hearing repeatedly in campus conversations and Q&A sessions: young women anticipating a “double bind” between family expectations and professional ambition, while male students were far less likely to frame their futures around the same trade-offs. The quote functions as an on-the-ground snapshot of gendered socialization and institutional expectations in higher education and early career planning.

Steinem contrasts the pervasive “double bind” faced by women—being expected to succeed in education and work while also bearing primary responsibility for marriage and childrearing—with the relative freedom men often have from that same anticipatory anxiety. By framing it as an observation repeated across many campuses, she underscores how structural gender norms reproduce themselves even in spaces associated with progress and opportunity. The quote functions as a critique of unequal social expectations: women are trained to plan their lives around competing roles, while men are less often socialized to see family responsibilities as constraints on ambition. It implicitly calls for cultural and institutional change—shared caregiving, equitable workplace policies, and a redefinition of masculinity that includes domestic responsibility.