We'll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the

In the words of Gloria Steinem—“We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.”—there resounds a challenge to the very order of society. She reveals the imbalance of a world where power, when wielded by women, is diminished or mocked, while wealth, bound tightly to men, is exalted as strength. Until these twin distortions are corrected, equality remains a mirage. Her words call for a breaking of chains—chains forged not of iron, but of ideas handed down through centuries.

The ancients themselves knew this tension. In Athens, wisdom sat on the lips of women like Diotima, yet their voices were silenced in public life. Wealth and property belonged to men, while women were relegated to the home. Power, when women dared to touch it, was branded as dangerous or unnatural. Steinem unmasks this ancient pattern still alive in modern times: that power in women is treated as weakness, and wealth in men is mistaken for virtue.

There is also here a deeper wisdom: that power and wealth cannot be separated. Whoever controls wealth commands the laws, shapes the culture, and defines what power looks like. Thus, as long as wealth remains gendered—hoarded in the hands of men—then power in women will always be seen through distorted eyes, lessened, feminized, or stripped of its rightful dignity. To heal one imbalance, the other must be healed first.

History offers its witnesses. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, held political brilliance and charisma, yet her power was framed by Roman historians not as wisdom, but as seduction. Why? Because wealth and the means to define history lay in the hands of men, and so her authority was rewritten to belittle her. In contrast, men who wielded wealth—Caesar, Antony, Augustus—were praised as mighty. Thus we see how the masculinity of wealth distorts the perception of women’s power across ages.

Thus, let this lesson endure: equality is not achieved by permitting women into halls of power still defined by men’s wealth. It comes only when we reshape both—when wealth itself is freed from its masculine cage, and power in women is honored as equal, untainted by stereotype. Steinem’s words remind us that liberation is a double task: to unshackle women from diminished power, and to unshackle humanity from the belief that wealth and strength belong only to men.