"Hillary's bravery and smarts under fire in the last campaign kind of changed the molecules in the air, so that people can now imagine a female chief of state," Steinem said. "I didn't think she could win the last time. But I think a woman might be able to win next time."

Female Power

Steinem said she wasn't surprised a black man achieved the presidency before a woman. The U.S. is far behind almost every democracy in terms of elevating women to positions of power, she said. Europe, for instance, has seen Margaret Thatcher running Britain and Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany.

And corporate boards, she said, are more likely to include a man of color before a woman of any race "because his masculinity is affirming for the guys."

"Most children, boys and girls, are still raised by women almost exclusively and that means we associate female power with childhood," Steinem said. "And so men, who don't have their own example to the contrary, associate female power with childhood and feel regressed by it. The last time they saw a powerful woman, they were 8."

Gender balance may be best achieved by reshaping traditional roles, beginning with mothers and fathers equally participating in child-rearing, Steinem said. Businesses and governments can help by adopting family-friendly policies, such as offering day care and maternity and paternity leave, which she said should be called "parental" leave.

"It's important that it be seen not just as 'maternity' because otherwise it will be seen as a cost of employing women," Steinem said. "And men won't ever get to know their arriving babies, either."

Traditional gender roles are behind the assumption that "one group eats and the other cooks," she said. "It is the root of the whole idea that we are ranked instead of linked."

Steinem is the subject of an HBO documentary released in August, Gloria: In Her Own Words, and is working on a book about her more than 30 years as a feminist organizer, "Road to the Heart: America As if Everyone Mattered."

"Sometimes people say to me, at my age, well aren't you interested in something other than women's issues?" she said. "And I say 'show me one. Show me one that isn't transformed by including both halves of the population.'"