PG: When did you start thinking seriously about women’s equality?

RBG: When I was working on a book about civil procedure in Sweden, in 1962 and ’63.

GS: For which she learned Swedish. Is that not incredible?

RBG: Between 20 and 25 percent of the law students in Sweden were women. And there were women on the bench. I went to one proceeding in Stockholm where the presiding judge was eight months pregnant. There was also a journalist who wrote a column in the Swedish daily paper: “Why should women have two jobs, and men only one?” Inflation was high, and two incomes were often needed. But it was the woman who was expected to buy the kids new shoes and have dinner on the table at 7. I remember listening to those conversations. It was that same summer I read “The Second Sex.”

GS: For me, an important point came when I was living in India, because of the Gandhian movement and the role of women in it. But I was slow to see how it applied here. I couldn’t quite bridge that gap until the late ’60s.

PG: How did people respond when you first raised concerns about equality for women?

GS: They were either disinterested or said it was impossible. My classic experience was an editor who said, “O.K., you can publish an article saying women are equal.” But right next to it, he would publish an article that said that they weren’t — to be objective.

RBG: The concern was that if a woman was doing gender equality, her chances of making it to tenure in the law school were diminished. It was considered frivolous.

GS: I remember covering a hearing in Albany about liberalizing the abortion laws. This was before Roe v. Wade. And they invited to testify 14 men and one nun. A group of women said: “Wait a minute. Let’s have our own testimony from women who had this experience.” That was my epiphany. But when I wrote about it, my friends at New York magazine, good people, took me aside and said: “You’ve worked so hard to be taken seriously. Don’t get involved with these crazy women.”