"I have to last that long to meet my current deadlines even," she says. A leader of the women's movement for 50 years, at 82 she is "busier than I've ever been - maybe people think I'm going to die".

On her to-do list: help get Hillary Clinton elected as US president ("I think she can win and she has to win"); introduce a Vice series of documentaries on violence against women around the world; consult on an HBO TV series about Ms, the feminist magazine she co-founded in the '70s; work on a one-woman theatre show in which actor Kathy Najimy plays Steinem and the real Steinem joins in for an audience Q&A.

Most of all she wants more time to write a book she began with the late Cherokee Nation chief, Wilma Mankiller, about lessons we can learn from "original cultures", such as picturing society as a circle rather than a pyramid - "it's not about hierarchy, it's about connection".

In a community in Ghana, Steinem says, "when someone does an anti-social destructive thing they punish them with isolation. But when that person is brought into society again, there's a long ritual amount of time when everyone tells them every good thing they ever did.

"That's like an aha moment to me, because we could do that."

Among her cascading ideas is that screening American police recruits for domestic violence - which they commit at four times the normal rate - could also help reduce their racist and other "superiority crimes".

"I see something and think if we did this, maybe we could fix that," she says. "I get hooked."

Even in Australia this week - her first visit in 20 years – Steinem is writing an extra chapter for a new edition of her 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road.

She will fill Sydney Town Hall twice, signing thousands of books.

Until her 50s Steinem lived a nomadic life like her restless father, and although she now owns an apartment in New York she still travels more than half the year, speaking and listening to other people's stories.

Steinem exudes calm strength and says she does little to keep healthy except avoid drink and drugs. Her only addiction is "I'm a hopeaholic".

Deflecting thanks for what she has achieved for women, she says, "No, we were all in this together".

But she snaps at the idea that for a while young women rejected feminism: "That's utter bullshit.

"Part of the problem is there were few of us older women, and people were abandoned even by their families for what they were doing. Now they're trying to exact gratitude from young women, which is so unfair.

"It's not the fault of young women what happened before, and gratitude never radicalised anyone. I didn't walk around saying thank you for the vote; I got mad because of what happened to me."

She has a "weird feeling that I've been waiting for some of my friends to be born. I feel so in tune with the essence of women in their 20s and 30s."

There's still much to be done, she says, with women juggling work and motherhood, campus sexual assault, student debt, reduced income; and women over 60 the poorest demographic group in the US.

Feminism, she says, "is never just about women".

Determined that Donald Trump will not be president, she plans to travel with a busload of women to a crucial swing state such as Florida or Colorado, and talk to groups, especially Republican and independent women.

"Our Republican Party has become a party of crazy people," she says. "But unfortunately the approach to Republican women is 'How could you be Republican?', which of course nobody is going to respond to.

"Instead we just say the truth, which is they didn't leave the Republican Party, the party left them. Let's talk about issues and what's good for us."

Gloria Steinem speaks at these Sydney Writers' Festival events:

On the Road, Thursday, May 19, 3pm, Roslyn Packer Theatre

Life on the Road, Friday, May 20, 6.15pm (sold out) and Saturday, May 21, 3pm, Sydney Town Hall

Why Women Should Rule the World, Saturday, May 21, 10am, Roslyn Packer Theatre.