GLORIA STEINEM
FEMINIST ICON
In the early part of the
20th century, education
for women catalyzed
empowerment. Then in
mid-century the birthcontrol
pill made further
empowerment possible.
Gloria’s activism found
a foothold in this
evolving context.
“We are talking about a
society in which there will be
no roles other than those
chosen or those earned;
we are talking about
humanism.”
Gloria Steinem,
American icon,
has devoted her
life to empowering women,
encouraging them to make
their own choices in the
roles they play in society.
Even today she remains
the country’s most eloquent,
influential and revered
feminist. In the
early part of the 20th century,
education for women
catalyzed empowerment.
Then in mid-century the
birth-control pill made
further empowerment
possible. Gloria’s activism
found a foothold in this
evolving context.
The daughter of a
Jewish-American father
and a part-German mother,
her childhood was
turbulent. It was marked
by her father’s failing business
and her mother’s failing
health. In 1952, she
was accepted into Smith
College, Massachusetts,
from which she graduated
magna cum laude in political
science. She journeyed
to India on a Chester
Bowles scholarship offered
and enrolled at
Delhi University. She noted
how she felt strangely
at home there. Upon her
return home, she stated virulently that America
was “… an enormous frosted
cupcake in the middle
of millions of starving
people.”
Steinem started her
journalistic career at a
political satire magazine
Help! Soon she was contributing
to Esquire and
the now-defunct Show
magazine. The article that
brought her attention
from the publishing world
was A Bunny’s Tale, an expose
of the Playboy Club
in New York. Steinem
went undercover and
worked as a bunny for a
month to bring the story
to print. Her feelings on
Hefner’s empire were immortalized
through her
famous quote, “A woman
reading Playboy feels a
little like a Jew reading a
Nazi manual.”
New York Times Magazine,
Glamour and Ladies’
Home Journal commissioned
her to write on a
range of articles and she
soon drifted into political
writing. It was at a meeting
of the Redstockings,
a New York liberation
group, called to protest
the abortion hearings of
1968 in Albany, that she
realized that it was the
system and not the individual
that was at fault.
Political activism was now
added to her agenda. Her
first feminist essay, After
Black Power, Women’s Liberation,
created a tremor in the male-dominated American
media.
Steinem’s legacy was
the establishment of Ms.
Magazine in 1971, a powerful
platform for feminism.
Its first issue’s print
run of 300,000 copies sold
out in a week and led to
26,000 subscriptions. She
was instrumental in its recent
move to be part of
the Feminist Majority
Foundation.
Steinem has also been
at the vanguard of the establishment
of foundations
that have impacted millions
of women. In 1971,
she founded, together
with Betty Friedan, Bella
Abzug and Shirley Chisolm,
the National
Women’s Political Caucus
which encouraged women
to run for public office.
She also founded the
Women’s Action Alliance
that mobilized non-white,
non-middle-class women
to fight social and economic
forms of discrimination.
Steinem was the
founding president of the
Ms. Foundation for Women
that builds women’s
power to drive social change
and the Take Our Daughters
to Work, an institution
in America today.
As Steinem once stated,
“If Women’s Lib wins,
perhaps we all do.” She
cleared the way for a whole
generation of women
leaders, scholars, pioneers,
and thinkers.
