Steinem, Gloria

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Gloria Steinem

BORN: March 25, 1934 • Toledo, Ohio

American social activist, writer

Gloria Steinem is a political activist who became an effective national spokesperson for the women's rights movement in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, a movement frequently referred to as the second wave of feminism. Steinem founded several organizations to promote the cause of women's rights and established the first national women's magazine actually run by women. She had a special ability to present feminist issues to a wide audience.

"We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned, we are really talking about humanism."

An unsettled childhood

Gloria Marie Steinem was born in March 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, at the height of the Great Depression (1929–41), a period of economic downturn in the world that led to high unemployment and much hunger. Her father Jewish American father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer. Her mother, Ruth, was a newspaperwoman. Through much of the year, the Steinems traveled around the United States in their dome-roofed house trailer, buying and selling antiques. They spent summers at their small resort in Clear Lake, Michigan. Gloria spent her first ten years living this nomadic (traveling) lifestyle. Her mother tutored her while on the road.

As an adult, Steinem was proud of her family's political activism. Her paternal (on her father's side) grandmother, Pauline Steinem, had gained notoriety as president of the Ohio Women's Suffrage Association from 1908 to 1911, and was a representative to the 1908 International Council of Women. However, Steinem did not have much exposure to this aspect of the family in her early life.

In the mid-1940s, Gloria's parents divorced. Leo left for California to find work and Gloria went with her ailing mother, who was suffering from severe mental depression, back to Toledo. In her early teens, Gloria cared for her mother while helping to support the family. For the first time in her life, she began attending school on a regular basis. By the time Gloria was fifteen and a senior in high school, her mother had become incapacitated (unable to care for herself) by depression. Her father agreed to care for her mother for a while so Gloria moved to Washington, D.C., to live with a sister who was ten years older while she finished school.

Beginnings of social activism

Upon graduation from high school, Steinem received a scholarship to attend Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Smith is the largest women's college in the United States. She entered college in 1952, majoring in governmental studies. Steinem was also attracted to political activism. She worked for Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson's (1900–1965) presidential campaign in 1952. Steinem graduated with honors from Smith in 1956 as magna cum laude (with high honors). She was also elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

Steinem had become engaged to marry during her senior year at Smith, but broke off the engagement when an opportunity to study political science in India came along. Steinem continued her studies in India for the next two years. There she adopted Indian dress and customs and became interested in India's political issues. Steinem joined nonviolent protests against governmental policies that were strongly prejudiced against certain elements or castes (strict social classes) of Indian society. She also witnessed caste riots in southern India while visiting there. As a result of her experiences, Steinem developed a deep sympathy for the powerless populations in the world. Steinem was a freelance (self-employed) writer for Indian newspapers and joined a group known as the Radical Humanists. The Indian experience vastly broadened Steinem's horizons by showing her the extent of human suffering in parts of the world.

Upon her return to the United States in 1958, Steinem looked for work as a journalist. However, she found that gender prejudice was well established in the profession. Editors seemed to want only male journalists. Finally, in 1960, Steinem was hired as assistant editor for the political satire magazine Help! in New York City. Steinem also began writing freelance articles for various popular publications, including Esquire, New York Times, and Show. Steinem kept her professional life separate from her personal interests. Her articles were about fashion, celebrities, and vacation destinations rather than advocating for social justice.

In the national spotlight

Steinem burst onto the national scene in 1963 when she wrote an investigative article for Show magazine about the opening of the New York City Playboy Club. She wrote about the working conditions of women who worked for the Playboy Club as waitresses wearing skimpy outfits. To gather her information, Steinem applied and was hired as a Playboy waitress. She worked for three weeks. Her article "I Was a Playboy Bunny" attracted national attention for its portrayal of the gender prejudice—including low wages and discrimination—faced by the women working in the clubs. The article was made into a television movie in 1985 called A Bunny's Tale.

Steinem was now a celebrity and could work full time as a freelance writer. She now received more substantial writing assignments. Throughout the 1960s she published a number of pieces on well-known political figures. She also did some script writing for the popular television show That Was the Week That Was in 1964 and 1965. Among the interviews she wrote was one with Playboy founder Hugh Heffner (1926–). In the interview, Steinem debated with Heffner about women's rights and other social issues.

Journalist becomes activist

Throughout the 1960s, Steinem became increasingly committed to political causes including women's rights, racial justice, and world peace. She supported the Civil Rights Movement, antiwar protests against the unpopular Vietnam War (1957–75), and Cesar Chavez's (1927–1993; see entry) United Farm Workers labor union of Latino fieldworkers. As her fame intensified, the media treated Steinem as the outspoken leader of the Women's Liberation Movement. Feminism was reborn in the early 1960s (see box). In her growing public role, she was attracting other public figures to the movement. Steinem also worked on behalf of various political candidates, including the presidential campaign of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), which was cut short by his assassination in June 1968.

Second Wave Feminism

Gloria Steinem became recognized as a leading spokesperson for a revitalized feminist movement in the United States often referred to as the second wave of feminism. The second wave grew in the early 1960s and lasted through the 1980s. Whereas the first wave of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century focused on absolute legal rights such as the right to vote called suffrage, the second wave was concerned with the injustices and inequalities built into society that affected day-to-day life. These included limited job opportunities, political powerlessness, sexual exploitation, and restricted reproductive rights. Women learned how the effects of social mores (well-established customs) reached into every aspect of their personal lives. This awareness of gender prejudice burst into the broader public realm in 1963. The presidential Commission on the Status of Women chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) issued a report emphasizing that gender prejudice reached into every aspect of American life. That same year, author Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a bestseller on gender prejudice in America.

From that beginning of awareness came the following successes in reducing gender prejudice in America. In 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act was signed into law, making gender discrimination in employment illegal. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, which greatly expanded educational opportunities for young women. That same year, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was sent to the states for ratification (approval and passage). In 1966, the National Organization of Women (NOW) was created to promote women's issues. In 1973, the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision legalized abortion. In addition, many prestigious universities that had been male-only, such as the Ivy League schools of Harvard and Yale, became coeducational in the 1960s and 1970s. A major disappointment was handed to feminists in 1982 when state ratification of the ERA fell three states short of the thirty-eight states needed. Steinem's Ms. magazine chronicled these issues for the second wave. The second wave feminists tried to establish a common feminist identity to achieve political solidarity. Their efforts fell short, and the third wave of feminism began in the 1990s, composed of women of color who felt passed by during the second wave.

In 1968, Steinem and Clay Felker (1928–) founded New York magazine. She provided a monthly political column for the magazine called The City Politic while serving as contributing editor. It was also at this time she attended a meeting of a radical feminist group known as the Redstockings. Though there on a writing assignment, Steinem became even more taken by the gender prejudice issues they discussed. She was deeply moved by their personal stories. Increasingly Steinem was not only writing about women's issues but accepting speaking engagements on the topic as well. She was becoming an active member of the movement rather than a journalistic observer.

Ms. magazine

In July 1971, Steinem helped found the National Women's Political Caucus with other activists Betty Friedan (1921–2006), Bella Abzug (1920–1998; see entry), and Shirley Chisolm (1924–2005). The Caucus encouraged women's active participation in the upcoming 1972 presidential election campaign. Also through the Caucus, Steinem found investors to help launch a new magazine that would be dedicated to covering contemporary social issues from the feminist perspective. Steinem had come to realize that only a magazine controlled by women could openly address women's issues.

By late 1971, Steinem had produced the first issue of Ms. magazine. That thirty-page issue appeared in the December 1971 edition of New York magazine. All three hundred thousand copies were sold in just eight days. Ms. magazine was the first national women's magazine run by women. Within five years, it had a circulation of five hundred thousand. As its editor, Steinem's reputation as the national feminist leader was firmly set. Through Ms., she became an influential spokesperson for women's rights issues, including unequal pay and sexual exploitation. However, now she was not just a writer but had the demanding responsibilities of an editor, too.

Involved in national politics

In 1972, Steinem attended the Democratic Party National Convention held in Miami, Florida. She fought to add an abortion rights segment to the party platform (a declaration of guiding principles). Steinem also called public attention to the under-representation of women and racial minorities among the convention delegates. Following the convention, Steinem covered Democratic candidate U.S. senator George McGovern's (1922–) campaign as a journalist.

Throughout the remainder of the 1970s, Steinem continued applying her organizational skills to the women's movement. In 1974, she founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the only national organization for women who are labor union members. Its goal was to improve the working conditions of women. Through 1975, Steinem helped plan the women's agenda for the next Democratic Party National Convention in 1976. In doing so, she relentlessly lobbied, or petitioned, liberal politicians on behalf of women's rights. The Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter (1924–; served 1977–81) won the election.

In 1977, Steinem was a participant at the National Conference of Women held in Houston, Texas. It was the first conference of its kind. The conference's goal was to draw the nation's attention to women's issues. It also served to draw attention to the feminist leadership including Steinem.

Life changes

Well into the 1980s, Steinem continued writing for Ms. magazine and speaking out on women's rights. Her life took a major turn when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. The following year, Ms. magazine was sold to new owners, who showed far less dedication to its publication. The magazine faded out of production over the next few years until reviving in 1991 when Steinem, who recovered her health, returned as consulting editor. The magazine actually went ad-free in 1989, when it was bought from Australian publisher Fairfax by American Feminists. Liberty Media bought the magazine (and Steinem returned to help run it) from American Fems in 1998 and maintained the ad-free policy. But she was not responsible for implementing it. She had long been critical of the gender prejudice and other prejudices expressed by advertising in general. In 2001, Steinem recruited various women as investors known as the Feminist Majority Foundation to purchase the magazine. Steinem remained on the advisory board into the twenty-first century.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem published several books. In 1983, she published a collection of essays in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, in which she recounted twenty years of her earlier experiences and described the lives of other influential women. In 1992, she published Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem that was a self-help book to inspire others. She explained how low self-esteem can influence every aspect of a woman's life. Two years later, she published Moving Beyond Words in which she shared her views on various social topics.

Numerous awards were bestowed upon Steinem. Notably, in 1993 Steinem was elected into the National Women's Hall of Fame in New York. In 1998, she was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame along with Hugh Hefner of Playboy magazine. During the 1990s Steinem encountered more health problems. In 1994, she contracted trigeminal neuralgia, a disorder that causes very sharp facial pain.

Much to the surprise of all her friends, sixty-six-year-old Steinem married South African David Bale (1941–2003), father of actor Christian Bale (1974–), on September 3, 2000. The wedding was at the Oklahoma home of fellow feminist and Cherokee Indian tribal leader Wilma Mankiller (1945–; see entry). Tragically, Bale died only three years later on December 30, 2003, of brain lymphoma (cancer). He was sixty-two years old.

Overcoming personal hardships, Steinem's activism continued into the early twenty-first century. She sought to erase class, race, and sexual prejudice among women and bring several generations of feminists together in a common cause. In 2005, she appeared in the documentary film I Had an Abortion. In it, she described an abortion she had years earlier in London while on her way to study in India. She also had become a member of another political party, the Democratic Socialists of America. Steinem also served on the advisory board of Women's Voices, Women Vote, an organization that seeks to increase the participation of unmarried women in the political process.