She herself did not have the awakening of feminist consciousness until she was about 35 years old - in 1969, as a reporter, she participated in a "vocal meeting" where women openly talked about their illegal abortion experiences.
She led protests, hosted seminars to raise women's self-awareness, wrote articles, gave speeches, and participated in political organizing work; she helped establish crisis centers to provide assistance to rape victims and shelters for women experiencing domestic violence; and she founded many groups that advocated for women's rights and raised funds for related causes.
She and a group of feminists even boldly founded a publication that went against traditional women's magazines. Ms. magazine, founded in 1971, was the first coated paper magazine in the United States founded, owned and operated by women. It aimed to guide the growing awareness of female empowerment and eliminate sexist concepts permeating the culture.
“When we started, there wasn’t even a word ‘sexual harassment,’” Steinem often said. “Back then it was just called life.”
She was extremely energetic and was still writing articles and giving speeches well into her nineties. She is the author of more than a dozen major works of nonfiction; the latest, "An Unexpected Life," is due out this month.
Steinem defies the stereotype of women's liberation supporters as unsexy, humorless and undateable. She had a glittering social life and had romances with a number of charismatic men, including director Mike Nichols and real estate and publishing tycoon Mort Zuckerman. She called Franklin Thomas, the groundbreaking president of the Ford Foundation, "the love of her life."
But she refused marriage (most of the time) and was childless, a choice she says she has never regretted.
Her lifestyle and uncompromising beliefs have made her controversial, beloved by liberals (though not always) and demonized (consistently) by conservatives.
While the male-dominated press almost unanimously embraced Steinem as the spokesperson for the feminist movement (to the displeasure of many other leaders in the movement and the vehemently anti-hierarchical Steinem herself), it simultaneously marginalized her in a condescending manner, treating her as a rebel with a pretty face.
Steinem, who grew up in the Midwest, began his career as a freelance writer in 1960 in New York. When she first looked for a job in New York, an editor at Life magazine turned her down. "We want reporters," he told her, "not pretty girls."
She made a name for herself in 1963 with “A Bunny’s Tale,” a witty investigative piece she wrote for Show magazine. She donned a corset that was too small and worked undercover as a bunny waitress at the Playboy Club in New York. Her articles have been praised for exposing the humiliating working conditions in that male fantasy cocoon. But she once regretted writing this article because some people used it to belittle her as a frivolous and superficial person.
By 1968, she was co-founder of New York magazine. She found her voice by writing a monthly political column, The City Politic.
Her column eventually led her down the path of political advocacy. She marched with United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez. Chavez was once highly respected, but reports this year emerged that he had sexually assaulted women. She also served as treasurer of the Angela Davis Legal Defense Fund. Davis, a radical black feminist, was incarcerated awaiting trial for murder but was later acquitted. In 1969, Steinem supported Norman Mailer's campaign for mayor of New York City, which he ultimately lost.
It was also there that she was deeply moved to embrace feminism while reporting on a group of women in Greenwich Village discussing their experiences with illegal abortions. She was outraged that these women were being treated like criminals. Steinem herself secretly underwent an abortion in the UK in 1957, after which she wrote her first openly feminist article, entitled “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”.
Her article was published at a time when the women's movement sparked by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) was gaining momentum.
In 1971, a powerful feminist group—including Friedan, Steinem, New York Democratic Reps. Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm, and prominent Republican activist Jill Rackelshaus, among others—founded the National Women's Political Caucus to promote the Equal Rights Amendment and elect women to public office.
In December 1971, Ms. magazine was launched as an insert in the year-end issue of New York magazine, thanks to the funding and promotion of editor Clay Felker. In January 1972, with Felker's renewed support, the first independently released full-length version was released.
The magazine attracted many well-known writers, including Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison and Vivian Gornick. It focuses on a wide range of issues, including sisterhood among women, gender-neutral parenting, wives experiencing domestic violence, and maternity leave. It also rates political candidates based on their stance on issues that women care about.
For a while, Ms. was doing pretty well. But the growing women's movement gradually split into different factions and encountered backlash from society. There were also divisions within the magazine. Some more radical feminists, as well as some women of color, thought the magazine was too tepid and not inclusive enough.
Gloria Marie Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Leo Steinem and Ruth Nuneweiler. Her father (whom she loved dearly) was a traveling antiques dealer, a man full of dreams but penniless.
For years, the family lived every summer in rural southern Michigan. In the fall, they hauled their RV to warmer climates. Steinem had lived a wandering life since he was a child, and it was not until the sixth grade that he attended a full year of formal schooling for the first time. She said she learned to read from street signs on the highway, and then she dove into the books.
Her mother was one of the first female reporters and editors at The Blade of Toledo. She suffered a nervous breakdown, became dependent on a sedative, and spent two years in a nursing home, all before Gloria was born.
When Gloria was about 10 years old, her parents divorced and her older sister, Susanna, went to school at Smith College in Massachusetts. Gloria and her mother moved into an abandoned farmhouse in East Toledo where her mother had lived earlier. Gloria's life became dominated by caring for her mother.
She cared for Ruth for seven years, until her senior year of high school. At that time, they sold their house and saved the money for Gloria's college tuition. Gloria spent her last year of high school with her sister in Washington, D.C., while Ruth went to California to be cared for by her ex-husband.
Gloria followed in her sister's footsteps and attended Smith College, where she majored in political science. In 1956, she graduated magna cum laude and became a member of the Phi Tau Phi Honor Society.
During her senior year, Steinem planned to marry her boyfriend, but later changed her mind. She left her engagement ring under her fiancé's pillow and "ran away," as she put it, traveling to India in early 1957.
En route, she discovered she was pregnant while waiting for a visa in London. She managed to abort the child.
At a time when India had been independent for less than a decade, Steinem traveled to India, attracted by the political legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. She won a Chester Bowles Asia Scholarship to study there, but she soon dropped the course. Dressed in a sari, she trekked across southern India with Gandhi's followers, gaining experience in "talking circles" and grassroots mobilization.
After returning to the United States, she spent a year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she served as director of the Independent Research Service. This is a non-profit educational foundation that recruits American students and provides government funding to travel to Europe to participate in Communist-led Youth Day events. Steinem was criticized on the left after Ramparts magazine later reported that the foundation was funded in part by the CIA. She thought the whole thing was no big deal. She told the New York Times in 2016 that the CIA never told her what to do or say, and she never reported to the agency.
She moved to New York in 1960 and began working as a freelance journalist. At that time, female writers were not taken seriously; she wanted to report on politics, but she could only receive celebrity interviews and fashion manuscripts.
