“A feminist is anyone who recognises the equality and full humanity of women and men.”

A short history of the work of feminist writer and campaigner Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem in 1977

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Gloria Steinem was born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohia, and spent her early childhood living with her parents in a travelling house trailer.  Following their divorce in 1946, Gloria lived with her mother in Toledo and finally began regular schooling.  Steinem’s childhood and adolescence however involved the added responsibility of caring for her mother who suffered with chronic depression, until she moved to live with her older sister in Washington, D.C. during her senior year of high school.

Steinem went on to graduate Smith College in 1956 and left for a scholarship to India where she became involved in journalism and nonviolent protests against government policy

Gloria Steinem at Women’s Alliance News Conference, 1972

Her journalism career really took off back in the US in 1960.  One of her infamous articles, which gained much attention for Steinem came in the form of her investigation into Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club in 1963.  In order to write ‘I Was a Playboy Bunny,’ Steinem went undercover to work at the Club, and recounted her experiences as a waitress there, exposing the misogyny and working conditions for the other women. 

By the late 1960s, Steinem was becoming more overtly political.  Her column ‘The City Politic’ for New York Magazine led to her involvement in the feminist movement, following the attendance of a meeting of the radical feminist group the Redstockings. 

Steinem had long been proud of her feminist roots: her paternal grandmother had been president of the Ohio Women’s Suffrage Association in the early twentieth century and Steinem herself founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 along with Betty Friedan, Bella Azbug, and Shirley Chisholm.  (As a side note: if you haven’t seen the brilliant series Mrs America on BBC iPlayer, go watch it!  It details each of these women during the height of the movement and their fight against Phyllis Schlafly.) 

At the same time, Steinem began to consider the possibility of introducing a new magazine for women focusing on contemporary issues from a feminist perspective.  This first appeared as an insert in the December 1971 issue of New York magazine, but by the following year, Ms became a magazine in its own right, co-founded with her friend and fellow advocate, Dorothy Pitman-Hughes.  Steinem remained as one of the magazine’s editors for the next fifteen years, and continues to work as a consulting editor for the magazine. 

Cover of Ms magazine, Vol. 1, July 1972

Steinem remained a constant supporter of political organisations, becoming an articulate advocate for the women’s movement during second wave feminism.  In addition to her journalism, she worked alongside Dorothy Pitman-Hughes, her co-founder of Ms magazine, and they became vociferous spokeswomen for the feminist movement, touring the US together to try to break down the barriers which saw feminism as being only for white, middle-class women.  Steinem and Hughes became firm friends in their joint beliefs of a unified feminist movement.

Gloria Steinem & Dorothy Pitman-Hughes, 1971

Steinem also also helped to found the Women's Action Alliance which specialises in nonsexist, multiracial education for children.  

During the 1970s second-wave feminist movement, Steinem remained constant to her support of pro-choice legislation for women, and was one of the main advocates for women’s reproductive rights.  This sometimes brought backlash from other women in the cause, who saw abortion as a sticking point to an already uphill battle for women’s rights.

Whilst covering an abortion speak-out in a church basement in Greenwich Village, New York, for New York magazine in 1969, Steinem spoke openly about her own experience, declaring that she had undergone an abortion in London at the age of 22.  She later claimed that she felt a ‘big click’ during this speak-out, stating that this was the moment she began her life as an active feminist: 

"It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person.  But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't [positive]."  Gloria Steinem

Steinem continued to speak out about a woman’s right to a safe abortion, dedicating her book My Life on the Road to the British doctor who carried out her illegal abortion in 1957.  She went on to co-found and serve as president for Voters for Choice, a pro-choice political action committee, and Choice USA, a national organisation supporting young pro-choice leadership and working towards preserving a comprehensive sex education syllabus within schools. 

“Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, 'You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”  Dedication of My Life on the Road, Gloria Steinem

Steinem continued to write articles, essays, and books, on feminism and issues affecting women.  Amongst her magazine credits, her essays have formed collections including Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender (1994); and Revolution from Within (1992), which is a work on self-esteem for women.  She also wrote a landmark biography of Marilyn Monroe’s life entitled Marilyn (1997), along with a personal memoir, My Life on the Road (2015), which details her continued visits to college campuses to inspire young women in the feminist cause.

My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

Amongst her other credits, Steinem also participated in the founding of the Coalition of Labour Union Women, Women Against Pornography, and the Women’s Media Centre, as well as remaining founding president of the Ms Foundation for Women, which is a national multi-racial, multi-issue organisation funding grassroots projects which empower women and girls, as well as founding the ‘Take Our Daughters to Work Day.’ 

As well as working on various television documentaries, she went on to host a television documentary series in 2016 entitled Woman with Gloria Steinem, focusing on contemporary issues affecting women, showing that she has continued to remain relevant and up to date on the current issues facing women and female-identifying feminists.  In recent years, she has spoken out in support of transgender people, expressing her unequivocal support, and stating that their lives should be celebrated, not questioned, and wrote in support of same-sex marriage in 2004. 

Gloria Steinem speaking with supporters at the Women Together Arizona summit in 2016

Her website states that she is: ‘particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organising across boundaries for peace and justice.’

In her personal life, Steinem married David Bale (the father of actor Christian Bale) in 2000 at the age of 66.  The couple were sadly only married for three years, before Bale died of a brain tumour in 2003 at the age of 62.    

In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.  When asked about ageing, Steinem has stated that, as she approached 60 years of age, she felt that she entered a new phase in life that was free of the ‘demands of gender’ that she had faced from adolescence onward.  Now at the age of 89, her voice and her activism remains as relevant and important as ever.

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