Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem
Born	Gloria Steinem
Occupation(s)	Feminist, Journalist
Spouse(s)	David Bale (2000 ─ 2003)

Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist icon, journalist and women's rights advocate. She is the founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine.

Early life

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her mother, Ruth Nuneviller, was of part German descent. Her Jewish-American father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer (with trailer and family in tow) and the son of immigrants from Germany and Poland. The family split in 1944, when he went to California to find work while Gloria lived with her mother in Toledo. As a child in Toledo, she cared for her ill mother and helped support the family. She also had a sister named Susanne.

Gloria Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo, then graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C. She attended Smith College, where she remains active. In 1963 she was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club to research an article that exposed how women were treated at the clubs. The article was a sensation, making Steinem an in-demand writer in the process. However, she later stated that she regretted writing the article, because the public associated it too much with her. .

Political awakening and activism

Gloria Steinem at news conference, Women's Action Alliance, January 12, 1972

After conducting a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem eventually got a political assignment covering George McGovern's presidential campaign, which led to a position in a New York magazine. Her 1962 article in Esquire magazine about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique by one year. She became politically active in the feminist movement, and the media seemed to appoint Steinem as a feminist leader of sorts. Steinem brought other notable feminists to the fore and toured the country with lawyer Florynce Rae "Flo" Kennedy, and in 1971, cofounded the National Women's Political Caucus as well as the Women's Action Alliance. In 1972, she helped start the feminist Ms. magazine and wrote for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. The magazine was sold again in 2001, to the Feminist Majority Foundation; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors, and serves on the advisory board.

Steinem cofounded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, and participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas in 1977. She became Ms. magazine's consulting editor when it was revived in 1991, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1991, Steinem founded Choice USA.

In a 1998 press interview, Steinem weighed in on the Clinton impeachment hearings when asked whether President Bill Clinton should be impeached for lying under oath, she was quoted as saying, "Clinton should be censured for lying under oath about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones deposition, perhaps also for stupidity in answering at all."

Contrary to popular belief, Steinem did not coin the feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." The phrase is actually attributable to Irina Dunn.

Criticism

Steinem has enjoyed widespread recognition in the US, and so has been a popular target for those critical of feminism generally. Within the feminist movement she has been criticized by radical feminists for what is seen as a liberal approach that makes too many concessions to patriarchy -- notably, her involvement with the CIA was exposed in 1975 by the the left-wing Redstockings. More recently, Gloria Steinem's marriage in September 2000 caused some controversy among feminists as Steinem had been a long time critic of the institution of marriage. Her late husband, David Bale, faced deportation charges for overstaying his visa, but his marriage to Steinem earned him conditional residency.

More recent life

In the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem had to deal with a number of personal setbacks, including the diagnoses of breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994.

According to two Frontline features (aired in 1995) and Ms. magazine, Steinem became an advocate for children she believed had been sexually abused by caretakers in day care centers (such as the McMartin preschool case).

On September 3, 2000, at age 66, she married David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale. The wedding was performed at the home of her friend Wilma Mankiller, formerly the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Steinem and Bale were married for only three years before he died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003, at age 62.

In 2005, Steinem appeared in the documentary film, I Had an Abortion, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. In the film, Steinem described the abortion she had as a young woman in London, where she lived briefly before studying in India. Steinem was also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and an advisory board member of Women's Voices. Women Vote.

In May 2007, she was the commencement speaker at Smith College - her alma mater.

Canadian singer-songwriter David Usher penned a song titled "Love Will Save The Day," which includes sound bytes from Steinem speeches. The song's opening contains her statement, "It really is a revolution," and the ending breaks for the quote, "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." In the credits of the movie V for Vendetta, this last speech is also quoted.

Steinem has been an active political participant in the 2008 election. She made headlines for a New York Times op-ed in which she called gender "probably the most restricting force in an American life," rather than race. She elaborated, "Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women."

List of works

• The Thousand Indias (1957)
• The Beach Book (1963)
• Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)
• Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
• Revolution from Within (1992)
• Moving beyond Words (1993)

Quotes

• "Evil is obvious only in retrospect."
• "The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn."

Biography

• The Education of A Woman: The Life and Times of Gloria Steinem by Carolyn Heilbrun 1995

See also

• Second-wave feminism
• Operation Mockingbird
• Redstockings

External links

• Template:WiredForBooks
• Gloria Steinem discusses “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation”
• Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution from the Jewish Women's Archive
• Gloria Steinem Biography from Thomson Gale
• The Gloria Steinem Papers at Smith College
• 1968 CBC interview with Gloria Steinem (video)
• Gloria Steinem speaks on "Nostalgia" on Bill Maher (video screenshot)
• Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem on ForaTv (video)
• Interview with Gloria Steinem on human trafficking (audio)
• Interview with Gloria Steinem on Victoria Woodhull in the documentary, America's Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull
• Interview with Gloria Steinem at feminist.com
• Gloria Steinem: "Right Candidates, Wrong Question"
• Gloria Steinem: "Women Are Never Front-Runners"
• Bad Subjects: "Strangers and Bedfellows: When Feminists Marry Animal Lovers"
• Newsbytes (Visalaw)