gloria

Gloria Steinem (b. 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

Gloria Marie Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her mother, Ruth, was of part German descent. Her Jewish-American father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer (with trailer and family in tow). 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.

Education and early career

Steinem entered Smith College on scholarship in 1952, majoring in government studies and becoming politically active in Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society (the oldest honour society in the United States) in 1956, the year she graduated. Steinem then studied in India for two years, after which she returned to America and had difficulty finding a journalist position because males had hiring preference. In 1960, she became assistant editor of Help! magazine and a freelance writer, and in 1963, started freelancing full-time with the publication of her infamous undercover article, A Bunny's Tale: "Show's" First Exposé for Intelligent People.

Political awakening and activism

After conducting a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem eventually got a political assignment covering George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, which led to a position in a New York magazine. 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 started the feminist magazine Ms. and wrote for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. The magazine was bought by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001, and Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board.

Steinem founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women 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.

Later life

In the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem had to deal with a number of personal setbacks, including the diagnoses of breast cancer in 1986,[1] and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994.

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 received as a young woman in London, where she lived briefly before studying in India. Steinem is also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and an advisory board member of Women's Voices. Women Vote.

Canadian singer-songwriter David Usher penned a song entitled 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."

List of works

• Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)
• Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
• Revolution from Within (1992)
• Moving beyond Words (1993)

Further reading

Carolyn Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem, 1995

See also

• Second-wave feminism

External links

• 1983 audio interview of Gloria Steinem by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio
• 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)