GLORIA STEINEM

While perusing our blog, please consider the following:

- How was Gloria Steinem a central figure in the Second-Wave movement?

- In what ways did she step out of the norm of feminist protesting in order to further the awareness of women's inequality?

- How have her books, articles, and actions influenced future feminists?

When abortion becomes illegal, it causes women to take unsafe measures and rely on dangerous abortion methods that often jeopardize their lives. There are many reasons why women may look to abortion, but the fact is that they live with the decision they make and they are intelligent enough to decide how their life will turn out.

Gloria Steinem a proclaimed feminist and activist felt that she did not “begin my life as an activist feminist” until the day she got an abortion. Steinem had an abortion at age 22 in London before the Roe vs. Wade case. This historic case overturned illegal abortion in the United States and made it possible for women to have control over this controversial issue. After her abortion she recalled, “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 guilt. 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].”    

Steinem attended a local abortion hearing in the basement of a church for New York magazine, in which she helped found and was a contributing editor and political columnist for. During this hearing she was able to witness women vocalize their experiences on illegal abortion. Many of the women had stories of pre abortion rape from doctors performing the procedures and women who were forced to agree upon sterilization for the underground medical procedure. It was soon after that, Steinem researched as much as she could about reproductive issues and felt that she could be open about her experience of abortion. "In later years, if I’m remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' . . . as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition.” Steinem has a long history of advocating for reproductive freedoms, early in her life as well as later in her life. Steinem appeared in a film produced by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich called I had an Abortion in 2005. She also characterized her experience in the documentary My Feminism, where she described her abortion as a “pivotal and constructive experience.”   

Since the legalization of abortion and contraception the white birth rate has declined as much as the black birthrate and most importantly the large number of women whose lives and health are saved by safe and legal abortion.  We may not all agree with the decision to have an abortion, but we must remember that we can dictate are own lives and decide if and when we want children.   

Gloria Steinem has become a name synonymous with feminism and she is best known as a feminist activists.  She co-founded Ms. Magazine and served as one of its editors for 15 years.   She was also the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women and a founder of its Take Our Daughters to Work Day.  She also helped to found the Women’s Action Alliance.   

Along with her activism, she is a bestselling author and renowned lecturer.  She has been published in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and women’s magazines as well as for publications in other countries, while working as a freelance writer. 

She is often the spokeswoman of issues of equality.  Her particular interests are the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, nonviolent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. 

Steinem graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in 1956.  She also received the first Doctorate of Human Justices awarded by Simmons College, the Bill of Rights Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Gay Rights Advocates Award, the Liberty award of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Ceres Medal from the United Nations, and a number of honorary degrees. Parenting magazine selected her for its Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in in promoting girls’ self-esteem. 

In a recent interview with Marianne Schnall, Steinem was asked what she thought were the biggest challenges that women face today.  Steinem responded, “Whatever each individual woman is facing; only she knows her biggest challenge.  However, if we add up the problems that affect the biggest numbers of women, then issues having to do with physical safety and reproduction are still the biggest.  Female bodies are stull the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and sage abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction.  If you add up all the forms of gynocide, from female infanticide and genital mutilation to so-called honor crimes, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse, everything, we lose about 6 million humans every year just because they were born female.  That’s a holocaust every year.  It makes sense that reproductive freedom is still the biggest issue- because the reason females got in this jam in the first place was because the patriarchal state or religion or family wanted to control reproduction – to decide how many workers, how many children the nation needs, and who owned them in systems of legitimacy – or even outright slaver.  The International Labor Organization says there are about 12 million people living in literal slavery around the worlds. And 80 percent of them are women and girls.”

She currently lives in New York, where she is working on a book about her 30+ years as a feminist organizer and also working with the Sophia Smith College on a project to document the grassroots origins of the U.S. women’s movement.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, (left) with Bella Abzug (center) and Gloria Steinem at the 1972 National Democratic Convention.