06 Nov Empower, Don’t Manage
In the middle of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities New York of the late 1980s, I meet her walking along Park Avenue, recognizable even in classic sunglasses, and so I say hello and offer immediately that I like her writings. She, of course, asks which ones? In the moment, my very best answer is “Articles,” and she smiles, instantly understanding that I have not read a single one of her books, which include such bestsellers as My Life on the Road, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, Marilyn: Norma Jean, and As If Women Matter.
Gloria Marie Steinem, who would later go on to become a renowned writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer, is born on March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. Her family lives and travels in a trailer that serves as a moving antique shop for her father, Leo, the son of Jewish emigrants. Her mother, Ruth, a Presbyterian, suffers a nervous breakdown at age thirty-four, before Gloria is born, becoming an invalid trapped in delusions that send her in and out of sanatoriums.
When Gloria is ten, her parents separate and divorce. The entire experience, including her mother’s inability to hold a job and the apathy of some of her doctors, fuels a passion for social and political equality.
Graduating from Smith College in 1956, Steinem inaugurates a lifelong passion for travel, spending two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow. While there, she is influenced by the activist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.
This begins her life’s work. Steinem initially becomes a journalist—for example, in 1963, working as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club while writing an article for Huntington Hartford’s Show Magazine. Everyone growing up in the 1960s remembers the black-and-white photo of Steinem in her Bunny uniform. Some even remember the piercing quality of her prose about how women are treated at institutions like Playboy. Steinem merges her magna cum laude brain with the fact that she is an ex-dancer and beauty queen. She begins to write history and write it brilliantly.
Driven by a hunger for social justice and armed with the teachings of Gandhi, Steinem begins empowering more than one generation of the disadvantaged, including, of course, women. From her co-founding of Ms. magazine in 1972, Steinem goes on to help launch or lead the Women’s Action Alliance, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Media Center, Voters for Choice, Choice USA, the Beyond Racism Initiative, Equality Now, Donor Direct Action, and Direct Impact Africa. Culminating a long string of the most important awards for leadership and giving, she receives in 2013 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Today, the woman from Toledo continues to set in motion change around the world, empowering millions upon millions of change agents. She works to define the future of social and political equality.
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