Steinem, Gloria (1934–)

American feminist Gloria Steinem is known for her work mostly in journalism and feminist activism. Over the past 5 decades she has founded several feminist organizations, coalitions, and conferences, as well as written books and magazine articles, given numerous lectures, and spoken at rallies and similar events. In 1968, she cofounded New York magazine with Clay Felker, and soon after, she founded Ms. magazine, a publication she initially edited and continues to work closely with to this day. It was the first women's magazine in the United States to be run by women. To critics, Ms. took the radical agenda of 1960s and 1970s feminism and watered it down; to proponents, it was a revolutionary forum for women's issues in the media.

Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, a direct descendant of suffragette Pauline Steinem. When she was 10 years old, her father left the family in the hopes of improving their financial situation, and Steinem spent the rest of her childhood caring for her mentally ill mother, herself a former journalist and college-level calculus instructor. Steinem could only attend school sporadically; in 1951, however, she finished high school after moving to Washington, D.C., and immediately after went to Smith College in Massachusetts on a scholarship, where she majored in political studies and worked for Democratic Party candidate Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign.

At Smith College, she remained politically active and began to pursue a career as a writer. After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, she studied abroad in India for 2 years, where she penned newspaper articles along with her first book, a travel guide for the Indian government titled, A Thousand Indias. Then she returned to the United States, and became assistant editor of Help! magazine, a satirical publication.

She often felt frustrated at the discrepancy between her personal interests, which included politics and international affairs, with the kinds of assignments offered to her and other females in the field of journalism, such as entertainment and fashion reporting. Her career as a freelance journalist took off with the publication of “A Bunny's Tale: Show's First Exposé for Intelligent People,” for which she worked under-cover as a hostess in Hugh Hefner's New York Playboy Club. The article appeared in the May and June 1963 issues of Show magazine. Around this time [Page 1335]she also dabbled in television scriptwriting and published The Beach Book, which took a less than serious look at sunbathing.

Soon enough, Steinem found venues to combine her personal and professional interests. After cofounding New York and writing a political column for the publication, she found herself attending a meeting of the feminist group the Redstockings, and subsequently wrote the article credited as her first overtly feminist piece of journalism, “After Black Power, Women's Liberation,” which appeared in New York magazine in 1969 and won the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award in 1970, and covered George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign. Drawing correlations between the struggles of ethnic, spiritual, and socially disadvantaged groups for their equal rights and the struggles of women for those rights would continue to be a theme in her work. Often, her work in women's liberation, with special attention on the right to contraceptives and abortion for women, as well as the establishment of rape crisis centers, coincided or happened in conjunction with her activism for civil rights and peace. All of this solidified her identity as a radical and a feminist.

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