Steinem, Gloria (1934–)

A COFOUNDER OF Ms. magazine and a motivating force in the National Organization for Women (NOW), Gloria Steinem has been one of the foremost voices of the feminist movement since the late 1960s. Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, into a line of determined women, beginning with her paternal grandmother, who had been a suffragist.

When Steinem was 10 years old, her father Leo moved out of the house, leaving Gloria and her sister to care for their mother, Ruth Nuneviller Steinem, who became increasingly emotionally fragile. The experience of accepting a parental role at such a young age affected Steinem for the rest of her life. She believed that her mother's depression was dismissed as “nerves” rather [Page 428]than understood as a physical condition because she was a woman.

While still a student at Smith College, Steinem's political views began to take shape. She worked on both the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate who lost both elections to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. She later campaigned for Democrats Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. Steinem was graduated with high honors from Smith in 1956. Afterward, she broke her engagement, choosing instead to accept a scholarship to study in India. Temporarily stranded in London, England, on her way to India, Steinem discovered that she was pregnant and chose to have an abortion. She told no one for 15 years. The trip to India convinced Steinem that she had a responsibility to save the world, and she returned to the United States with a deep enthusiasm for political reform.

Settling in New York in 1960, Steinem accepted a position as an assistant at Help magazine. Later she turned to freelance writing for such magazines as Show, Esquire, Glamour, and Ladies Home Journal. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, which ignited the modern women's movement. That same year, Steinem reluctantly went undercover for an assignment at the Playboy Club, a sexist yet popular men's club that was part of the Playboy magazine world, the magazine that pioneered showcasing nude women, including Marilyn Monroe. She described her experience in an exposé called, “A Bunny's Tale.” By 1968, Steinem began to attract substantial attention as the editor of New York magazine, which she cofounded. Steinem remained actively political, demonstrating against the Vietnam War and the oppression of workers and for women's rights.

After familiarizing herself with the current literature on feminism, Steinem concluded that the women's movement as understood by Friedan and her supporters was basically a movement of white, middle-class women. Steinem began advocating a more extreme view of feminism and was accused of promoting “man hating” and “bra burning.”

In 1970, Steinem received the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award for her article “After Black Power, Women's Liberation.” Unfortunately, Steinem had also launched discord within the women's movement and begun a private feud with Friedan, who rejected what she saw as Steinem's radicalism. Undeterred, Steinem set out on a lecture tour of college campuses throughout the United States designed to educate young women on feminism.

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