Steinem, Gloria

For many Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, Gloria Steinem was the public face of feminism. A journalist and political activist, she is best known as the founding editor of Ms. magazine—a position she held from 1972 until 1987. For over 40 years, she has lent her energies to innumerable initiatives on behalf of women's rights and social justice.

Born March 25, 1934, into a middle-class but downwardly mobile family in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem grew up under difficult circumstances. After her parents divorced when she was 11 years old, she found herself charged with caring for her mother, who suffered from bouts of mental illness. The experience of living alone with her mother in impoverished conditions—at times, their home was infested with rats—profoundly affected Steinem. As she later explained, “At home it felt dangerous. I felt safer outside.”

Steinem attended Smith College, where she majored in political science and graduated magna cum laude. During her senior year, she became engaged, and her life seemed poised to follow the typical course of a 1950s coed. Instead, however, Steinem abruptly broke off the relationship and made plans to travel to India on a fellowship. Waiting for her visa to clear in London, she discovered she was pregnant; with the reluctant help of a doctor, she managed to obtain an abortion. Steinem then went on to India, where she studied and traveled for over a year, gaining exposure to the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. She has described her time in India as a turning point in her life—a time when she acquired a heightened awareness of discrimination and inequality.

After returning to the United States in 1958, Steinem began working for the Independent Research Service, a nonprofit educational foundation that encouraged young Americans to participate in International Communist Youth Festivals to help counter Soviet-backed propaganda. Funded by the Central Intelligence Agency, the program was part of the government's attempt to fight communism through cultural means. At the time, Steinem did not perceive the link to the agency as problematic, but the connection would return to haunt her.

In 1960, Steinem moved to New York and began forging her way as a freelance writer. She acquired a reputation as a glamorous girl-about-town, but she initially struggled to land serious assignments. In 1968, her writing took a more political turn when she cofounded and became a columnist for New York magazine. By then, Steinem had become involved with a number of left-wing protest movements and political campaigns. Among many other activities, she marched with Women Strike for Peace, lent her support to Cesar Chavez's campaign on behalf of migrant farm workers, and championed George McGovern's presidential campaigns.

American feminist and journalist Gloria Steinem at a 1972 news conference for the Women's Action Alliance.

Steinem was actually somewhat slow to warm to the cause of feminism. As a self-supporting woman concerned with issues of poverty and racism, she found little to embrace in Betty Friedan's 1963 manifesto, The Feminine Mystique, which focused on the plight of suburban housewives. In 1969, however, Steinem experienced an emotional epiphany when [Page 1397]she attended a speakout on abortion sponsored by a radical feminist group, the Redstockings. Soon thereafter, she wrote her first explicitly feminist column, “After Black Power, Women's Liberation.”

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