Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934) is an American feminist icon, journalist and women's rights advocate. She is the founder and original publisher of Ms. magazine.

Early life
Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her mother, Ruth Nuneviller, was of part German descent. Her Jewish-American father, Leo Steinem, was a traveling antiques dealer (with trailer and family in tow) and the son of immigrants from Germany and Poland. The family split in 1944, when he went to California to find work while Gloria lived with her mother in Toledo. As a child in Toledo, she cared for her ill mother and helped support the family. She also had a sister named Susanne.

Gloria Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo, then graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C. She attended Smith College, where she remains active. In 1963 she was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club to research an article that exposed how women were treated at the clubs.

Political awakening and activism
After conducting a series of celebrity interviews, Steinem eventually got a political assignment covering George McGovern's presidential campaign, which led to a position in a New York magazine. Her 1962 article in Esquire magazine about the way in which women are forced to choose between a career and marriage preceded Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique by one year. She became politically active in the feminist movement, and the media seemed to appoint Steinem as a feminist leader of sorts. Steinem brought other notable feminists to the fore and toured the country with lawyer Florynce Rae "Flo" Kennedy, and in 1971, cofounded the National Women's Political Caucus as well as the Women's Action Alliance. In 1972, she helped start the feminist Ms. magazine and wrote for the magazine until it was sold in 1987. In 1991 Gloria Steinem founded Choice USA. The magazine was bought by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001, and Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board. Contrary to popular belief, Steinem did not coin the feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

Steinem cofounded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974, and participated in the National Conference of Women in Houston, Texas in 1977. She became Ms. magazine's consulting editor when it was revived in 1991, and she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

In a 1998 press interview, Steinem weighed in on the Clinton impeachment hearings when asked whether President Bill Clinton should be impeached for lying under oath, she was quoted as saying, "Clinton should be censured for lying under oath about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones deposition, perhaps also for stupidity in answering at all."

Criticism
Steinem has enjoyed widespread recognition in the US, and so has been a popular target for those critical of feminism generally. Within the feminist movement she has been criticized by radical feminists for what is seen as a liberal approach that makes too many concessions to patriarchy (notably, she was accused by the Redstockings in 1975 of working for the CIA, an allegation she has denied). More recently, Gloria Steinem's marriage in September 2000 caused some controversy among feminists.

More recent life
In the 1980s and 1990s, Steinem had to deal with a number of personal setbacks, including the diagnoses of breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994.

According to two Frontline features (aired in 1995) and Ms. magazine, Steinem became an advocate for children she believed had been sexually abused by caretakers in day care centers (such as the McMartin preschool case).

On September 3, 2000, at age 66, she married David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale. The wedding was performed at the home of her friend Wilma Mankiller, formerly the first female Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Steinem and Bale were married for only three years before he died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003, at age 62.

In 2005, Steinem appeared in the documentary film, I Had an Abortion, by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. In the film, Steinem described the abortion she had as a young woman in London, where she lived briefly before studying in India. Steinem was also a member of Democratic Socialists of America, and an advisory board member of Women's Voices. Women Vote.

Canadian singer-songwriter David Usher penned a song titled "Love Will Save The Day," which includes sound bites from Steinem speeches. The song's opening contains her statement, "It really is a revolution," and the ending breaks for the quote, "We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned; we are really talking about humanism." In the credits of the movie V for Vendetta, this last speech is also quoted.

List of works

 * The Thousand Indias (1957)
 * The Beach Book (1963)
 * Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)
 * Marilyn: Norma Jean (1986)
 * Revolution from Within (1992)
 * Moving beyond Words (1993)

Biography

 * The Education of A Woman: The Life and Times of Gloria Steinem  by Carolyn Heilbrun 1995