Website Post #5: Biography of Gloria Steinem

This website is all about Gloria Steinem. She is a famous feminist, a social activist, writer, editor, lecturer and a champion of women's rights since the late 1960s. She helped to make “Women’s Liberation” a household phrase and a global movement.

http://www.biography.com/people/gloria-steinem-9493491

She graduated top of her class at Smith College after which she became a writer where she quickly realized she was getting less prestigious writing assignments than her male counterparts and made less money. She became famous when she wrote an article about the exploitation of women in the Playboy Bunny Clubs. She went undercover working as a waitress in one of the clubs where she wore the bunny suit and experienced what that was like 1^st hand. It was not glamorous but made women sex objects for men.  She described pretty brutal working conditions there.

One of the excerpts from her many interviews showed that she did not want to follow the common path of women of her day. "In the 1950s, once you married you became what your husband was, so it seemed like the last choice you'd ever have…”. For her whole life she continued to speak about feminist subjects. A more recent discussion was in 2009 when she said “We've demonstrated that women can do what men do, but not yet that men can do what women do. That's why most women have two jobs—one inside the home and one outside it—which is impossible. The truth is that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.”

In 1971 she launched Ms Magazine – which was a national sounding board for the feminist movement. It gave a voice to women who didn’t want to accept unfair treatment. Articles in Ms tackled important subjects such as sexual harassment and domestic violence.

She wrote many books for women on women’s issues and self-improvement as well as her feminist experiences including “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions”, “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem” and “Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking Boundaries of Gender”.

There are videos at this site where you can see pictures of her and learn about her life.

I think Gloria Steinem's life has been very interesting. Women like Gloria had great courage to do things differently. Most young women in her generation looked for a man to define them and take care of them. They were put on a pedestal, protected and sheltered from the "real world" and delegated to their real job - taking care of their man and the house while having babies and staying home to raise them. If they worked, it was often to find eligible men. Their jobs were frequently around serving men, such as secretaries, and temporary until they found their husband. If not, the jobs were menial or women were pigeonholed. Gloria went against the norm by graduating from college and going straight into a predominantly male working world of journalism to work side-by-side with the men, compete with them for the interesting assignments and be as good as them. She persevered through discrimination against women there. She had to fight so much harder for the good assignments and put up with male chauvinism from her colleagues. She realized that many women were experiencing the same inequalities and that they shouldn't be silent about it and bear it. She helped women to speak out against this discrimination and work to change things. In her article about being a Playboy Bunny, she dared to write what most women felt when they are reduced to sex objects by men. She became famous from this article and developed into a great public speaker. She used her skills and fame to encourage women to be free and realize that not everyone has to live the same way. She organized women to band together to change the way they were perceived and be treated as equals in the workplace and in society. I like the way she continually looked for ways to improve herself. She rose to great heights in an age when women were not taken seriously as anything but wives and mothers. She owned and ran businesses as well as organized large movements of people to work to achieve social change. She is an excellent role model and the epitome of a strong and independent woman.