LEADing Justice
LEADing Justice
Gloria Steinem "Life on the Road"
Gloria Steinem is more than the sum of her parts -- a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist, whose intersectional work continues to have extraordinary impacts on America and the world.
Among her landmark achievements, she co-founded Ms. magazine and the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Women's Media Center, the Women's Action Alliance, the National Women's Political Caucus, and Choice USA. Her numerous honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Barack Obama.
At 88, her lifetime of service personifies living history; however, she remains focused on the future - the elimination of sexism, racism, and discrimination of all kinds.
She joins the LEADing Justice podcast to discuss her remarkable “life on the road.”
Dr. Janet Dewart Bell • Executive Producer / Host | Chris Neuner • Producer / Editor | Theme Music • First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn
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Created on: 2022-10-19 01:22:27
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I am Janet Stewart Bell, the founder and president of LEAD Intergenerational Solutions, Lead advances in Democracy and Social Justice by promoting democratic principles and leadership from an intergenerational lens lead builds on the wisdom, experience, energy and perspectives of diverse leaders and activists in the fight for America's future. The Leading Justice podcast will tackle the most challenging issues of the day through provocative and informative discussions with singular guests who make a difference in the fight for freedom in America and the world.
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Securing a just and equitable future requires courage, commitment, compassion, vision and hope. Those elements are the themes of the Leading Justice podcast.
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Gloria Steinem is more than the sum of her parts. A writer, lecturer, political activist and feminist whose intersectional work continues to have extraordinary impacts on America and the world. Among her landmark achievements, she co-founded Ms.. Magazine and the Ms.. Foundation for Women, the Women's Media Center, the Women's Action Alliance, the National Women's Political Caucus and Choice USA.
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Her numerous honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom at 88, her lifetime of service personifies living history. However, she remains focused on the future the elimination of sexism, racism and discrimination of all kinds. There is no one who is more transformative in my life and in the life of others. And Gloria Steinem. So I am absolutely thrilled and grateful for you to take the time to talk with us.
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I'm thrilled and grateful. But movements are about masses of people moving, and what I do is a contagion from other people. So I don't feel like it's individualized and in some way.
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Yes. And I know you feel that and you and you believe that deeply. But there are people who are called by movements like Martin Luther King and and who also sparked movements. They have that dual purpose. What do you think it means to be a feminist in the 21st century?
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It's a little hard to say because I suspect in each person's life there's a different expression of it. We shouldn't even need the term feminist, actually. We shouldn't need qualifying adjectives by race, by class, by sex. But because we have them, feminist is a way of saying that we are in a man. Of course, men can be feminists too, as we know, is a way of saying that we are all human beings, regardless of gender and regardless of race.
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How did you come to that understanding?
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I think I had it as a little girl. Don't you think you kind of understood it when you were young and then I did.
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I did not. So don't give me that credit.
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Well, no, no, but I mean, I just think there was a moment in childhood when we understood people were people and they came in different colors like flowers. I remember my mother telling me that. Right.
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And then you see the structures of the world and you see that our Congress even now looks nothing like the country.
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You know, the country is is at least 50% people of color and certainly 50% women. And Congress doesn't look like that. So you you began to. I began to to question why. And at first, because I was a writer, a journalist. I just was writing about it. And then, of course, at a certain point, you have to actually do something besides besides write about it. So after New York magazine started and I had a column of my own and I you know, I got invitations to speak.
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I had become a writer, so I didn't have to talk in public. I didn't want to do it. But I realized it was important to do. So I asked my friend Dorothy Pitman Hughes, who was then running a childcare center on the West Side, who was fearless. If if she would do it with me. And she said, okay. So then it accidentally turned out that there we were, one black woman, one white woman together, traveling, which turned out to be a good thing because obviously our audiences were different together than they would have been probably individually.
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And I remember that iconic first photo and then the recent anniversary photo of the two of you with.
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Your fists up. Yes. Right.
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Right, Right. Yes. And both of you. And came to the very first, I have to say this Derrick Bell lecture, which we now last year was the 26th. Yes.
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Because we always knew we were learning from him. Right.
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And he always knew he was learning from you
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and.
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What can be done to get younger generations engaged in the struggle for women's rights?
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You know, I think, you know, it's hard to generalize about a whole diverse generation. But I think that young people do. You know, the single thing that even young children say all over the world is something like it's not fair. You are not the boss of me. Right. And I think that's that's kind of in us. I think it's in in young people to our role is probably just to encourage them because they see things that we don't.
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And they may feel that they want to get a job or they won't get a scholarship or they won't get, you know, so something that's sort of establishment if if they act. So they may need our support. But I, I find it utterly present in young people. I was just online with a whole class full of young people in England. And there they are now fighting the same battles.
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Which these battles tell me.
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To try to make the their own government, whether it's their township or the country at large, more responsive to what people need. They see the economic stratification, especially now with COVID. They also see who is vulnerable to it. Who is getting health care and who isn't. You know, they're quite aware of that. Mm hmm. So the question of how to incrementally make that more just and accurate is is very much with them.
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What are the most important leadership lessons you have learned or that you would say to to these young people, for instance? Hmm.
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That's an interesting question because I don't know. I don't think they're exactly leadership lessons, though. They are that, too. I would say there's a kind of organic democracy. If you remember to listen as much as you talk and talk as much as you listen. Now, for some people, perhaps especially for women more than men talking as much as you listen since we were raised to be good listeners
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can be just as difficult. But for everybody, it's it's it's a pretty good rule.
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Another one I would say is if if the group that's making the decision doesn't look like the group that's going to be impacted by the decision, probably, you know, it needs some change. Mm hmm. I mean, it's just there, just to me and to you. I think they're just kind of commonsensical. But because we have a more hierarchical system with Congress, it still doesn't look like the country, you know, with huge economic polarization.
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We have to keep reminding ourselves and each other. And that's what a movement is really. It's a place to find support and ideas and other people who are also interested in changing what's going on.
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How do you sustain your energy and your years commitment, your involvement in these movements?
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Are you kidding me? Everything else is boring compared.
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I love that. Know.
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Right. And and it's important, as I was saying, because we are communal animals. It's important that that we not get isolated, that we, you know, talk to each other. And whether it's Zoom or sitting here or whatever it is that we have some mutual support.
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I think that what you what you just said about everything else is boring, is that that that, to me is almost a rallying cry for for young people that I know that when I talk to my students and they're always fascinated that that I was born in 1946 and that I'm still doing these doing certain kinds of things.
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What do you see as your major accomplishments, your lifetime? Major accomplishments?
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Oh, you know, I think that's for other people to say. You know, I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, I guess I would just say that I hope people might think that I tried to make the world a little more kind and just than it was when I showed up.
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What President Obama said when you got the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That was a moment when a long overdue moment. And I know I personally know how modest and kind you are and that I would the I think others would say a lot more than you would and also know that that you have used your celebrity and frankly, notoriety for the for the good, for the good of other people, that that's not something.
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You it's because I'm I'm not in the 1930s they used to call a media worker you know, and you too. I mean we work in the media. So it does mean that we ourselves are more likely identified, but it also means we have like a little printing press in a way that that we can get things out there and help make the invisible visible. But I was so honored and I wouldn't have been honored if it was a different president than Obama.
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But because it was Obama,
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it was a huge honor.
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Is there anything else in terms of media, since we talked about media, I know you you, along with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan, are the founders of the Women's Media Center, which in full disclosure, I know I now chair thanks to Gloria Steinem, who recommended that I do that. But the Women's Media Center has has such an important role to play. And maybe you could say a little bit about why you founded I know why, but say a little bit why you founded the Women's Media Center and what you hope that the Women's Media Center, what it has done and what you hope that it will do.
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We I think we're sitting at a breakfast table one day, you know, with Robin and Jane and saying, you know, how can we make the news look more like reality?
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You know, as I was saying, it doesn't the news doesn't usually represent people of color to the degree that they are present and making news. And it doesn't usually reflect female human beings, too. So what could we do about that? And we had been all of us had been railing away at the media and made some progress, but we thought perhaps creating the news ourselves so that there would not only be stories that might not otherwise be on the news, but also there would be people to interview on and on and women, diverse women to interview on current issues.
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So on the Women's Media Center, you see, you know, every few days there's a list of women that that the rest of the media can contact to interview.
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In your book, My Life on the Road, where you talked about the promise you made to the doctor.
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I graduated from college, Smith College. I was engaged and trying not to get married.
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Because you didn't want to change your name?
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No, I just, you know, it's not quite fair to the way we see marriage now. But then, once you're married, your life really was pretty much the same as your husband's life. And I knew that I wasn't ready to do that. So as a rather drastic means of not doing that, I went to India,
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a country to which I had been drawn for a lot of reasons in my life. But in any case, I decided to go to India and I decided abruptly in order to break my engagement. So I ended up in London of waiting my visa, which, given the vicissitudes of the Indian government, took like three months to come. And in the meantime, I realized I was pregnant. Abortion was not legal then in England or indeed in France or anywhere else.
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You know, I really didn't know what to do. I had all this fantasies of, you know, throwing myself downstairs, riding a horse. But, you know, all these rights that many women have had since I mean, actually one in three American women has needed an abortion at some time in her life. So it's not and I didn't know at the time, but it's certainly not an uncommon experience. So finally, in this little crazy room that I had rented, I looked at the phone book and I went to the nearest doctor and he listened to me and he said he would send me to he sent me actually to a woman doctor who actually did the abortion.
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But you needed two doctors signatures to have this procedure. So definitely he was taking a big risk, too. So he said that he would do this, he would sign and he would send me to this woman doctor. But I had to promise him two things. One, that I would never tell anyone his name, and two, that I would do what I wanted to do with my life. So all these many years later,
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you know, I said that at the beginning of I explained that at the beginning of the book.
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Is there anything else that you would like to say in terms of how it's sort of the the arc of your life? What is the connective thread to all of those things?
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Well, I, I do think that we are we each come into this world as as a unique human being with interests and talents and a combination that has never happened before and will never happen again. And so the
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the purpose for each of us, I think, is to find a way to express those a positive way that's helpful to other people and a community at the same time. And thanks to you, you're my community. The women's movement, my community
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friends in India are my you know, I've I've I've been able to do that. And I in terms of of memory, I don't know. I guess I just would want people to say she made the world a little better than it was when she showed up. How about that? Or a little more just or a little more kind than it was when she showed up.
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Thank you, Miss Steinem.
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Thank you for listening to the Leading Justice podcast. Please join us next week as we present Andrew Young, the close confidant and partner of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ambassador Young has a singularly impactful life in advancing justice and freedom in America and the world. Next episode Ambassador Andrew Young, The Leading Justice Podcast.
