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Gloria Steinem is a well-known feminist activist, organizer, writer, and lecturer. Over the years she has supported women’s equality and liberation issues. She has accomplished this in a time where women’s rights were often overlooked. In general her life has been difficult. She was born March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was an antique dealer and her mother a journalist and teacher. When she was a young child the family traveled around the country living in a travel trailer so the father could collect and sell antiques. Because of this she never enrolled in regular schools. Her mother taught her while they traveled. While she was a child her parents divorced and she spent years taking care of her mother. The mother had a nervous breakdown after the divorce and was unable to work. After high school she attended Smith College where she studied government and political science. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. After graduating she did post-graduate work in India. There she was educated about the suffering in the rest of the world and realized the high living standards present in the United States. After returning from India she began a journalism career in New York. She decided to do an investigative report on the Playboy Club. She got a job at the club as a bunny including the traditional bunny costume. She reported on the hard work, bad conditions, unfair wages, and the treatment she went through by being placed in a role based on their sex to serve men. In the 1960s she supported the causes of the American left. She was actively involved in the civil rights movement for African Americans as well as Hispanics and other minorities, and worked actively against the Vietnam War. During this time she worked for //New York Magazine//. She worked on the Women’s Liberation Movement and supported the Equal Right Amendment, equal pay for women, abortion rights, and preventing domestic violence in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Cesar Chavez – Farm Workers 1975 Dorothy Pitman Hughes Child Care Pioneer 1970

In 1972 she founded //Ms. Magazine//. This magazine became the leader in the feminist movement. Unlike other women’s magazines she covered gender bias, sexual harassment, was active in studying political candidates’ position on women’s issues, and campaigned against pornography. She was the first woman to address the National Press Club.

She was very active in the 1972 Democratic National Convention. She founded or co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus to increase women’s participation in politics, Women’s Action Alliance, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Women’s Medical Center, Foundation for Women, Choice USA. At 75 she is still a feminist activist, writer, and lecturer. She has written several books covering women’s rights, elimination of sexual exploitation, and has worked for true equality for women. She continues to advocate feminine causes and still marches and demonstrates. She produced a documentary on child abuse for HBO. She is on the board of trustees of Smith College and on the board of directors of the Women’s Media Center. Over the years she has received many awards. She was awarded the Minerva Award that honors remarkable women in 2008. She is listed by the //Biography Magazine// as one of the 25 most influential women in America.

//“In my generation, we were asked by the Smith vocational office how many words we could type a minute, a question that was never asked of then all-male students at Harvard or Princeton. Female-only typing was rationalize by supposedly greater female verbal skills, attention to detail, smaller fingers, goodness knows what, but the public imagination just didn’t include male typists, certainly not Ivy League-educated ones.// // Now computers have come along, and ‘typing’ is ‘keyboarding’. Suddenly, voila!—men can type! Gives you faith in men’s ability to change, doesn’t it?” –Gloria Steinem //to Smith College Graduation 2007