Strong & Powerful Women: Gloria Marie Steinem
In 1934, March 25, in Toledo, Ohio, United States, Gloria Marie Steinem was born. Growing up she didn't attend school regularly due to her and her parents, Leo Steinem and Ruth Nuneviller traveling in a house trailer most of the time, until she was 11. Her parents later got divorced and her mother suffered from being chronically depressed so Gloria took care of her mother.
During her senior year in high school she moved to Washington DC to live with her sister Susanne Steinem Patch and she later went to go further her education at Smith College where she studied government, which was obviously not common for a woman to want to study. She was then offered a scholarship in India when she graduated from Smith College. While in India she participated in nonviolent protests against government policy.
Before she became a freelance writer and journalist in New York City, she worked for Independent Research Service. In the late 1960's, she helped to create New York magazine, which she wrote a column for on politics called The City Politic. After reporting on an abortion hearing by the Redstockings, a feminist group, she became more engaged in the women's movement.
So much so that in 1971, she and Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan formed the National Women's Political Caucus, a magazine for women which is said to 'treat contemporary issues from a feminist perspective'. She also played a huge role in the launching of Ms. magazine, which tackled important topics such as domestic violence.
Gloria Marie Steinem at one point wasn't even a fan of marriage, she even said " A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle". But at the age of 66, in 2000 she got married to David Bale, but unfortunately, he died of brain lymphoma on December 2003.
Gloria was also helped fund the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Voters for Choice, Women Against Pornography, and the Women's Media Center.
She is the author of :
- My little Red Book
- Doing Sixty and Seventy
- My Life on the Road
- As If Women Matter: The Essential Gloria Steinem
- I Never Called It Rape
- Outrageous Acts and Everyday
- Revolution from Within: A Book of Self- Esteem
- Marilyn
- Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender
She is not only a spokeswomen for the American feminist movement, but she is a journalist, leader, feminist and a social political activist. & for her work she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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