64 Facts About Gloria Steinem

Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1969, Gloria Steinem published an article, "After Black Power, Women's Liberation," which brought her national attention and positioned her as a feminist leader.

Gloria Steinem was born on March 25,1934, in Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Ruth and Leo Gloria Steinem.

Gloria Steinem's mother was Presbyterian, mostly of German and some Scottish descent.

Gloria Steinem's father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Wurttemberg, Germany, and Radziejow, Poland.

Gloria Steinem was ten years old when her parents separated in 1944.

Gloria Steinem's father went to California to find work, while she and her mother continued to live together in Toledo.

Gloria Steinem concluded that her mother's inability to hold on to a job was evidence of general hostility towards working women.

Gloria Steinem concluded that the general apathy of doctors towards her mother emerged from a similar anti-woman animus.

Years later, Gloria Steinem described her mother's experience as pivotal to her understanding of social injustices.

Gloria Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo and Western High School in Washington, DC, graduating from the latter while living with her older sister Susanne Gloria Steinem Patch.

Years later, Gloria Steinem dedicated her memoir My Life on the Road to him.

Gloria Steinem worked to send non-Communist American students to the 1959 World Youth Festival.

Gloria Steinem's resulting 1962 article 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.

In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, Gloria Steinem was employed as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club.

Gloria Steinem eventually landed a job at Felker's newly founded New York magazine in 1968.

Gloria Steinem had had an abortion herself in London at the age of 22.

Gloria Steinem felt what she called a "big click" at the speak-out, and later said she didn't "begin my life as an active feminist" until that day.

The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Gloria Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and serves on the advisory board.

Also in 1972, Gloria Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club.

In November 1977, Gloria Steinem spoke at the 1977 National Women's Conference among other speakers including Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, Cecilia Burciaga, Lenore Hershey, and Jean O'Leary.

In 1978, Gloria Steinem wrote a semi-satirical essay for Cosmopolitan titled "If Men Could Menstruate" in which she imagined a world where men menstruate instead of women.

Gloria Steinem concludes in the essay that in such a world, menstruation would become a badge of honor with men comparing their relative sufferings, rather than the source of shame that it had been for women.

In 1959, Gloria Steinem led a group of activists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to organize the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna festival, to advocate for American participation in the World Youth Festival, a Soviet-sponsored youth event.

In 1968, Gloria Steinem signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

On July 10,1971, Gloria Steinem was one of more than three hundred women who founded the National Women's Political Caucus, including such notables as Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm, and Myrlie Evers-Williams.

Gloria Steinem, offended that the most famous female superhero had been depowered, had placed Wonder Woman on the cover of the first issue of Ms.

The story outlines and the work already done on the issues was scrapped, something that Gloria Steinem was not aware of and made no attempt to rectify.

In 1977, Gloria Steinem became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.

In 1984, Gloria Steinem was arrested along with a number of members of Congress and civil rights activists for disorderly conduct outside the South African embassy while protesting against the South African apartheid system.

At the outset of the Gulf War in 1991, Gloria Steinem, along with prominent feminists Robin Morgan and Kate Millett, publicly opposed an incursion into the Middle East and asserted that ostensible goal of "defending democracy" was a pretense.

In 1992, Gloria Steinem co-founded Choice USA, a non-profit organization that mobilizes and provides ongoing support to a younger generation that lobbies for reproductive choice.

In 1993, Gloria Steinem co-produced and narrated an Emmy Award-winning TV documentary for HBO about child abuse, called, "Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories".

Gloria Steinem contributed the piece "The Media and the Movement: A User's Guide" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.

On June 1,2013, Gloria Steinem performed on stage at the "Chime For Change: The Sound Of Change Live" Concert at Twickenham Stadium in London, England.

Later in 2014, UN Women began its commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, and as part of that campaign Gloria Steinem spoke at the Apollo Theater in New York City.

Contrary to popular belief, Gloria Steinem did not coin the feminist slogan "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle".

When Time magazine published an article attributing the saying to Gloria Steinem, Gloria Steinem wrote a letter saying the phrase had been coined by Dunn.

Gloria Steinem has written extensively on her travels, experiences with women and the Indian feminist movement with her colleague and friend, Ruchira Gupta.

McGovern lost the nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and Steinem later wrote of her astonishment at Hubert Humphrey's "refusal even to suggest to Chicago Mayor Richard J Daley that he control the rampaging police and the bloodshed in the streets".

Gloria Steinem was reluctant to re-join the McGovern campaign, as although she had brought in McGovern's single largest campaign contributor in 1968, she "still had been treated like a frivolous pariah by much of McGovern's campaign staff".

Gloria Steinem was an active participant in the 2008 presidential campaign, and praised both the Democratic front-runners, commenting,.

Nevertheless, Gloria Steinem endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton, citing her broader experience, and saying that the nation was in such bad shape it might require two terms of Clinton and two of Obama to fix it.

Gloria Steinem made headlines for a New York Times op-ed in which she cited gender and not race as "probably the most restricting force in American life".

Gloria Steinem again drew attention for, according to the New York Observer, seeming "to denigrate the importance of John McCain's time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam"; Gloria Steinem's broader argument "was that the media and the political world are too admiring of militarism in all its guises".

Gloria Steinem endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 US presidential election.

Gloria Steinem was an honorary co-chair of and speaker at the Women's March on Washington on January 21,2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.

In 1967, Gloria Steinem revealed in an interview with The New York Times that she worked full time from 1958 until 1962 at the Independent Research Service, which was largely financed by the CIA.

Redstockings raised the question of whether Gloria Steinem had continuing ties with the CIA, which Gloria Steinem denied.

On September 3,2000, at age 66, Gloria Steinem married David Bale, father of actor Christian Bale.

Gloria Steinem technically became stepmother to Bale's four adult children; she has no biological children.

Gloria Steinem was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994.

In 1979, Gloria Steinem wrote the article on female genital mutilation that brought it into the American public's consciousness; the article "The International Crime of Female Genital Mutilation" was published in the March 1979 issue of Ms.

Gloria Steinem's article contains the basic arguments that would later be developed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum.

Gloria Steinem has frequently voiced her disapproval of the obscurantism and abstractions some claim to be prevalent in feminist academic theorizing.

On June 15,2020, Gloria Steinem co-wrote a letter with Mona Sinha to the editor of The New York Times, in which they opposed the elimination of civil rights protections for transgender healthcare by the Trump administration.

In 2005, Gloria Steinem appeared in season 2, episode 13 of The L Word.

Also in 2013, Gloria Steinem was featured in the documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America about the feminist movement.

Also in 2014, Gloria Steinem appeared in season 1, episode 8, of the television show The Sixties.

Also in 2014, Gloria Steinem appeared in season 6, episode 3, of the television show The Good Wife.

In 2016, Gloria Steinem was featured in the catalog of clothing retailer Lands' End.

The Gloria Steinem Papers are held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, under collection number MS 237.

The Glorias is an American biographical film about Steinem which premiered in 2020.

In 2020, Gloria Steinem was portrayed by Rose Byrne in the FX miniseries Mrs America, depicting the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.