GLORIA STEINEM
Reflects on the Women's Movement

By Maureen Traxler

In a warm, easy-going style, Gloria Steinem, the famous face of feminism, recently spoke at Nassau Community College's (NCC) 20th annual Sexual Harassment Awareness Day. Her topic;the Progression of Feminism: Where are we going?;captivated a combined audience of more seasoned individuals who observed her walk into the history books through 40+ years of writing, activism and advocacy and college students who learned about her endeavors through stories and study.

At an impromptu press conference preceding her presentation, Networking© magazine's publisher Christine Conniff Sheahan complimented Steinem on her work in the movement, saying, "You went forward; you carried the banner." Steinem replied demurely that her work is known because she is accidentally in the media and identifiable. She added,

"Feminism only works as a movement - it's not an individual thing." Commenting on the pace of the movement, Steinem said, "Consciousness change goes like wildfire because individuals, groups and communities can do it on their own. Institutional change;laws, how money is distributed and who decides social policy; takes longer, but has much more real world impact."

"I live in the future," said Steinem, "and love to look forward and say 'What if?'" And in the spirit of another dreamer, Walt Disney, who said, "If you can dream it, you can do it," Steinem revealed her visions: TV news, Internet news and blogs talking about solutions not just problems...Oprah doing a show with men who are saying "How can I combine a career and a family?"...The media not only looking at conflict as news, but also that the resolution of conflict is newsÉ People who will be raising their sons in the same way they raise their daughters, and daughters like they raise their sons - and men raising their babies as much as women are and showingchildren that men can be as loving as women.

Making It in the Big Apple
After growing up in the Midwest, caring for a mom challenged by mental illness, and not attending a full year of school until she was 12, Steinem graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College (MA) in 1956, and then spent two years in India on a Chester Bowles Fellowship, where she gained valuable organizational skills from Gandhi followers.

At 28, she began her career as a free-lance journalist in New York City. The photogenic girl from America's Heartland created a stir when she went undercover as a Playboy bunny and wrote an article on their working conditions for Show Magazine.

In 1968 Steinem joined the founding staff of New York Magazine as a contributing editor.The incident that thrust her into the feminist movement was her coverage of an abortion rally held by the radical feminist group of the Sixties called Redstockings. As she wrote about the event for her political column in New York Magazine, she began to question why this experience that is solely feminine is illegal.

Rebirth of the Feminist Movement
Steinem's activism triggered a rebirth of the feminist movement which marks its beginnings in July 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton discussed with her four friends her discontent with the limitations placed on women under America's new democracy. The women called a convention in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.

Steinem went on to co-found Ms. magazine in 1972, the only women's magazine owned and controlled by women at the time, and was an editor there for 15 years. As a freelance writer, she has been published in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine and many women's magazines as well as in publicaitons in other countries.

Her books include the bestsellers Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; Moving Beyond Words and Marilyn: Norma Jean, on the life of Marilyn Monroe. Her writing aslo appears in many anthologies and textbooks, and she was an editor of Houghton Mifflin's The Reader's Companion to US Women's History.

She helped to found the Women's Action Alliance, the National Women's Political Caucus, Voters for Choice and Choice USA.

Steimen was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women and responsible for initiating the Ms. Foundation's Take Our Daughters to Work Day in 1993. The Day was created and produced for the Ms. Foundation by Nell Merlino, currently the CEO of Count Me In for Women's Economic Leadership.

In the same year the program began, Steinem was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, acknowledging her contributions to the women's movement.

Reflections
In order for people to know where the movement is going, it makes sense that people know where the movement has been and where it is at present. Steinem took her Nassau Community College listeners back to the 1960s and the campus anti-Vietnam War protests, which included the draft;the first time students became a political force. "Women were a part of that time," she added, but unfortunately, "when the military draft disappeared, much of the activity did, too."

"Women have always been in combat in every day life," added Steinem, who said that statistically, the most dangerous place for an American woman is in her own home because many are beaten or killed by someone they know. Steinem believes women in the military still do not receive the same benefits as their male counterparts, although she agrees women are now being counted. "Perhaps that's progress," she remarked.

At the Sexual Harassment Awareness Day, Steinem reflected on the origin of the phrase "sexual harassment," a term coined by a woman attorney, Catharine MacKinnon, who became interested in the harassing behaviors women experienced in the workplace.

Steinem commended the brave women in the Cornell University summer program who in the mid 1970s spoke out about what was happening to them. "Progress can be made from speaking the truth, hearing others, and discovering there are other people experiencing this too," recalled Steinem. "It's about power, if we band together," said Steinem. "We can see this as an example of what can be done in the future."

Steinem mentioned another courageous woman, an African American named Michelle Vinson, a bank teller sexually abused by her supervisor. Standing up to the abuser and the institution, she took the case to court, and in 1986, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling mandated that employers have the obligation to prevent and respond to workplace abuse. Women and Blacks in American politics

Steinem says, "You can't have democracy without the civil rights movement, without the feminist movement." She sees a link between the movements and theorizes that maintaining racism controls reproduction.

When asked if in 1974 she could have envisioned a women running for president of the United States, Steinem pointed to women who have paved the way: Victoria Woodhull who ran for president in 1872 and received the nomination of the Equal Rights Party, and in more modern times, Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1968, who liked to say she "took the "White male only" sign off the White House." While Steinem said, "Perhaps naively we thought we might have had a woman there sooner," she added that people say, "Why are we choosing our leadership talent from such a small percentage of the public?"

With the current Democratic Party primary race for president fielding a White woman and an African American man, Steinem shows her belief in the coalition of sex and race, cautioning American voters not to let the media pit candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama against each other.

"Let's keep it as a coalition and see who comes out the winner," Steinem concludes. "When I'm asked, 'Are you supporting Clinton or Obama?' I just say, 'Yes'."

Where We Go From Here
In a January 2006 interview with CBS News, Steinem talked about her marriage at age 66 to human rights activist David Bale. She wore jeans and a flower in her hair, and most importantly, she knew who she was and no longer felt she would have to give herself up in any way. Sadly, Bale died three years later of a brain lymphoma. His son is actor Christian Bale.

While Steinem said the reason people know of her involvement in the women's movement is because there were so few women activists in the Sixties, she sees a new wave of women taking college students forward and keeping the momentum going. She acknowledged the growth of this "new wave" of feminists arising from "the women's studies programs, rock concerts and awareness programs on every campus and in every community."

Steinem spoke about the age-old practice of sex and labor trafficking, issues that highlight her current activism. She said that trafficking for labor is actually a bigger problem today than in the days of slavery in America in proportion to the world population in the 1800s. She pointed out that there are no laws in New York State that address sex trafficking, yet "the United States can discipline other countries for not having trafficking laws."

In the United States, Steinem said, "work is still valued according to the social identity of the person who does it. We must re-value work for its real importance to the community, not to the social identity or social value of the worker," stressed Steinem. She called for valuing "all productive work," and highlighted the American homemaker, a profession shared by one-third of our nation's population, who "works longer and harder than any other worker with less guarantees of salary supports and social benefits.

"We are all struggling to become full people," Steinem concluded. "We discover it together. It takes a movement. We need each other, but at the same time and in balance with that, each one of us is a unique miracle, a combination of heredity and environment. It is that uniqueness, the imbalance with our shared humanity, the community, the movements of social justice and liberation, which sets our dreams free, and what can be a greater reward than that?"