Gloria Steinem’s early years hardly suggested the making of a feminist icon.
The daughter of an itinerant antique dealer, she grew up in a trailer and, after her parents divorced, was raised by a mother struggling with mental illness. Her first job after college was with an organization funded by the CIA. And while trying to establish herself as a journalist, she found herself typecast after a story she wrote about New York’s Playboy Club appeared alongside photographs of her dressed as a Bunny. Few editors were inclined to take a writer in bunny ears seriously.
But the seeds of feminism had already been planted: in her mother’s treatment by the medical establishment, in a back-alley abortion she underwent in London and in the exploitation she witnessed at the Playboy Club.
Everything changed in 1969 when she covered an abortion speak-out for New York magazine. It was the “big click,” as Steinem later called it. Soon she cofounded Ms. magazine, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance and the Women’s Media Center, becoming one of the most influential activists of her generation.
Now, she reflects on that extraordinary journey in her new memoir, An Unexpected Life.
Steinem joins us to discuss six decades of activism, the people who shaped her, the victories won for women and human rights and the challenges facing the next generation as it imagines an even bolder future.