AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Gloria Steinem has died. The trailblazing journalist, political organizer and activist who devoted her life to the fight for women's rights was 92 years old.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Steinem's towering influence on American life is reflected in her many interviews with this network dating back to the early 1970s. We wanted to share some excerpts of those conversations as we remember her legacy.
CHANG: In 1971, Steinem, along with Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and other leaders in the women's liberation movement, founded the National Women's Political Caucus. Steinem spoke to NPR, saying, for generations, women had been doing all of the menial work in political campaigns.
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GLORIA STEINEM: We're not going to do that anymore. Let the male candidates do their own typing and mimeographing and, you know, driving voters to the poll. We're going to work for each other now. The will is there. We don't have to get women involved, but I think women do need a lot of help, encouragement and expertise.
CHANG: The National Women's Political Caucus advocated for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights and fair treatment of women in the workplace.
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CAROL KADUSHIN: Are you an anti-male group?
STEINEM: We're anti-men who use their privileges as men, sure. But we're not anti-men who dare to become human beings and to compete on an equal basis with Black men and Chicano men and all women. It's - the problem is that many men are so accustomed to the idea that no matter how bad things get, they can count on being superior to two groups, non-white men and women, that they kind of crack up when they're presented with a situation which they have to compete equally. But humanist men, we're not opposed to, no.
DETROW: In 1971, Steinem co-founded and edited the first of its kind Ms., or Ms., magazine, a national magazine owned and run by women. The following year, NPR spoke with her for a story we called "Is Ms. A Magazine Or A Text For Revolution?"
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STEINEM: The women's magazines that are around are really talking about women in their roles as wives and mothers, in spite of the fact that every once in a while, they do a different kind of article saying that women are human beings. Even then the next month, in order to be objective, they publish another one saying they're not (laughter). I mean, I feel that I am, and lots of other women are very isolated from each other, so that we need a magazine that's a kind of consciousness raising group in itself, a friend, you know, that comes into your house and is something that really tells the truth about your life and that will help change life instead of just offering an escape.
CHANG: Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, and spent her early years on the road with her parents. As she described in a personal essay for the NPR series This I Believe, her parents, quote, "thought that traveling in a house trailer was as enlightening as sitting in a classroom."
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STEINEM: I grew up seeing with my own eyes, following my curiosity, falling in love with books and growing up mostly around grown-ups. Needless to say, school hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn't prepared for gender obsessions, race and class complexities or the new-to-me idea that war and male leadership were a part of human nature. Soon I gave in and became an adolescent hoping for approval and trying to conform. It was a stage that lasted through college.
DETROW: Her mother, Ruth, was 35 when she gave birth to Gloria. What Steinem didn't know until much later was that Ruth had given up a successful career as a reporter and editor to help her husband run the family business. After her parents' divorce when she was 10, Gloria was both daughter and caretaker to her mother who had nervous breakdowns and depression. In order to fit in with other kids, she would give herself her own curfew, something her mother couldn't do.
CHANG: Steinem remembered her mother in the essay "Ruth's Song (Because She Could Not Sing It)," and she spoke about that with NPR's Susan Stamberg in 1984.
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STEINEM: Because we live in a society in which women are less powerful, many of us have been motherless, and I suppose because our mothers had no power to be examples to us or to protect us. And so part of the women's movement is becoming each other's mothers and nurturing each other. Part of it is understanding that it was not our mother's fault. It's amazing how long we can as young women, especially, go through life saying, I'm not going to be anything like my mother. So we blame her. We blame the victim instead of seeing what the forces on her were. Now, I'm just beginning to meet young women who say something wonderful because their mothers are interesting and sort of powerful people who have been able to be individuals. And they say, oh, I hope I can have as interesting a life as my mother. And it's so wonderful to hear that change.
DETROW: Steinem was treated for breast cancer in the 1980s. In a 1992 interview on Fresh Air, she recalled receiving the diagnosis.
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STEINEM: First, I thought, ironically, oh, so that's how it's going to end, you know? And then I thought to myself, as if it was welling up from the deepest part of me, I've had a wonderful life. And I treasure that moment. You know, it meant a lot to me. But on the other hand, it also made me realize that in this culture, women - we know how to be in the central plateau. Now I was entering a whole new place. It was like falling off a cliff because I couldn't see enough people ahead of me. You know, in the last two or three years of kind of paying more attention to my own inner life, I've realized that this aging in the last third of life or whatever is a new country. Women become ourselves after 50. You know, we leave behind this female impersonator role and drop a lot of baggage and really become much more our true selves.
CHANG: In 2017, after President Trump was elected to his first term, Steinem addressed those gathered on the National Mall for the women's march on Washington.
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STEINEM: We are here and around the world for a deep democracy that says we will not be quiet. We will not be controlled. We will work for a world in which all countries are connected. God may be in the details, but the goddess is in connections.
DETROW: More than a month before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, a draft of the opinion leaked, and Gloria Steinem joined us on this program.
CHANG: Steinem, who spent a lifetime fighting for women's rights, said her first reaction was, this feels both new and angering and ancient.
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STEINEM: You know, I think there have always been efforts to control women's birth-giving since women have been giving birth, for thousands of years. You know, this is not a new issue, and the very definition of patriarchy is trying to control women and birth-giving.
DETROW: Despite that news, Steinem said she was undeterred.
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STEINEM: One thing I've learned over time, over and over again, that politics and deep change and, you know, everything we're trying to do is like a tree, and too often we think the tree grows from the top, from Congress. Trees grow from the bottom, so what you and I do every day, what's possible in our community. We could thank the physicians who are supporting and providing reproductive freedom. We can give money to the elected figures who are supporting this vast majority view, and we can just, you know, refuse to be intimidated by the protestations of a losing minority.
CHANG: At the time of her death, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED was preparing to interview Steinem about her forthcoming memoir "An Unexpected Life." In the chapter called "Bad Things I'm Glad Happened To Me," Steinem writes, quote, "the point is not what choice we make, but that each of us has the power to make a choice. I hope my story might help to support your power to choose."
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