Gloria Steinem: Women’s Rights Warrior Makes An Exit

Gloria Steinem, who died at the age of 92, fought for and achieved equality, self-worth, and confidence for women around the world. Among the many social and political revolutionaries who came out of early 20th-century USA, she stands out as an unrelenting fighter for women’s rights whose life mission was to give women the right to live and work as they wanted. Much before she passed away, that right had been achieved around the world and had been written into statute books in many countries. That is an achievement that surpasses many much-decorated prophets and statesmen of the 20th century.

When Steinem launched the pioneering women’s magazine ‘Ms.’ in 1971, women were still victims and objects in a patriarchal world. Her aim was to turn that world upside down, and she did. Feminism was born and grew with her. Ms. became a magazine that fought for and achieved equal rights for women in many fields and eradicated the many biases and assumptions that blocked the rise of women. “When we started there was not even a term for sexual harassment. It was just called life,” Steinem once said.

Her life was unrelenting and passionate, and she lectured and wrote into her 90s. She has written 12 non-fiction books, and her life story is scheduled to be published soon. For women, she was the prophet and angel put together, and there was no women’s issue she did not wade into. Some counter-feminists, right-wing loonies, and patriarchs tried to write her off as sexless and humourless, but she set her own terms. On Larry King Live, a woman caller told her “to rot in hell”. Though she was opposed to women being burdened with marriages and babies and refused to have one, she had a string of affairs with men of high standing, and there wasn’t any indication that she tried to run them all down as second-grade humans.

Steinem did a stint in Miranda House Delhi as part of a Chester Bowles fellowship. Her India stint and her travels to villages in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere helped shape some of her early positions on feminism, and we can easily conjecture that the sorry plight of women in India would have helped well up the anger within her. She has listed the world-known activist and writer Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay among those who inspired and helped shape her position on feminism in general and reproductive rights in particular. Miranda House was quick to claim credit and issued an obit statement. In Delhi, Steinem also formed a long-standing friendship with economist and feminist Devaki Jain, who said that Steinem “laid the foundation for public acknowledgement of women’s minds, skills, and political and social voices.” No one can disagree with that. Steinem will live for much longer as one who gave muscle to woman power and placed feminism in the forefront of social thinking.