| There has been a lot of famous women activist
working for our rights in this past century. They have accomplished
many great things to help aid women in their day to day lives.
Because of them we've earned rights to do things such as voting to wearing
pants. One of the most famous is Gloria Steinem, she has spent most
of her life working for women's rights this is a short biography on her
life and why she will always be remembered. |
| She was born March 25th, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio ,and
grew up until the age of ten traveling around the country with her mother
Ruth, sister Susan, and Father Leo a traveling antiques salesman.
They spent summers at their resort in Clarklake Michigan. Gloria's
summers there are her happiest childhood memories. There she met and
became friends with many other children her age , she also learned to tap
dance. |
| Ruth home schooled the girls giving Gloria her
profound love and respect for books, although she also suffered
from a severe depression and spent most of her times in bed. It
sometimes got so bad that she had hallucinations, became violent, and
even self destructive. At the age of ten Gloria's parents split up
in 1944 leaving Gloria and her mother moved back to Toledo, her father
moved to California and Susan went to Smith College in
Massachusetts. |
| Ruth became very ill and could not take care of
Gloria so their roles reversed. She started doing all of the
shopping, cooking, and housekeeping. They rented out the bottom of
their house for money and Gloria tap danced for money. Although
taking on so much so early in her life she managed to read near 3 books
every night and went to the movies every weekend that she could afford
to. She did very well in school, having both boy and girlfriends in
high school ,and even danced for the Eagles Club. |
| In her senior year Susan finally realizing Gloria's
poor living conditions took her to live while Leo took care of Ruth.
Although planning to go to college Gloria wanted to become a Rockette.
She did so well that she graduated Vice President of her class, and was accepted to Smith College. Smith provided Gloria with her
first stable home. There she quickly won over her classmates with
her independence. She described the amount and availability of books
as heaven. She majored in government and was very politically active
on campus. |
| She and Susan went to visit their mother on the
weekends. These meetings with their mother led Gloria to her
realization that her mother was an actual person, her depression was
caused by quitting her job when she got married. Seeing how her
mother had suffered after having to choose between work and family Gloria
became even more involved in the work for women's equal rights. |
| In 1956
Gloria graduated with a Phi in Beta Kappa and accepted an offer to study
for two years in India. While on her way to England she discovered
that she was pregnant. Not wanting to quit her career so early and experience
her mothers pain, she got an abortion. After her two years in India
she came back to the U.S. wanting to publish a book about her stay. Unfortunately
very few female reporters were hired. Life magazine even went as far
as to say "We don't want a pretty girl, we want a writer." |
| After
finding landing herself a job at HELP! she became a freelancer.
Although she had finally found a good job she was still not being taken
seriously by her employers. Her editor suggested that she go
undercover as a playboy bunny. She took the offer thinking that such
an assignment would lead to her being taken more seriously. This
however was not the case. Although she intended it to be a strong
piece of investigative reporting it backfired causing her to be taken even
less seriously because she had worked for playboy. |
| For the
next five years she continued to freelance and began working for New York
magazine. She being very pleased with this new job said "my
work and my interests began to combine." She even received high profile
cases such as covering the Martin Luther King assassination. While
she was covering an abortion hearing she got a taste of how oppressed
women really were. After this she began to become even move involved
in women's liberation. While attending one of the rallies she
noticed that they never had any African American speakers. The
liberation seemed to only cover white women This sparked her idea of
always having an African-American woman speaker come to give speeches with
her. |
| While in
New York she went to meet Dorothy Pitman Hughes, the owner of the first
day care for working mothers. Dorothy and Gloria began giving many
public speeches together. This encouraged black women to join in the
liberation because Dorothy was also African American. In 1971 the
duo formed the Women's Action Alliance and in 1972 founded Ms. Magazine ,
one of the stepping stones to reach out to women around the country. |
| A you can
see Gloria did many great things to accomplish so much for us today.
This page is a tribute to her and all of the other great women who helped
to give women equal rights. |