GLORIA STEINEM: THE TRANSNATIONAL LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FEMINIST

By

JESSICA LANCIA

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2015

© 2015 Jessica Lancia

This dissertation is dedicated to all the freedom fighters, everywhere.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Seeing this project to completion would not have been possible without the support of the following people, who encouraged, cajoled, critiqued, and in many other ways helped see this work into fruition. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to

Dr. Louise Newman, my advisor and committee chair. For the last six years, she has mentored me and this project and has helped me become a stronger thinker and more precise writer. I am lucky to have had such a responsive advisor who pushed me to create my best work, and then taught me to polish it. I am also grateful to my committee: Bill Link, Paul Ortiz, Sheryl Kroen, and Trysh Travis, whom I selected because I value their intellect and perspectives, and because they teach inspirational graduate classes. I also want to thank past advisers, who encouraged me to pursue a

PhD, especially George Hopkins at the College of Charleston, Dominick Cavallo and

Marsha Darling at Adelphi University. Their courses brought history to life, and made me want to follow in their tracks.

The students and staff in the history department at the University of Florida have also been a huge support. My cohort and UF friends, with whom I shared classes and beers, especially in the first few years, provided the emotional and intellectual support to keep going. I’m especially indebted to Tim Fritz, who brought me to UF in the first place, and my colleagues Allison Fredette, Chris Ruehlen, Brenden Kennedy, Michael

Brandon, Andrea Ferreira, Scott Huffard, Nicole Cox, Johanna Mellis and Greg Mason.

Thank you also to Erin Smith, Linda Opper, and Hazel Phillips, who helped me navigate the bureaucratic organ that is the University. Finally, thank you to the dissertation writing group, especially “el Capitan” Rob Taber, who kept me focused in the final push.

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This work would not have been possible without the financial support of several institutions. The University of Florida provided primary funding, but I also received grants and scholarships from the following: Smith College, Harvard University, and

Duke University. I have also been privileged to have wonderful friends and family who have let me stay in their beautiful homes when I needed to get away to write: Alida

DePaz and Milena Gamboa in San Jose, Costa Rica, and Steve and Susan Hoffius in

Savannah, Georgia. As a former archivist, I have to give special thanks to the archivists

Amy Hague and Maida Goodwinn at Smith who gave me so many tips and advice and allowed me to go through the unprocessed Ms. Magazine papers, as well as all of the other archivists who have answered countless queries.

Finally, I am lucky to have such a wonderful and extensive personal support crew. The most important person in this regard is my spouse, Johnny Ibañez.

Throughout this process, Johnny has been my anchor, patient guide, first phone call, puppy wrangler, and generally the most amazing “pit crew” leader anyone could ask for.

I truly am the luckiest, and I love you. Thank you also to my family, who stopped asking me, finally, when I was going to be done. Mamma, Bennie, Ale, Dawn, and Julian –I love you. Papa’, I wish you could have been around to see this to the end with me. To my new family in Gainesville, especially Wanda DePaz and Jorge Ibañez and the rest of the De Paz clan, who are thankfully too many to name, thank you for being the biggest side-line cheer-leaders. To my closest Gainesville friends: Lorna Bracewell, Paola

Aguirre, Lauren Hannahs, Valerie Malivuk, Cindy Tarter and Amanda Bisson, thanks for always being there for me. Thank you to everyone else who helped get me here,

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especially my first USA family: Anna Hoffius, Danielle Corneille, Michael Morrison,

Steve and Susan Hoffius, Susan Dunn, Harlan Greene. Thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 8

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 9

2 EARLY YEARS: OHIO TO INDIA, 1934-1959 ...... 26

3 A RISING STAR: FROM FAMED JOURNALIST TO FEMINIST ICON, 1958- 1972 ...... 58

4 MS MAGAZINE AS TRANSNATIONAL NEXUS ...... 85

5 INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S YEAR, 1975: STEINEM AS FEMINIST AMBASSADOR ...... 119

6 STEINEM AND GLOBAL POLITICS ...... 147

7 CONCLUSION ...... 176

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 195

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 201

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Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

GLORIA STEINEM: THE TRANSNATIONAL LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FEMINIST

By

Jessica Lancia

August 2015

Chair: Louise Newman Major: History

This dissertation uses Gloria Steinem, the United States’ most internationally prominent feminist of the 1970s, to demonstrate that women's movement activists in the

United States were involved in and connected to women's movements and feminist activists in other parts of the world. It explores how they understood their actions and conceptualized their movement as part of a more global movement. Through Steinem's experience, the dissertation explains the appeal that US feminists had in reaching out to a global audience in both legitimizing their own movement and in giving them continued access to feminist activism. The dissertation argues that, in attending to Steinem's life, we see the internationalization of the US women's movement and how it fits into a growing global feminist movement.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Known as much for her looks as for her unwavering public support of women’s rights, Gloria Steinem, a recent winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, is arguably the iconic symbol of the U.S. women’s movement of the 1970s. With her streaked blond hair, oversized aviator glasses, long legs and disarming smile, Gloria

Steinem remains one of the most recognized figures of the 1970s. She was profiled by newspapers and magazines, consistently photographed, quoted (often mis-quoted), and interviewed in the print media, radio, and television. As far as the women’s movement goes, only Betty Friedan maintained this level of visibility in the press during this time.

Yet, Steinem is far more than a sexy symbol of American feminism. As a writer, magazine editor, and public speaker, Steinem’s list of accomplishments is impressive.

As a freelancer, she frequently published in the New York Times and other major news organs in the United States and abroad. In 1968, she helped to found New York

Magazine, and, in 1972 she co-founded Ms. magazine. She published several best- selling books, including three highly biographical works, Outrageous Acts and Everyday

Rebellions (1983), Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992), and Moving

Beyond Words (1994), as well as a biography of Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn: Norma Jean, in 1986.1 Her writing earned her many accolades, including the Penny-Missouri

Journalism Award, the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the Society of

Professional Journalism, and the Society of Writers Award from the United Nations.

1 Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983; Gloria Steinem, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1993; Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994; Gloria Steinem and George Barris, Marilyn: Norma Jean, (New York: H. Holt, 1986).

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As an activist, in 1971 Steinem helped found the Women’s Action Alliance, a national information center formed to coordinate women’s movement resources at the grass-roots level, and the National Women’s Political Caucus, dedicated to increasing women’s participation in public life and to supporting feminist politicians. That same year, she also co-founded the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national fund supporting girl’s and women’s empowerment projects. Her service in these and other organizations led to many more tributes, including induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, an honorary Doctorate of Human Justice from Simmons

College, and the Ceres Medal awarded by the United Nations.

Organized thematically and chronologically, my dissertation examines Gloria

Steinem’s life from her early years as a young, nomadic, and cosmopolitan American woman to her mature adulthood as a world-renowned feminist activist, arguing that

Steinem’s life can be used to illuminate both the reaches and limits of transnational U.S. feminist activism in the late 20th century. This dissertation highlights the significant international influences on Gloria Steinem’s life—her travels and life-changing encounters, especially in India, her participation in global feminist activism, exchanges between her and feminist activists around the globe-- in order to trace how these events shaped Steinem’s career and outlook.

Gloria Steinem’s life also enables us to explore the ways in which feminist movements in the United States intersected with feminist movements elsewhere in the world—in Europe (France, Spain, England and Germany), Asia (Russia, India, and

China), Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, and Costa Rica), Africa (Egypt and Kenya), the

Middle East (Iran and Israel), and Australia. Thinking about Steinem from this

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perspective adds to our collective knowledge of the transnational migrations of social movements in a globalizing world, especially the intersections of women’s movements from around the globe and the complex attempts by these activists to break down national barriers in the name of addressing the common oppression experienced by women in the 1970s. In exploring these attempts, my dissertation aims to expand our knowledge of U.S. women’s movement activism and to debunk notions that insularity was characteristic of American feminism during this time frame.

Though Steinem’s activities represented only a small aspect of the US women’s movement overall, they carried a disproportionate amount of weight because Steinem was perceived as the symbol of American feminism, especially to an international audience. As a result, Steinem gained access to social circles and people in positions of power who were inaccessible to many of her U.S. feminist peers. She then was able to use her visibility, access and authority to work for international cooperation among feminists and to bring issues affecting women in other parts of the world to the forefront of the American public’s consciousness. Through her stewardship of Ms. magazine,

Steinem had a significant impact on the communication women from around the world had with one another, as the magazine was read extensively overseas and served as a transnational nexus for feminists.

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1934, and spent her childhood traveling around the county in a camper with her larger-than-life father and mentally fragile mother. She developed into an independent, popular, and fiercely intelligent young woman, won a scholarship to attend Smith College and spent four formative years from

1952 to 1956 in Northampton, Massachusetts, socializing with the New England elite.

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She used the opportunity to study abroad in Europe, to spend time in Switzerland, and to live and travel extensively in India before returning to the U.S. and landing a job in

1959 as the director of the Independent Research Service, a CIA-funded organization that sent young Americans to Communist Youth Festivals around the world. She also developed a career as a free-lance writer, and by 1963 she had garnered some acclaim for writing an exposé of Playboy bunnies by working undercover as a bunny herself.

She became sought after as a writer of women’s issues, and was sent to profile the

1968 abortion hearings in NY, which was her first foray into the newly proclaimed second-wave of the feminist movement. Hooked by the movement, she became a full- time feminist writer and activist after co-founding Ms. magazine in 1972.

Although scholars and journalists have lauded Steinem for her multi-faceted attempts to make the American public aware of struggles and concerns affecting women, little has been written about the extensive transnational influences on Steinem’s life. The two major biographies published on Steinem illuminate many facets of

Steinem’s varied life and provide a useful timeline, but neither situate her work within the broader scholarship on transnational feminism. The first, Carolyn Heilbrun’s The

Education of a Woman (1995) is a traditional biography written for a popular audience.2

The book is driven by narrative, rather than argument, and characterizes Steinem as a complex figure who is “both exemplary and exceptional.”3 The second book, Sydney

Ladensohn Stern’s Gloria Steinem: Her Passion, Politics, and Mystique (1997),

2 Carolyn Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995). 3 Heilbrun, 403.

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maintains the same narrative-driven feel, and explores Steinem’s life in much the same vein as Heilbrun’s.4

Both biographies provide a basic overview of her life and both, but Heilbrun’s in particular, provide keen insight into Steinem’s inner life – exploring how she battled the demons of her childhood and arguing that she found meaning in her work and in being a dependable and nurturing figure in contrast to her own childhood experiences. 5 In addition, Stern and Heilbrun devote attention to Steinem’s experiences in India and her studies abroad. Stern explores with particular zest Steinem’s alleged involvement in the

CIA through the Independent Research Service. However, neither analyzes the impact these early experiences had on Steinem’s international work as an adult, the kinds of work she did on a domestic level that had international components, or how she was involved in international affairs and grassroots feminist activism outside of the United

States.

From a broader perspective, this dissertation fits into a growing literature concerning the transnational history of social movements to build a broader, deeper

4 Sydney Ladensohn Stern, Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique. (Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1997). 5 The main difference between the two biographies derives from the extensive personal access that Steinem gave Heilbrun, whom she considered a friend, but did not extend to Stern, whom she did not know. Steinem gave Heilbrun unfettered access to her papers and her close friends and confidants, as well as herself. This influenced both the conclusions they drew about her character and the influences upon it. For instance, Stern signed an agreement that, in exchange for being interviewed, Steinem would receive a copy of the manuscript to fact-check, and that Steinem was to be the “absolute authority” about any facts and quotes she disagreed with unless it could be proven otherwise with tape-recorded evidence. According to Stern, once Stern submitted the manuscript to Steinem, Steinem objected to several of Sterns’ characterizations of her and facts about her life. For instance, according to Stern, Steinem “objected strenuously to my contention that she could have derived ego gratification from being a feminist leader rather than being a completely reluctant leader who only wanted to be a writer.” By contrast, Heilbrun paints this exact description of Steinem in her exploration of her involvement in feminist activities. Stern, 449. Heilbrun, xi.

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understanding of the global activist networks that were active during the 1970s.6

Beyond encouraging scholars to reconsider the origins and development of feminist social movements, transnational feminist scholarship has also called into question established conceptions of feminist movements as geographically insular phenomena that took shape solely within the boundaries of the nation-state.7

Transnational, comparative, and international approaches are sometimes conflated, and it is important to take a moment to note the key methodological differences that distinguish transnational from these other methodologies. Transnational history focuses on understanding the movement of ideas, people, and materials across national boundaries, while comparative history focuses on evaluating similarities and differences of similar topics in different nation states. International history is focused is on political relationships that extend beyond the nation-state, like those between governments and international agencies, such as the United Nations. The first transnational histories of the women’s movement were also strongly comparative: they dealt with the campaign for women’s suffrage in the early twentieth century, comparing

6 Some scholars have begun to focus on particular historical moments with strong transnational components. See, Kenney Padraic, and Gerd-Rainer Horn, eds. Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989. (Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.) 7 The most famous of these is Bonnie Smith’s Global Feminism Since 1945 (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). Because there are few transnational feminist histories, the following have provided background information on countries with feminist movements whose histories intersect with US feminists’ in this dissertation: or France, see Claire Duchen, Feminism in France: From May ’68 to Mitterand. (London: Routledge, 1986) and Francoise Picq, “The MLF: Run for your Life,” in Claire Duchen, ed. French Connections: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement in France. (Amherst: Mass, University of Massachusetts Press, 1987); Tristan, Anne and Annie de Pisan. Histoires du M.L.F. (Calmann-Levy: Paris, 1977). For Germany, see Hilda Bendowski, Wie Weit Flog Die Tomate? (Berlin: Heinrich-Boll Stiftung, 1999); For Mexico, see Elaine Caray, Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 in Mexico. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005); In Italy, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Liberazione della Donna: Feminism in Italy. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1986.) In Japan, Machiko Matsui, “Evolution of the Feminist Movement in Japan.” NWSA Journal, 2, no. 3 (Summer 1990). In Australia, Sylvia Kinder, Herstory of Adelaide Women's Liberation 1969-1974, (Salisbury Education Centre, Adelaide, 1980).

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and linking women’s movements in Britain and the United States and arguing for their extensive interaction.8 This dissertation is purely a work of transnational history (with few comparative elements), in that its main concern is in understanding Steinem’s international activities and how these interacted/clashed/coalesced with women’s activism in the United States in the 1970s.

It is also important to note that the term transnational feminism has a distinct connotation in other literatures and disciplines, especially in sociology and women and gender studies. There, the term transnational feminism is associated with postcolonial critiques of Western feminism, defined especially by the work of Chandra Mohanty.9

She argued that “universal sisterhood, defined as the transcendence of the ‘male’ world…ends up being a middle-class, psychologized notion that effectively erases material and ideological power differences within and among groups of women, especially between First and Third World women (and, paradoxically, removes us all as

8 Patricia Harrison makes this argument well in Patricia Harrison, Connecting Links: The British and American Women’s Suffrage Movements. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000), 1. While scholars were slow to begin this comparative work, activists were engaged in writing their own histories from a transnational perspective early one. For an early activist perspective on a comparative approach connecting women’s movement in the US and Europe, see Jan Bradshaw, Women’s Liberation Movements: Europe and North America. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982).

9 Mohanty’s book Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity sets up a theory of transnational feminist solidarity rooted in a third world context. See Chandra Mohanty. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003). Mohanty locates the fundamental roots of “third world” women’s oppression in the context of capitalist exploitation and racism. Beyond connoting a non-western subject of study, Mohanty’s work has had a far- reaching influence in feminist historiography. Like theorists Denise Riley and Judith Butler, she challenged the categories of womanhood and universal sisterhood, arguing that these were constituted by Western modes of thought. Other women’s studies works that use this definition of transnational feminism include Wendy Hesford and Wendy Kozol, eds. Just Advocacy?: Women's Human Rights, Transnational Feminisms, and the Politics of Representation (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005). Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America : Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)

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actors from history and politics).”10 This dissertation takes Mohanty’s claims seriously, while arguing for an expanded definition of the term to include North American feminism. As expanded upon below, it delves into Steinem’s participation in, and separation from, the concept of universal sisterhood, predicated on the belief of a common oppression as women.

There are several scholars who have already addressed this concept in the historical timeframe of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the most productive discussions of the U.S. women’s movement transnationally have addressed the tensions that developed within international conferences among U.S. movement activists and between U.S. participants and other nation’s activists. Scholars such as Judy Tzu-Chun

Wu and Jocelyn Olcott have shown that while North American women tried to forge international coalitions with activists from other nations, divisions among US feminists made it difficult for them to generate solidarity among themselves.11 Wu suggests that the underlying tensions among the U.S. contingent emerged from the lack of interaction between the Third World, liberal, and radical feminist movements in the US. Olcott ’s

10 Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 116. Though not a work of history, her work has cautioned historians to pay attention to the micropolitics of context, stating that “cross-cultural feminist work must be attentive to the micropolitics of context and subjectivity, as well as global economic and political systems.” Chandra Mohanty, “’Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity Through Anticapitalist Struggles” (2003) in Carole McCann and Kin Seung-kyung, Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 447. Another wide-reaching article that cautions us to pay attention to the particularity of locational contexts is Susan Friedman’s “Locational Feminism.” Susa Friedman, “Locational Feminism: Gender, Cultural Geographies, and Geopolitical Literacy,” In Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, Marianne Dekoven, ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Also see Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor. “Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Twentieth-Century Feminism. Signs, (Winter, 1999). 11 Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, “Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Peace Activism and Women’s Orientalism,” in No Permanent Waves, ed. Nancy Hewitt (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 193-220; Jocelyn Olcott “Globalizing Sisterhood: International Women’s Year and the Politics of Representation,” in Niall Ferguson, ed. The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Retrospective (Harvard University Press, 2010), 281-93.

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study of the 1975 United Nations International Women’s Year (IWY) conference in

Mexico City argues that while many U.S. feminist activists dreamt of a “global sisterhood,” in which a shared identity as “woman” united them in their quest to fight patriarchal power, this proved an elusive and contentious battle of identity-based interests.12 Wu and Olcott’s articles demonstrate the problematic consequences of this concept of universal sisterhood from the perspective of international politics.

My dissertation enters this discussion by showing how Steinem’s international experiences demonstrate consistent and extensive efforts on behalf of US feminists to engage on behalf of women’s rights initiatives globally, both in terms of supporting grass-roots movements and as part of more broadly defined international bodies such as the United Nations. The dissertation argues that, in many respects, Steinem acted as a kind of “global ambassador” of feminism representing the United States to the world, and that her engagements helped to define the shape of a nascent global feminist movement. At the heart of this engagement with international politics, I argue, was a deep-seated desire on behalf of Steinem and other activists to create a sense of feminist solidarity that transcended national borders and depended, more than anything else, on a shared understanding and conceptualization of womanhood as an oppressed class (or, as Steinem would have put it herself, caste).

The dissertation also supports the reconceptualization of the chronological parameters of the feminist movement undertaken by feminist scholars in recent years.

For instance, historians of the second wave have, until recently, articulated the history of the movement by using a “wave” analogy, terming the swell of activism that took

12 Olcott, 283.

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place from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s as the “second wave.”13 Many historians have critiqued this assessment, Nancy Hewitt chief among them, arguing the wave analogy is both inaccurate and limiting in understanding the complex nature of women’s movement activism.14

Steinem’s life story demonstrates the incongruity and limitations of this assessment. Born in 1934 as the grand-daughter of a 19th century suffragist, she was older than many of the feminists who joined the feminist movement in the 1960s and early 1970s and had a direct, personal connection to the “first wave”, having been raised in the shadow of a woman’s activist figure. By remaining active in the women’s movement until the present day, Steinem’s personal experience, too, defied the characterization of the wave.

The narrative arc of Steinem’s activities and involvements in grassroots politics demonstrate the continuation in activity between first, second, and third waves of activism, and expands as well as reorients its geographical scope. For instance, scholars of the “second wave” (where Steinem is generally categorized) posit that the movement declined sharply in the mid-1970s and that, by the 1980s, it had all but failed

13 The wave analogy has a long history -- feminist activists in the United States started using it early on to connect their struggle with that of 19th century feminist activists. For example, see Judith Hole and Ellen Levine, Rebirth of Feminism. (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1973). 14 Nancy Hewitt, No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Some scholars have begun to do the work of rethinking the wave by including transnational activism. For example, Nancy Hewitt, discussed above, recently began to include transnational analyses in their studies of U.S. feminism. Her work on women’s activism in Tampa, FL from the 1880s to the 1920s, for instance, discusses the tensions and coalitions between middle class white women, laboring black women and Latina cigar workers. She makes the Spanish-American war of 1898 central to her analysis, positing that the “war in Cuba transformed women’s activism in South Florida, accelerating women’s entrance into new public domains and complicating relations among Anglo, African American, and Latin activists.” Nancy Hewitt, Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 68.

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due to a conservative backlash and Reaganomics.15 However, shifting focus to the transnational dimension of U.S. feminism enables scholars to re-evaluate this trajectory, as the mid-1970s marks the increasing saliency of international feminist cooperation on the level of non-governmental organizations and the growth of feminist movements in other countries in which Steinem is engaged. By the 1980s, the international feminist circuit had grown and expanded to take on global concerns such as nuclear disarmament, conflict resolution, environmental conservation, and economic development. These are very important components of feminist activism and global organizing that US feminists found themselves productively engaged in throughout the

1990s (and into the present,) and which traditional women’s histories of the second wave have largely ignored.

The organization of this dissertation is both chronological and thematic. The next chapter, Early Years, traces Steinem’s life as a young, nomadic and cosmopolitan

American woman during the 1940s and 1950s whose academic training included – in a fashion characteristic of the American elite at the time – one semester studying abroad in Europe. However, Steinem’s education included a most unusual component for young Americans at the time, as she also spent two years immediately following her

15 The following accounts have been useful in providing background information and general accounts of the movement in the United States: Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights and the New Left (New York: Random House, 1979); Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Kathleen Berkeley, The Women’s Liberation Movement in America,(Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999). Excellent recent works include: Anne Enke, Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, eds, Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement. (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Rosalyn Baxandall, “Re-Visioning the Women’s Liberation Narrative: Early Second Wave African American Feminists.” Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (Spring, 2001).

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graduation from Smith College studying and travelling in India during 1956-1958. This chapter argues that Steinem’s experiences in India fundamentally shaped her perspectives on activism, including her ideas concerning women’s shared and global experience of oppression that could take many forms – from class to race to gender. It is in India that Steinem learned about successful grass-roots activism, knowledge that she would bring to her feminist politics in later years. Furthermore, she developed important connections in India that propelled her professional career, a subject further explored in the third chapter.

The third chapter – A Rising Star – picks up the chronology of Steinem’s life after she returns to the United States in the early 1960s and takes the reader through the founding of Ms. Magazine in 1972. This chapter examines how the connections

Steinem made in India enabled her to begin her career when she returned to the United

States, permanently altering her outlook and perspectives and influencing the US women’s movement in its wake. While in India, Steinem met an American PhD student,

Clive Gray, who recommended her for the job as the head of the Independent Research

Service, a nonprofit organization whose mission was to encourage Americans to attend

International Communist Youth Festivals. At the festival in Vienna in 1959, Steinem met

Nikita Kruschchev’s son-in-law and the Dalai Llama’s brother.

Steinem’s time in India and as the head of the Independent Research Service also had pragmatic consequences for her journalistic career. She was introduced to individuals who gave her the opportunity to prove herself as a female journalist and professional writer, working her way up in the journalism field by writing for Glamour,

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Ladies’ Home Journal, The New York Times, Vogue, Life, Harper’s Magazine, McCall’s, and New York magazine.

The fourth chapter – Global Ms. - delves into Steinem’s most consuming professional project: Ms. Magazine, exploring how the magazine served as a transnational nexus during its most influential years, 1972-1980 and arguing that

Ms. served both as a catalyst and model for feminist magazines around the world. As one of the first mainstream newspapers in the US with a wide global reach, Ms. inspired other feminist magazines, like the French F, begun by contributing editor and close collaborator Claude Servan-Schreiber. The staff at Ms. also shared lessons with other magazines and its editors, such as the German Emma, the Italian Effe, and England’s

Spare Rib, with whom the American magazine exchanged article ideas, office visits, magazine space, and fund-raising appeals. In the Global South, Ms. had relationships with women’s magazines in Ghana and South Africa. The term “Global South” is the term in most recent usage by scholars, replacing the term “third world.” Like the term

“third world” it remains problematic in its oversimplification in grouping countries and in reinforcing hierarchies based on economic and cultural categorizations. I use the term throughout the dissertation critically, aware of its problems and limitations.

Though the magazine itself has been widely studied, its international dimensions have received only passing mention. This chapter highlights a variety of ways in which the magazine served as part of an international feminist network. It demonstrates that

Ms. provided readers from many parts of the world an avenue to learn about women’s struggles worldwide through communication exchanges and media coverage of international events. It argues that Ms. served as a transnational nexus, linking up

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feminist groups across national boundaries and providing assistance and inspiration for feminist political projects.

The fifth chapter, “International Women’s Year, 1975: Steinem as Global

Ambassador,” focuses on Steinem’s involvements in international politics by looking at her international speaking engagements and her attempts to create what she called

“psychic spaces” in which feminists could engage one another. Although Steinem’s full- fledged involvement in an international feminist movement began as a result of her role in Ms. magazine, the global recognition of her role as an adept politician, started with her participation in the first United Nations-sponsored conference on the status of women, held in Mexico City in June 1975. This conference addressed global issues of gender inequality and discrimination against women, providing Steinem (and many other American and international feminist activists) a chance to learn from and about women in different cultures. Many Americans, including Steinem, also came to realize first-hand the limitations that a large bureaucracy such as the United Nations faced in its ability to bring about change for women worldwide. Five months later, at the urging of the Conference, the UN General Assembly declared 1976-1985 to be the International

Decade of Women, hoping to launch a “new era in global efforts to promote the advancement of women by opening a worldwide dialogue on gender equality.”16 In the next two decades, the UN hosted three more international conferences: in Copenhagen

(1980), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995). Steinem participated in that dialogue by publishing reports on the conferences for Ms. magazine and by collaborating with the

16 “The Four Global Womens' Conferences 1975 - 1995: Historical Perspective” UN Division for the Advancement of Women Webpage. Accessed on October 10, 2014. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/followup/session/presskit/hist.htm.

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United Nations. Finally, this chapter illustrates how the same chasms facing American feminists at home followed American feminist interactions abroad, including the defamation tactics used by Betty Friedan and Redstockings against Steinem at the IWY conference.

The sixth chapter, “Steinem and Global Politics,” examines Steinem’s global network from the mid to late 1970s, returning to Ms.’ attempts at creating international feminist solidarity. By the mid-1970s, American feminists like Steinem had become deeply enmeshed in major geo-political debates of the time, especially in the Middle

East, and parts of Africa and South East Asia. This chapter explores two engagements in which Steinem played a significant, and very different role – Iran in 1972 and 1979, and India in 1976. The interactions in Iran demonstrate the extent to which western feminist ideologies about women’s rights clashed with those of women in Iran. In 1972,

Steinem refused a visit to Iran at the behest of the Pahlavi Empress because of concerns that grassroots feminists in Iran brought up with her. They feared the Pahlavi regime had invited her to try to legitimize its own limited support of women’s rights. Five years later, in 1979, the political regime in Iran changed as the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. This time, a group of Iranian grass-roots feminists invited Western feminists to participate in the struggle against the anti-woman policies – like mandatory veiling - that the Ayatollah was trying to install. Again, Steinem did not to travel to Iran, but this time she supported the efforts of Simone de Beauvoir and other Western feminists who did. The chapter explores the tensions between the feminists on the committee and in Iran.

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The second example examines a different cultural exchange involving Steinem’s experience in India in the mid-1970s. In 1976, at the request of her Indian friends and feminist colleagues, Steinem returned to India for the first time since living there from

1957 to 1958. During this trip, she shared some of her experiences but spent most of the time listening and learning about the dimensions of the Indian women’s movement.

She traveled with Indian colleagues and learned for the first time about micro-financing and other local initiatives to stimulate the economy and provide a living wage for Indian women in the lower classes. She then returned to the US and shared those encounters with her peers at Ms. and the global network of the magazine’s readers. In contrast to the experience in India, this interchange demonstrates how US women’s activists could learn about events and movements in different parts of the world and grow from these interactions in ways that were positive and illustrative of the celebration of difference within a communally defined movement. Both of these interactions, in Iran and in India, happened within Steinem’s orbit and within the context of Ms. magazine and the highly charged 1970s.

Taken as a whole, the dissertation provides new evidence of a vibrant international women’s movement that took place after the traditional United States’ movement had already crested. In that movement, Gloria Steinem and the magazine she created played a small but essential part, just as they did in the growing international feminist movement. Steinem was able to use networks of knowledge, her connections, and her professional skills to help develop this growing international feminist movement as well as to give more depth to the one she had been deeply involved in her home country. How did such an exceptional individual accomplish such

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impressive feats? To answer that, we must return to the beginning -- in 1934 in Toledo,

Ohio.

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CHAPTER 2 EARLY YEARS: OHIO TO INDIA, 1934-1959

When I was living in India on a fellowship after college, a kind Indian friend took me aside and suggested I might consider saying ‘South Asia,’ ‘Southeast Asia,’ and the like, instead of the ‘Near’ and ‘Far East.’ It was the first time I’d ever realized that ‘Near’ and ‘Far’ assumed Europe as the center of the world. Gloria Steinem in 1992.1

This chapter focuses on Steinem’s early life, from her birth in Toledo, Ohio in

1934 to the end of her college career in 1958, to understand how and why Steinem came to be so interested and involved in international politics from an early age. It briefly traces the most significant influences from within her family, especially the

Theosophical ideology of her mother and grandmothers, which encouraged Steinem to think of the world as an interconnected place, and to value her own intellect and experiences. This chapter also examines her college years at Smith from 1952 through

1956, and then explores Steinem’s early adulthood as a nomadic and cosmopolitan

American woman who studied abroad in Europe during her junior year at college in

1955 before embarking on a journey to India that would fundamentally shape the direction of the rest of her life.

The bulk of this chapter explores the years from 1956 – 1958, during which time

Steinem spent two years in India, immediately following her graduation from Smith college. In India, she abandoned her physical possessions to join a group of

Gandhians trying to stop riots between castes that had broken out in Ramanathapuram, a rural area in Tamil Nadu, and she began to earn her living as a professional writer.

Some of her experiences were deeply personal and traumatic, shaping her feminist

1 Steinem, Revolution from Within, 44.

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positions in later years: in particular the experience having an abortion in London, which, though legal, was highly frowned upon and performed in secrecy. Other instances were less disturbing, but still significant in forging the outline of her future. The context of the Cold War followed her to India, where she encountered Soviet and

American spies, and explored left-wing philosophies like radical humanism and Indian

Communism. Finally, her stay in India allowed Steinem to deviate from the traditional conventions governing young American women’s lives at this time-- marriage and the confines of domesticity to which she would have been expected to conform had she stayed in the United States. By the time she returned to the United States in 1959 as a

24 year-old woman, Steinem had already learned to rely on herself for her own economic support, and she had also forged important connections to people who would be of great significance to her in her future endeavors.

Gloria Steinem was born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio to a working-class Christian mother, Ruth Nuneviller, and a Jewish father from a well-to-do family, Leo Steinem.

Steinem’s parents met while working at the college newspaper at the University of

Toledo and married in 1921. Both families opposed the union when the couple wed in

1921, after meeting at the University of Toledo. Ruth continued to work as a journalist for the Toledo Blade until the birth of the couple’s first child, Susanne, in 1925. In 1926, the couple bought land in Clark Lake, Michigan. Leo’s vision was to have a bustling summer resort luring visitors with a series of attractions and bands from around the country. The summer resort and dance pavilion, called Ocean Beach Pier, offered dancing “over the water, under the stars” and opened on Memorial Day, 1928. 2 The

2 Heilbrun, 12.

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resort, which grossed $50,000 the first summer it was open, enabled Leo to make several new real estate investments, including the purchase of a new home. Then, in

1929, the stock markets crashed and business diminished significantly.3 The unsuccessful venture, which eventually closed during WWII, ruined the family’s finances.

Steinem’s mother Ruth continued her work as a “pioneer in journalism,” as

Steinem recalled years later, but developed insomnia and severe anxiety, suffering from a mental breakdown in 1930, four years before Steinem was born. There were many causes; including financial pressures, several miscarriages and the birth of a stillborn son, and an accident at Clark Lake where a young man lost his life.4 Her breakdown led to a several-month stay in a Toledo sanitarium in 1930. After that, as Steinem recounted, her mother, who had been a “spirited, adventurous young woman” turned into a woman who “was always lying on the couch with her eyes closed, talking to people in another realm.”5

Unfortunately for the young Steinem, she could not rely on extended family for much emotional support. Both of Steinem’s grandfathers had died before she was born, and her paternal grandmother died when Steinem was 6, in 1940. However, Steinem did receive two significant inheritances from her grandparents, especially her grandmothers. The first was growing up in the shadow of strong-willed and independent

3 Heilbrun, 13. 4 This story is explored in Heilbrun, 12-14. . 5 First quote from Steinem, quoted in Heilbrun, 13. Second quote from Gloria Steinem and Peter Kunhardt, Gloria: In Her Own Words.

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women who did not ascribe to traditional modes of femininity. The second, as described later in the chapter, was an attraction to Theosophy.6

The grandparent she would have probably connected to the most was her paternal grandmother, Pauline, one of the most prominent suffragists in Ohio during the

1910s.7 In many ways, Steinem’s life would parallel her grandmother’s, even though

Steinem only remembered her vaguely, as a “plump, white-skinned, gray-haired woman” with whom she ate “clear soup with dumplings on a table with a lace cloth.”8

Pauline spoke on behalf of women’s suffrage to the U.S. Senate, on behalf of progressive school legislation and suffrage to the Ohio state legislature, and helped establish a juvenile court system in the US. She served on several suffrage associations and traveled internationally as a delegate for the International Council of

Women in Switzerland in 1908 as well as attending the quinquennial meeting of the

International Council of Women in Toronto in 1909.9 When she died in 1940 - Steinem was only 6 - the local newspaper called her “a remarkable Toledo woman who helped to shape the feminist movement in this country.”10

6 Heilbrun, 8. 7Leo Steinem’s father, Joseph Steinem (1852-1929), was born in Germany but immigrated to the United States as a young man. He returned to Germany to find a bride and met Pauline Perlmutter, who was born in Radzweiwo, Russian Poland on August 4, 1863 and had moved to Germany as part of an exodus of the Reform wave of Judaism when she was still a child. They married in 1884 in Germany and immigrated to Toledo, Ohio after three years. Joseph became successful in real estate but it was his wife Pauline who rose to even higher prominence in the community. More biographical data on the Steinems’ is available from Stern, chapter 1, pages 7-19 and Heilbrun, chapter 1, pages 1-41. Steinem’s discussion of this that led to Heilbrun’s analysis is in a note from Gloria Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, dated January 29, 1995. Gloria Steinem Papers. Sophia Smith Archives. Smith College. Northampton, MA. Box 1: Folder 8. 8 Quoted in Heilbrun, 8. 9 Marquis, Albert Nelson, ed. Who’s Who in America: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Living Men and Women of the United States, Vol. 13, 1924-1925. (Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Co., 1926), 3027. 10 Quoted in Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.” Esquire October 1971, 208.

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Steinem’s other grandmother was also a remarkable woman. Marie Ochs

Nuneviller, described as an ambitious and domineering woman, was born June 16,

1871 in the small down of Dunkirk, Ohio to a working-class family and died in 1958 in

Toledo, Ohio. She made money as a schoolteacher and later by writing sermons for the local Scotch Presbyterian Church. She married Joseph Henry Nuneviller, who was a boarder at her mother’s house, and they moved to Toledo. Joseph was born in New

Hampshire in 1867, and worked as a railroad engineer, a profession with which his wife was not satisfied, given her own social climbing ambitions.11 Steinem described her as

“self-willed with an edge of wildness,” recounting an episode where she traveled alone to California using her husband’s railroad pass and was caught in an earthquake in Los

Angeles. Instead of fleeing, she stayed to watch because she had never before been in an earthquake.12

Gloria Steinem, named by her 9 year-old sister Susanne, was described as a cheerful baby, and developed a close relationship with her sister and parents throughout her childhood. She spent summers at the Clark Lake resort and learned tap- dance steps from the resort dancers. There she met people from many different parts of the country and developed a fondness for reading that would stick with her. It was “a great time of running wild, catching turtles and minnows and setting them free again, looking for coins that customers at my parents’ dance hall dropped in the lake, wearing a bathing suit all day long and sleeping in a little office behind the dance hall to the sounds of Gene Krupa or Wayne King or the Andrews Sisters.”13

11 Bio data from Heilbrun, 2-4 and Stern, 10-11. 12 Heilbrun, 3. 13 Steinem quoted in Heilbrun, 16.

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One of the elements of Gloria’s childhood that may have inspired a sense of comfort with traveling and engaging in new experiences was the almost itinerant nature of her early childhood. For many years in Steinem’s early life, the family would travel around the country in an RV, leaving Michigan during the cold winters for the sunnier climes of Florida and other parts of the country. Ruth, who had a teaching certificate, would instruct the girls, while Leo would buy and sell antiques on the road to make ends meet. Though Leo’s irresponsibility made Ruth increasingly anxious, Steinem reveled in her father’s charm and zest for life. Thirty years after his death, she recalled her fondness for him. “Against all he had been taught a man’s life should be, against all convention for raising children and especially girls, he loved and honored me as a unique person. And that let me know that he and I—and men and women—are not opposites at all.”14

The itinerant nature of her early years prepared Steinem well for a life on the road, but this eventually took a toll on Ruth and the couple agreed to divorce in 1945, when Steinem was 11 years old. Leo went to California and Ruth and Steinem moved to

Amherst, Massachusetts, to be near Steinem’s sister Susanne, who was a junior at

Smith College. After a brief stint in New York, Ruth and Steinem moved back to Toledo, where they lived in Ruth’s parents’ house and survived on income from renting out the other parts of the house and the Clark Lake property. In Amherst, Steinem became active in the girl scouts, studied dance, and performed in plays.15 Ruth was left to take care of Steinem. Except that it was Steinem, a sixth grader, who ended up taking care

14 Steinem quoted in Heilbrun, 20. 15 Awards, programs, and miscellanea, 1946-1956, Steinem Papers, 5:5.

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of Ruth, whose mental state became increasingly unstable after her divorce-- to the point that, as Steinem articulated, she was unable to take care of her daughter or herself. “I remembered longing to escape the littered, depressing, rat-infested house where I lived alone with my mother… I remembered worrying as a child about our lack of money…I remember feeling sad about navigating life by myself, working after school, worrying about my mother, who was sometimes too removed from reality to know where she was…”16

Steinem’s high school years from 1946-1950 were a very difficult period for her, as she and her mother had little money and no outside help. Eventually, realizing Ruth was an unfit mother, Susanne and Leo came up with a temporary arrangement: even though they were divorced, Ruth went to live with Leo in California for a year while

Steinem moved to Washington, DC to live with her sister and attend her senior year at

Western High School in Washington, DC, where Steinem proved popular among her peers. She was elected vice president of the Student Council her senior year, vice president of the Senior class, secretary of the French club, and “princess” of the high school ball.17 Having been a caretaker to her mother, Steinem had developed into a self-possessed, mature girl, who intimidated and impressed her peers. As a high school boyfriend recalled, “People were in awe of her – she was a thinker and expressed herself well. She was serious but still had a sense of humor. I remember she had

16 Steinem, Revolution from Within, 37. 17 “Vivacious Gloria Steinem Proves Popularity in Senior Elections.” The Western Breeze, Western High School, Washington, DC Vol. 34 No 6, April 3, 1952. In Gloria Steinem Papers 1 – 10.

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strong beliefs and feelings and was very strong-willed. She was very respected. She fit in with those of us who thought of ourselves as sophisticated.”18

When it was Steinem’s time to leave for college she followed in her elder sister’s footsteps and attended Smith College, a women’s college in Northampton,

Massachusetts, enrolling in 1952 at age 18. “I didn’t know anything about other women’s colleges, I only knew about Smith because my sister had gone there,” she recounted in a 1973 interview.19 Her grades were too low to qualify for a scholarship, so she scrounged for tuition from various sources.20 The money to pay for her tuition came in part from the sale of Ruth’s parents’ house and land, which was condemned by the city and bought by a church.21 Later on, she received a scholarship and took out loans from the Smith Students’ Aid Society, describing herself as “a poor kid in a rich school.”22

College was a deeply liberating experience for Steinem, as she finally gave up her role as her mother’s caretaker and was able to explore the world in her own terms.

“I had very different reactions to the College from other women who were in my dormitory or in my class because it seemed the most luxurious, stable, marvelous kind of place. Compared to Toledo and an enormous high school, mostly factory working parents and children who did not go to college at all, it just seemed enormously

18 Quoted in Heilbrun, 62. 19 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City. In Gloria Steinem Papers 4-4 20 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City. In Gloria Steinem Papers 4-4 21 Steinem, Revolution from Within, 111. 22 Questionnaire, “Who’s Who in America”, c 1982. Steinem papers, 1-3.; Steinem file of Smith Student’s Aid Society loan summary. Steinem Papers, 5-2.

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secure.”23 She felt the class divisions very strongly, although she was not able to fully understand them at the time. “[W]hat saved me from certain kinds of social problems was that I didn’t know they were rich,” she recalled. “I began to observe that certain people came home from spring vacation, came back to school, with suntans and wonder why that was. And I began to understand that whereas in Toledo you got all dressed up in essentially very cheap clothes actually, that casual clothes could cost money and that you didn’t just wear your old good clothes, that there were actually clothes made for sports and so on. All kinds of social things I discovered.”24

In college, she developed a strong interest in international relations and politics.

She was intensely curious about different cultures and ideas, and jumped on the opportunity to travel to Switzerland during her junior year in the fall/winter of 1954 and spring/summer of 1955 to study with a dozen other Smith students, feeling that she might never have another chance to visit Europe.25 “I wanted to go to Europe and I felt that I would not be able to go any other way, I thought this was a kind of subsidized way of going. If I thought I would have been able to travel [later] I would have stayed at

Smith; it would have been much better for me academically not to have gone to

Geneva.”26

Steinem boarded the Queen Elizabeth from New York on September 1, 1954 and arrived in Cherbourg on September 6. She traveled with her fellow classmates and was

23 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City. Steinem Papers 4:4 24 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City. Steinem Papers 4:4 25Heilbrun, 53. 26 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City, page 14. Steinem Papers 4:4

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accompanied by their history professor Elisabeth Koffka. From there, she and the other students took a train to Paris, where she stayed for six weeks with a French family organized by the Smith program directors and took intensive French classes.27 She then traveled to Geneva, where she took courses at the Institut des Hautes Études

Internationaux at the University of Geneva. Her favorite course was international law, but she also studied international migrations, French literature, comparative constitutional law, Western Civilization, German History, 20th Century English Literature, and International History. Though she struggled with French, she earned all As during her second semester, except for a C+ in 20th century English Literature.28

Steinem was selected at random to live with a host family in Geneva, but she still felt isolated and lonely. She later remembered her experience in Geneva as very educational, though not academically stimulating.29 In an interview years later, she said she learned that Americans were mistaken in their intellectual inferiority complex and that the University of Geneva was “worse than any American university I know of in its provincialism.”30 Yet she took advantage of the location to travel through Europe, visiting Rome and Milan in March 1955, and, when her courses were over, she enrolled at Oxford University for a summer course on twentieth-century English literature and politics. The course at Oxford catered to Americans and allowed her to hear lectures by politicians like Labour Party leader Richard Cory. It also allowed her to spend a little bit

27 Smith bulletin for Junior Year in Geneva 10 June 1954. Steinem Papers 5:3. 28 Steinem Papers 1:1; Steinem student book, University of Geneva. Steinem Papers, 5:3. 29 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City, 15. Steinem Papers 4:4 30 Newsweek profile draft “Steinem on Steinem”; August 3, 1971. Steinem Papers 4:3.

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more time in Europe, a continent she never thought she would have the chance to see again.31

She returned to the United States from Southampton, England, on the R.M.S.

“Queen Mary” in August 1955.32 She returned to Smith for her senior year in 1955, graduating in 1956 with a B.A. magna cum laude in government. During her final year of college she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, served in student government and as an officer for her class, and performed in musicals.33 After graduation, Steinem found herself facing two “dead-end jobs” – one researching for Time-Life, which would have been appealing except that Steinem knew that as a woman, she would never have been offered a position as a writer. Her second “job” offer was marrying Blair Chotzinoff, a pilot with the Air National Guard and a former nightclub reporter for the New York Post, whom Steinem had met on a blind date. Chotzinoff came from an elite New York Jewish family, and was smitten with Steinem from the moment he met her, wooing her with romantic gestures including writing “Gloria” in the sky above the Smith campus.34

Though her affection for Chotzinoff was deep, she did not want to follow in her mother’s footsteps and find herself trapped in a marriage. Luckily, Vera Michaels Dean, a professor of Indian history at Smith, presented her with a third option, which gave

Steinem an opportunity to pursue a fascinating adventure as well as an excuse to opt out of her engagement to Chotzinoff. Dean proposed that Steinem take advantage of

31 Stern, 79. 32 H.M.S. Queen Mary List of Passengers, August 18, 1955. Steinem Papers 5:3. 33 Smith Commencement program, June 3, 1956, Steinem Papers 5:1. 34 Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.” Esquire October 1971, 209.

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an experimental fellowship and go to India. Leaving her engagement ring on

Chotzinoff's pillow with a note that said “I’m sorry,” she followed the third path.35

The experimental fellowship Steinem received as a graduating senior from Smith financially allowed her to live in India for two formative years from 1957 to 1959. The funds for the scholarship came from the Chester Bowles Asian Scholarship. Named after former US ambassador to India Chester Bowles (1951-1953), the scholarship provided a one-year stipend of $1000 each for two Smith students to attend post- baccalaureate courses and do research at the Universities of Delhi, Calcutta, and

Madras.36

Steinem was intrigued by the idea of living in India. She saw it as a tactical move, an investment in her future, a fulfillment of an intellectual curiosity, and a great adventure. Practically, it both allowed her to escape her engagement to Chotzinoff and gave her a start as a writer and journalist, “which is what I very much want to be.”37

However, as she declared to the fellowship committee in her application to them, she also had “a real interest in India, an interest that grew from an early study of Indian dance to an interest in political as well as cultural India under the instruction of Vera M.

Dean at Smith and M. Ja[cques] Freymond at the Institute in Geneva.”38

While in Geneva, Steinem had written a paper on Indian communism, which her professor - the esteemed and charismatic Jacques Freymond - had pronounced the

35 Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.” Esquire October 1971, 209. 36 Steinem papers, 1:1. 37 Letter from Gloria Steinem to Barbara Jean Stokes, ca. 1956, Steinem Papers 5:6. 38 Letter from Gloria Steinem to Barbara Jean Stokes, ca. 1956, Steinem Papers, 5:6.

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best he had ever seen by an undergraduate and offered to have published.39 In declaring her interest in the topic for the paper (which earned her an A+), she explained,

“I could not reconcile India of the head-lines, land of political unrest and economic potpourri, with the calm, contemplative, mystic India of the Bhagavad Gita and Asokan edicts. Since a study of the CPI [Communist Party of India] usually leads to at least a background knowledge of economic and political unrest, I decided that the issue of communism in India was an excellent jumping-off point in becoming acquainted with

India as a modern state.”40

Steinem’s interest in India also came from experiences as a child. She was inspired to travel to India by the Theosophist philosophies of her grandmothers, who would bring Steinem along with them to their meetings as a little girl and let her read books on India, from which she gained an affinity for India as “the origin of much of

Theosophical thinking.” Both of her grandmothers and her mother had become believers in Theosophy, a movement founded in 1875 by a Russian aristocrat living in

New York, which “combined lofty humanitarian and internationalist ideals with Early and

Western religious concepts such as reincarnation, psychic phenomena, spiritualism, and occultism.”41 Theosophy’s followers included Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw,

Thomas Edison, and, for the purposes of Steinem’s interests, Mohandas Gandhi.

Steinem’s grandmother Pauline, the suffragist, explained her view of the connection between feminism and Theosophy in an essay she wrote for the Toledo

Blade in 1914. “I believe in woman suffrage because I believe that the perfect equality

39 Stern, 78. 40 Gloria Steinem “Communist Party of India” March 1, 1955. Steinem Papers 111: 15. 41 Stern, 8.

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of men and women is founded on Divine Wisdom… Theosophy teaches first of all the brotherhood of man without distinction of race, creed, color or sex.”42 As future chapters will demonstrate, Steinem’s own later engagement in transnational feminist activism can be attributed to the same Theosophical foundations laid down by her grandmothers.

Finally, Steinem saw living in India as an opportunity to gain a different perspective on her own country and the problems afflicting it. As she wrote to the

Chester Bowles Scholarship committee, it was through some Indian friends that she came to think about the question of race in the United States: “I was made so aware of my own ignorance of our colored problem through the questioning of Indian friends that

I spent two summers working in the Negro community center here in Washington so that I might better understand this problem which looms so large in Asian eyes.43

Though she was thrilled when she received news that she was selected for the award by the fellowship committee, Steinem now had to figure out specifics. As this was the first year of the experimental scholarship, Steinem had little guidance from Smith as to what she was going to do, where and how she was going to live, and how she was going to supplement her funding. Although $1000 was a good amount of money for a young women her age, the lowest round-trip airfare was $1200. The other student traveling with Steinem, Kayla Achter, could rely on her parents for support. Not so,

Steinem. She had to scrounge around for sources of funding, contacting magazines and finally securing a one-way ticket to London from TWA for writing a publicity piece for them. Though she did not yet have a way to get to India, she decided to go to England

42 Quoted in Stern, 9. 43 Letter from Gloria Steinem to Barbara Jean Stokes, ca. 1956, Steinem Papers 5:6.

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and figure it out from there.44 She received tips and connections from Smith colleagues, like Barbara Jean Stokes, who put her in touch with India’s permanent representative to the United Nations.45 Finally, it was time to leave.

Steinem spent the second part of 1956 in London, staying with a Smith graduate, trying to figure out a visa for India. It was in London that she had a deeply personal experience that defined her feminist position in years to come. When she arrived in

London at age 22, she realized she was pregnant. After weighing her options, she decided to have an abortion. Unlike in the United States, where abortion was illegal, abortion was legal in England, with the written approval of two doctors, but it was highly frowned upon. Steinem was able to find a doctor to perform the procedure in secret.

She would often recount the experience as a shameful and guilt-ridden one.

In the telephone directory Steinem found the name of a doctor who was practicing medicine close to where the classmates with whom she was staying, Jane

Bird Nissen and George Nissen, lived. She recounted the experience meeting him:

He was quite old then, at least in my understanding of what old was, and his office was one room full of books and old carpets with a gas grate you put pennies in. He was very kind, and gave me a prescription that would bring on my period if I were not pregnant. Of course, it didn’t work.

Only after many scared weeks, which much have been from early November til past Christmas – working illegally as a waitress, waiting for visa from Indian government, and actually contemplating suicide for the one and only time in my life – did I meet at a party… a very egocentric and aggressive American playwright who, just in passing, was complaining about how many actresses in his play (which he couldn’t get produced in New York, probably for good reason) he had to get abortions for. That was how I learned it was possible in England with the written permission of two

44 Interview transcript of Jacqueline Van Voris with Gloria Steinem. April 16, 1973, New York City, 17. Steinem Papers 4:4; her experience is also described in in Stern, 92-93. 45 Barbara Jean Stokes to Gloria Steinem. October 20, 1954. Steinem Papers 5:6.

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doctors saying something like this would be bad for one’s health, or perhaps also mental health; not sure.

So I went back to Dr. Sharp, who, after some hesitation, wrote the request to a Harley Street woman surgeon… [H]e made me promise two things: first, that I would do good things with my life; that I would write, and follow what I most wanted to do; and second, that I would never tell anyone about his help. And I never did – until now. But if he were still alive, I hope he would be seen as a hero. 46

The female surgeon who performed the abortion on Steinem was brusque and judgmental, but good at her job. She told Steinem to use birth control in the future, especially in India. She spent a few days recovering. As she recalled, “[a]fter a few days in bed taking pills for the bleeding (I told my classmate I’d hurt my back), I was fine. And

I’m grateful to this day. It was the first time I took control over my own life.47

While the London abortion was traumatizing, the experience that followed– her time in India – was one of the most transformative and important experiences in

Steinem’s life. “Most of us have few events that divide our lives into ‘before’ and ‘after.’

This was one for me,” she recounted in her 1994 memoir Moving Beyond Words.48 In fact, the two years Steinem would spend in India defined her deeply on both personal and political levels. It also helped to shape her feminist politics in later years. Steinem arrived in Bombay (now Mumbai) from Athens on February 4, 1957 and flew to New

Delhi two days later. She recounted her first impressions to the fellowship committee:

Soon the wheels glided onto the runway and the rumble of the motors gave way to the chatter and rustling of passengers readying to leave. ‘I’m in India… in India,’ and my thoughts began to run like a newsreel travellogue. ‘Land of intricate turbans and Buddhism and Himalayas, of ageless beauty and jewelled elephants and Asokan wisdom.’ And sure enough, a tall majestrically turbaned Indian stooped to enter the plane and

46 Fax from Gloria Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, August 8, 1993. Steinem Papers 1:8. 47 Fax from Gloria Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, August 8, 1993. Steinem Papers 1:8. 48 Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words, 266.

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turned toward me. I rose, sure that he was going to begin a speech of ‘Welcome to India, mystic heart of Asia, land of ancient cultures.’ He namasthed politely before me, took out a shiny red insecticide bomb and said, “Stand still while I spray you.” India, I was to discover, is like this. It shatters Western romantic illusions with little ceremony, and often in a less amusing way. But it replaces them with impressions far more real and less easily forgotten.49

She spent her layover in Mumbai at the home of the TWA traffic manager, Jim Farley.

Steinem had her first experience of Indian poverty in the car ride to his house.

Figures lying on charpoys (a sort of wooden frame bed stretched over with wide woven strips) formed rugged ranks on the sidewalk. The still less fortunate curled up in their rags on pavement or doorstep, and as I speeded past these multitudes in the luxury of a car, I felt first anachronistic and then terribly terribly guilty. And this was only the first and most fleeting impression of many more to come.50

She spent the next two days touring the city with Farley. “[I] felt like the Eyes and

Ears of the World as I passed the Harbour and the Gateway to India, the luxurious residences of Malabar Hill, the Hanging Gardens and the lovely view they command of city and shore, the Tower of Silence where the Parsees take their dead to be turned into bleached bones by sun and vultures, and the crooked miles of Bombay Streets…”51

During her layover, she also attended a Parsee religious “confirmation” ceremony for the child of one of the Farley family's friends. She reported back detailing with much fervor and specificity the nuances and cultural elements she witnessed. She also became privy to racism and the effects of British colonialism after lunching at a whites- only country club. After asking why no Indians were present and being given a matter- of-fact response that it had been privately owned since colonial times, Steinem reported

49 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report #1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7. 50 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report #1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7. 51 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7.

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to her committee “I told myself that after all, customs don’t change in a day, and that

Western families living in India have many adjustment problems to face, but the sun seemed a little less bright and the meal a trifle tasteless after this discovery. Nor did it cheer me any to see the group of ayahs (maids or nurses) standing patiently outside the threshold they could not cross while their little charges had their lunch or swimming lesson.”52

After two days of “wandering saucer-eyed through Bombay,” Steinem boarded a plane to New Delhi.53 She traveled by bus to the American embassy, searching for her co-fellowship student Kayla Acher, and found a letter from Chester Bowles telling her to seek out Jean Joyce of the Ford Foundation. This she did, and found in Joyce a

“charming, gentle, and intelligent person” who offered her a place to stay until she found her footing. Many years later she described Joyce as a woman who “had the kindness

– and courage – to become the guardian of a stranger…She’s a lovely, gentle woman who used to get tears in her eyes when she talked about villagers and aid programs.

She was also responsible for a vacation in Kashmir with Peter, a nephew she was looking after, and me that she must have totally subsidized, since I had little money.”54

Steinem was grateful for the opportunity to stay with Joyce, because “After all those months of waiting and miles and miles of travel to arrive in Delhi, I was feeling rather lost and anti-climactic – as if I had confidently put my foot out for the last stair and discovered there wasn’t any.”55

52 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 53 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 54 GS note to Carolyn Heilbrun, n.d. Steinem Papers 1:8 55 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7

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After a few days exploring the University and the possible living arrangements,

(and not having found Kayla) she decided to apply to live at the Miranda House, a residential college for women. Several individuals had tried to dissuade her from living there on the grounds that she would be unhappy with the food and accommodations and that no non-Indian had ever stayed in the dormitories (in actuality, a Canadian and

Mexican girl lived there, too), receiving the advice to stay with an American family, instead.56 This did not deter Steinem, who did not want to be sheltered from the experience of living in India as an Indian student would. After spending an hour convincing the headmistress “that we really did want to live with students and would not spend our time complaining about the lack of luxuries,” she finally secured her accommodations and enrolled in the University of New Delhi for three months.57

Steinem did not regret her decision, in large part because of the network of support that enveloped her. “Our arrival in Miranda House”, she recalled, “was greeted with warmth and kindness and much gentle curiosity on the part of the two hundred some graduate and under-graduate girls living there… We were never allowed to want for a blanket or a friendly word or a helping hand with hooks and zippers. Each group invited us to their outings and gatherings, and individual girls asked us to their homes for dinners or weekends, to weddings, to lectures and concerts or simply long talks over coffee.”58 A few weeks after Steinem’s arrival, a third roommate joined their group, a

56 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 57 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 58 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7

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Mexican woman named Yolotl Gonzalez-Torres, doing advanced research in

Anthropology.59

Her time in New Delhi was both challenging and enlightening. On the one hand, she felt very alone and the classes did not inspire her. On the other hand, she was fascinated by the personal connections she forged and her encounters with Indian culture. She recounted to the fellowship committee, “our days at Miranda House are full of talk – funny, serious, political, mystic – all kinds. At night in our rooms, we have long sessions and we are asked everything: the Christians’ conception of God, the intricacies of Western lingerie, the dating system, Rock and Roll, how much milk the average cow gives, our favorite American authors and, the one question that always recurs in any group, why did the U.S. arm Pakistan against India.”60 Steinem continued to think and talk about U.S. foreign policy in front of her classmates and professors as well, and initially answered as a representative of her country--that is, giving the answer she thought the committee, Smith, and her Indian cohorts expected to hear, and maybe that she herself believed. For example,

In the course of discussing the Pan American Union in one International Relations class, we were asked the difference between the U.S. interference in Guatemala and the Soviet action in Hungary. (This, though asked more out of honest curiosity than antagonism, nearly shocked us into silence. I think we managed to be convincing, but the difference is surprisingly difficult to explain from the vantage point of an Indian classroom. Another time, Kayla, because of her own religion and her country’s policy, was asked to explain the position of Israel in the Middle East. We scuttled around the library doing research on that one, and later discovered that we were following on the heels of a skilled Egyptian propagandist. I’m not sure how successful we were, but in any case, we planted the idea in their minds that Israel might possibly have a case, something that India’s foreign policy and their own sympathies with Arab

59 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 60 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7.

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nationalism may not have made evident before. Then, of course, there was the inevitable question about our aid to Pakistan. We do our best to explain the reason for this and that the U.S. will not allow these arms to be used against India, but feelings on the Kashmir issue and fear of Pakistani attack is so widespread that it’s a difficult job. As we later discovered in the elections, no political figure dare intimate that Kashmir does not belong to India, nor have I heard anyone, in the six weeks I’ve been here, say that a solution is possible until the U.N. recognizes and punishes Pakistani aggression. This issue seems to be the biggest cohesive political concern among the many communal and linguistic groups that go to make up India.61

Because she was writing a report of her activities to an American audience at the height of McCarthyism, Steinem did not admitted to growing more critical of U.S. intervention in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia as a result of these discussions. Nonetheless, she was exposed to many new perspectives both through conversations with her professors and peers and through research into the topics that opened her up to this possibility. As she recalled in later years, “I was beginning to see my own country from an outsider’s point of view, i.e. comparing U.S. interventions in

Latin America with Soviet actions in Hungary (something I never would have done while in London waitressing at the espresso where newly arrived Hungarians gathered with horror stories – much less when I was a college student.”62

Steinem went beyond explaining or discussing American foreign policies in her classes. She also became a voyeur to the Indian political campaigns and elections that were taking place when she arrived. She tried to explain these to the committee back home, describing the political campaigns, the different parties, and the issues particular to each. “Because of our curfew…we weren’t able to attend too many meetings, but the

61 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7. 62 Letter from Steinem to Heilbrun, Feb 4, 1995, in Steinem Papers 1:8.

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most striking thing was how much of a sameness there is, from the common voters point of view, among the three major parties….A political party is not a ‘side,’ but can be any small group with a common philosophy, or, for that matter, any single man with a gathering of friends, neighbors and family who root for him. The only way things get neatly divided into statistics is that there’s a limited number of ballot boxes to choose from. In their political habits, the nearest Western counterparts of Indians are the

French.”63

Steinem was even able to witness Election Day thanks to an Indian journalist friend she made. She toured the various polling locations and described the scene.

In one crowded alley of Old Delhi, we found a whole line of women in the rusty black or heavy white veils of purdah, standing with bare feet and heavy silver ankle bracelets peeping from beneath long skirts. They peered curiously at us from the embroidered open work in their veils and bounced the babies on their hips to more secure positions. At another booth, we found a row of saffron-robed saddhus (wandering holy men) brought up by the solitary splendour of a rich man being carried on a litter.64 Just as we were leaving the same area, I caught sight of a sturdy little boy of seven or so leading by the hand one of the oldest women I have ever seen. Her white sari and hair where all that were visible for she was bent so double by some terrible infirmity that her face was hidden and she must have been able to see only a foot or two before her when she walked. But the little boy was leading her patiently and steadily toward the polls.65

Steinem was witnessing a historic moment: universal voting rights across India had been enacted only after independence from Britain in 1947, even though elite women in

Madras and Bengal had been voting since 1921 and Sikhs in Punjab had granted equal voting rights to all women in the region in 1925.

63 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 64 A litter is a wheel-free, human-powered vehicle used for the transport of persons often taking the form of an open chair carried by two or more people, sometimes enclosed. 65 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7

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Though she may not have been aware of the historical value of the elections that she witnessed, Steinem’s experiences in India mark the first time that her interest in women’s issues became apparent. In a short article written for her alma mater, Steinem recalled how she came to India with preconceived western notions about the oppression of women and left with a more complicated and nuanced view of their lives.

Before coming to India, I, like many other Westerners, looked upon the lot of Indian women with compassion and a little pity. They, poor things, did not enjoy the independence, the freedom, the privileges of their Western sisters… I was generally thankful that, being a woman, I had been born in the right hemisphere. All that was before coming to India. Once here and acquainted with Indian women, it is no longer possible to think about their position in a statistical, sociological, way. They have come far in freedom of education and self-development since the time they were treated as one of man’s less valuable possessions.66

The article explained, from Steinem’s perspective the psychology behind the sari, the traditional Indian dress that Steinem wore every day for most of her two years.67

Saris, she found, helped her understand the women of India better.

Saris make one stand straighter and walk more slowly and worry less about time and efficiency. Getting out of the angularity of Western cloths and into something as soft, graceful and altogether feminine as the sari can’t but bring about a subtle change in the way you move or think; suddenly you’re less of an outsider and far closer to understanding the other saried figures around you. I’ve completely transferred my sense of modesty from my middle to my legs, so I cheerfully bare four inches of waist (as is necessary with the short blouse, choli, one wears) and enjoy the swish of draped tissue silk around my ankles.68

The article is telling for several reasons. In the first place, it demonstrates a transition in her previous thinking about women, a deepened understanding of women

66 Gloria Steinem Papers, clipping ‘The Sari is a Way of Life.” n.d., Steinem Papers 114:3 67 She had decided she was going to be “swapping her campus clothes for a sari and sandals” before leaving the United States in October 1956 and made the transition while at the Miranda House. Frances Rowan, “Setting Compass for India” Washington Post, October 29, 1956. In Steinem Papers 199:2 68 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7

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in India, while at the same time articulating a sense of distance and separation. It is also, however, one of the first articles in which Steinem grapples with issues of women’s rights, socially constructed gender divisions, and the effect of cultural norms on the everyday lives of individuals. “Being a woman in India is a complex business,” Steinem concluded in the piece.

Every feminine act and adornment is given its true meaning and symbolism. Equal voting rights and inheritance laws are important. Equal opportunities for education and employment are important too. Perhaps with the coming of all these things, the traditional art of being a woman will be forgotten. (Though as a Western woman, I hope not. There is much we could learn from Indian women.) But for the rest of this century at least, no one can study or become part of India without first understanding the psychology of the sari.69

Steinem furthered her cultural education by participating in festivals like Holi, the colorful festival of spring, and many weddings, celebrations, and sight-seeing excursions, to which she was invited by her Indian friends. Steinem also encountered plenty of people who fueled her fascination with communism. While in India, she stayed for some time with a woman she described as “a junior ‘Emma Goldman,’ who was married to a prominent Indian communist.”70 She also met communist professors, like

De. Ashraf (“a Communist who was wavering a bit after Hungary and had probably never been an avid party worker, but a Communist nonetheless with a wife who worked in the Russian Embassy and plans to go to Russia soon”) and, for the first time ever, some Russians she intimated were communist spies.71 “I was consumed with curiosity,” she recounted, “for aside from diplomatic parties in Washington and Geneva, I had

69 Gloria Steinem Papers, clipping ‘The Sari is a Way of Life.” n.d. Steinem papers 114:30. 70 “Who’s Who in America” questionnaire, ca. 1982, Steinem papers 1:3. 71 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7

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never met an honest-to-God Soviet Russian before.”72 She struck up conversation with one of the Soviet women, and tried to explain to her that the U.S. government was not involved in her trip, a concept the woman had a hard time comprehending. “It was not that she thought that I was lying, only that she could not comprehend how it was ‘the government’ that pervaded every area of her life did not also regulate mine.”73

She entertained other ideas and theories as well. In May 1957, Steinem attended the study camp of the Radical Humanists, a philosophy inspired by the political thinking of M. N. Roy. Known for evolving the social philosophy of Radical Humanism, Roy asserted, according to scholar B J Makakul, that “the crisis of modern civilization is due to the lack of an integrated view of human nature…According to him, the economic structure of the society should be so planned that it would promote freedom and well- being of the individual.” Disavowing Marxist concepts of economic determininsm, dictatorship of the proletariat, and dialectic materialism, he instead stressed a reconciliation between social organization and individual freedom as the basis for Indian

Democracy.74

The Radical Humanist camp allowed Steinem a different vision for conducting political affairs and intellectual discussions. “For someone so accustomed to meetings run by Robert’s Rules of Order – from student self-government sessions to political rallies – it was remarkable that ten days of eight-hour-a-day discussions among some forty people could be so well run with no restraints save mutual respect.” Further, she

72 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 73 Steinem Chester Bowles Fellowship Report # 1, 1957. Steinem Papers 5:7 74 B K Mahakul, “Radical Humanism of M.N. Roy,” The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 66, No. 3 (July-Sept., 2005), pp. 607-618.

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discovered, “Sitting Buddha-style on the floor or in casually grouped chairs was far more conducive to intense and informal discussions than the conference table could ever be, and it was a welcome change for me to sit comfortable and shoe-less on the big durrie provided.”75 Steinem would find the physical flexibility and reconsideration of space an appeal she brought to the Ms. boardroom and her many feminist engagements.

She was impressed by the caliber of the participants and the activities of the group. “In all cases, it was with the unique aim of helping man realize his own powers of rational judgment, of cultivating in him the habits of self-reliance and self-help that are requisites of any democracy. I heartily agreed with this emphasis on education,” she concluded, “both formal and informal, by book or by example.”76

As an American, it is not surprising that she was simultaneously attracted by the individual-focused and altruistic approach of radical humanism. “Implicit in this individual-centered approach is the belief in the worth of the individual which is, for me, the measure of all civilization. Many of my fellow participants were former communists and/or bomb-throwing revolutionaries, and it seems almost true that only having once denied the worth and dignity of the individual human life can one ever come to realize its true value.”77 Statements like these are reflective that, in spite of her mature persona and her keen intellect, she was still a young, naïve person who had yet to learn to articulate a nuanced perspective on the human condition.

75 Gloria Steinem, “In the Camp of the Radical Humanists,” The Radical Humanist, vol. xxI no 26. June 30, 1957, page 321. Steinem Papers 112:55. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid.

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However, attending the conference was part of the process of becoming a more aware and culturally developed adult and added yet another layer of complexity to her host country. The participants shared many accounts, based on first person, about problems with the Indian democratic process, which de-romanticized India and challenged her notions of harmony.78 She found herself “in heartfelt agreement with the

Radical Humanists that democracy of any kind is impossible unless the individual is aware of his own rational capabilities and uses them in the spirit of self-reliance and human dignity.” However, she did not believe, like the Radical Humanists, that the solutions to these problems was in eliminating political parties, but rather to improve them.79 This is a position that she would continue to maintain in later years.

Steinem’s defense of political systems as imperfect but necessary separated her from some prominent radical feminist and Marxist feminist strands of thought during the women’s movement and are what placed her in the ideological camp of liberal feminism.

Steinem rejected radical feminism for the same reason as she rejected radical humanism -- true change, she believed, came from working within a system to change that system. As she expressed in her article in the Radical Humanist,

The strength of a democracy lies in the ability to change elected officials peacefully and in a constitutionally prescribed manner. Hence the necessity of a cohesive set of principles which all parties or elements in the society share. There must be a basic ‘agree to disagree’ within the framework of the constitution or each election would be a revolution…. It may well be that with the development of a democratic tradition in India will come the possibility of partyless politics. It could be a blessing and an example to all humanity should it prove so. But it seems clear that the party system is here for at least the remainder of this century, the

78 Ibid. 79 Ibid.

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immediate aim must be to make it work in the most democratic manner possible.80

Though in many ways India moved Steinem outside of her comfort zone, by the time her fellowship ran out, she found herself “more at home there in India than I was in

Europe during that junior year abroad. India was welcoming and diverse.”81 This statement is indicative of a broader sentiment that Steinem felt: a sense of comfort around cultures and environments that were foreign to her in some way. While writing the self-help biography Revolution from Within, Steinem analyzed why she felt more comfortable in Indian, black, and other cultures in which she was “not supposed to” and not in mainstream US, Europe, and England. Her conclusion is that growing up, she always felt like an outsider.82 As an outsider, however, she was well-liked and found it easy to be welcomed into diverse communities. For example, Arnaldo Segarra, a

“young Puerto Rican who grew up playing stickball in the sewers of El Barrios and who used to be an aide to [New York] Mayor Lindsey,” said of Steinem in 1970, “we even made her an honorary Puerto Rican. And not too many white Anglo-Saxon females get that.”83

Because she was so enthralled with the country and comfortable in her surroundings, Steinem extended the timeline of her fellowship, which was originally meant to last only nine months, to a total of eighteen months. Steinem secured a little additional funding through her parents ($50 a month) but mostly supported herself by writing articles for Indian newspapers, including the Times of India, the Hindusthan

80 Ibid. 81 “Who’s Who in America” questionnaire, ca. 1982, Steinem Papers 1:3. 82 Notes to Introduction for Revolution from Within, Steinem Papers, 1:9. 83 Lynn Sheer, “Gloria Steinem: Every girl’s Dream of Making it Big” Chicago Sun-Times, April 5, 1970.

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Times, Indian Express, and Amrita Patrika Bazaar.84 She also financed herself by writing a guide book for Indian Airlines with the hopes of enticing more tourism to the country. Called A Thousand Indias, the 300-page travel book and guide to India was commissioned by the Indian government and allowed Steinem to travel free of charge. It also gave her a reason to write about Indian people, ideas, and customs.85

Without classes to take, and with free passage around India, Steinem travelled extensively through the country, first with co-fellowship student Kayla Achter, and then alone. She spent a month in Calcutta, traveling south to Madras by train after that. She stayed in Pondicherry, south of Madras, visiting the area where Mother Theresa was from, though never meeting her. She eventually traveled inland to the small town of

Gandhigram, where she met a group of Mahatma Gandhi’s followers, led by disciple

Vinoba Bhave. Her itinerary was fluid and haphazard, defined by the connections she made along the way, and, as the experience she recounts below demonstrates, she did not limit herself to traveling as an outsider.

I happened to wander into a Vinoba Bhave ashram at the time of the caste riots and they didn’t have any women left. They made these little teams of two people, a man and a woman, to go through the villages to try to calm people down because there was a terrific amount of killing and then eventually more killing going on… so they said, well, you know, you’re just as foreign if you come from Delhi or Bombay as if you come from the United States, and you wouldn’t be any more likely to know their language, so come with us, so I did, for two weeks, walking around.86

84 Steinem curriculum vitae ca. 1958, Steinem Papers 1:1. 85 Steinem Papers 1:1. She also wrote a student guide to India for the Chester Bowles Asian Fellowship Committee, as well as a shorter version for the airline TWA and a village documentary and three commercial shorts for Bombay-based Fact Films. Steinem curriculum vitae ca. 1958, Steinem Papers 1:1. 86 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India”, 1976, Steinem Papers 228C.

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This was one of the most transformative experiences in Steinem’s life, and one which she recounted as the time “discovered for the first time real poverty and politics.”87 At their encouragement, Steinem joined the group, and walked with them from village to village, learning about Gandhian activism. She recounted the experience in her 1994 memoir, Moving Beyond Words.

Each day, we set off along paths shaded by palms and sheltered by banyan trees, cut across plowed fields, and waded into streams to cool off and let our homespun clothes dry on us as we walked. In the villages, families shared their food and sleeping mats with us, women taught me how to wash my sari and wash and oil my hair, and shopkeepers offered us rice cakes and sweet, milky tea in the morning. I found there was a freedom in having no possessions but a sari, a cup, and a comb, and even in the midst of turmoil, a peacefulness in focusing only on the moment at hand. I remember this as the first time in my life when I was living completely in the present.88

Steinem’s time in India was life-altering for personal, professional, intellectual, and emotional reasons. Personally, it opened Steinem’s world to a wide range of possibilities for ways of living and aspirations that exceeded the desires to belong to the

American upper classes of her peers at Smith. “India began to make me see there was more to life than a pretty house in Westchester,” she stated. “It made me see that the

United States is the exception in the world, not the rule. America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.”89 In an interview years later, she recounted how the experience helped her to piece together the complicated issues of global inequality. “In the beginning India wasn’t as shocking as I expected. It was like a

87 “Who’s Who in America questionnaire”, ca. 1982, Steinem papers 1:3. 88 Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words, 265-266. 89 Draft of Newsweek profile “Steinem on Steinem” August 3, 1971, Page 7. Steinem Papers 4:3.

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huge panorama. But then you make individual connections. You see a little girl begging in the street and you see yourself as that child.”90

It also marked the beginning of Steinem’s career as a free-lance writer. Unlike other financially privileged girls at Smith, Steinem was no stranger to working life and had held many part-time jobs between 1948 and 1956, but for the first time, she found that she was able to secure enough free-lance assignments to fully support herself on her writing.91

Steinem went to India open to the possibility of changing her view about the world. And it seems that she did learn some important lessons from the women in India.

By 1964, she said of her time there, “[I] came home with a few writing credits, no money, and some rather large notions about changing Indo-American relations and possibly the world.”92 She learned other statistics and facts about India that she did not expect. For instance, that more women in India worked as lawyers, doctors, and in government circles than in the United States.93 One of the other important things she learned was to become aware of her Western-centric worldview. In Revolution From

Within, her autobiography, Steinem recalled that while she was in India “a kind friend took me aside and suggested I might consider saying “South Asia,” “Southeast Asia,” and the like, instead of “Near” and “Far East.” It was the first time I’d ever realized that

90 Ibid. 91 Steinem curriculum vitae ca. 1958, Steinem papers 1: 1. Part time jobs included working as a swimming teacher in a Washington, DC African American community center for two summers, working as a salesgirl, ballet teacher, and copy girl with the Washington Evening Star. She had also worked illegally as a waitress in London for three months, and for a business in India, designing and exporting Indian sandals to California. 92 Gloria Steinem letter from GS to Jean Kennedy, May 29, 1964, Steinem Papers 1:2. 93 Betty Marsh, “American in India Tells of Assignment to Land of Contrasts” Toledo Times, September 12, 1958, page 4. Steinem Papers 195:1.

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“Near” and “Far” assumed Europe as the center of the world.”94 Once she realized this – she was among the first Western intellectuals to do so - her perspective shifted.

Steinem further credits her time in India as “the beginning of [her] political life.”95

In a passage that was cut out from her biography Doing Sixty, she wrote about the importance of her experience in India in terms of creating in her mind a model for doing social justice work and grass-roots politics. “I’ve been traveling around this country every week for most of the last twenty-five years, working with many women and some men in the kind of direct-action organizing I first saw and was so magnetized by in

India.”96

In sum, Steinem’s experience in India shaped her perspectives on activism, on women’s empowerment, on a global and shared experience of gendered oppression, on labor and technology, and developed her career as a writer and as a feminist intellectual and international activist. Speaking about the experience in 2007 while traveling to

India at the invitation of Women's WORLD, part of an international network of feminist writers, Steinem stated, “I do not walk from village to village in the United States - I usually fly - but if you want to know how people live, you have to go where they live; if you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. I believe I learned that in

India.”97 Those two years in India set the tone that defined much of the rest of her life.

94 Steinem, Revolution from Within, 44. 95 “Who’s Who in America” questionnaire, ca. 1982, Steinem Papers 1:3. 96 Unpublished excerpt from Doing Sixty by Gloria Steinem. Steinem papers 1:7. 97 Meenakshi Mukherjee and Inda Pande, “A conversation with Gloria Steinem,” 2007, accessed from http://www.gloriasteinem.com/updates/2011/3/22/just-added-2007s-meenakshi-mukherjee-and-ira-pande- interview.html.

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CHAPTER 3 A RISING STAR: FROM FAMED JOURNALIST TO FEMINIST ICON, 1958-1972

Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’s walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on. – Breakfast at Tiffany’s.1

Steinem returned to the United States in 1958 via Burma (now Myanmar), Hong

Kong, and Japan. She sent two trunks to the United States full of books and pamphlets,

Indian garments and other clothes and accessories, a few statues, a bag of photographs, and a bundle of letters.2 Steinem intended to settle in New York and build a career as a journalist. She was excited about sharing her experiences and eager to talk about India, but found that very few people had even a small knowledge of India and that interest for the subject was lacking. “Even the Beatles hadn’t come to India yet!” she recounted in an interview years later.3 Even though she felt she could have stayed in India longer and “felt much more at home there than I had ever felt in Europe,” she was “curious to come back to America.”4

Integrating her years in India into the rest of her life, “two very, very crucial years” was impossible for Steinem until 1972, when she was able to assimilate those experiences into the women’s movement in the United States by utilizing many of the same approaches to organizing and by connecting once more with activists around the world.5 This chapter examines how Steinem became a feminist icon by tracing her early

1 Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, (New York: Knopf, 2012), 69. Steinem read and loved the book when it fist came out in the 1950s, and identified with the main character, Holly Golightly. She also interviewed Truman Capote early in her career. 2 Trunk inventory, nd, Steinem papers 5:8. 3 Mukherjee and Pande, “A Conversation with Gloria Steinem,” 93. 4Newsweek profile draft “Steinem on Steinem,” page 8, August 3, 1971. Steinem Papers 4:3. 5Mukherjee and Pande, “A Conversation with Gloria Steinem,” 93.

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employment and activist history from 1958 to 1972, when she co-founded Ms. magazine. It explains how her experiences in India led to an opportunity for Steinem to do more international work from a U.S. home base, with the Independent Research

Service, a CIA-funded organization whose aim it was to encourage young Americans to attend communist youth festivals. The connections that Steinem made at the

Independent Research Service in turn helped her find her first job in the U.S. magazine industry. Once in the door, Steinem rose to the top ranks of journalism during the shifting political and social climate of the 1960s. Then, growing frustrated with the limits of her career and having developed a strong feminist identity, Steinem branched out on her own in 1972 and co-founded the best-selling feminist magazine in the country, Ms. magazine.

Of course, the social, cultural, and political landscapes changed significantly between 1958 and 1972. When Steinem left the United States in 1957, the Cold War permeated American citizens’ private and public lives, as well as served as the focus of

U.S. foreign policy. By the time she co-founded Ms., the specter of the Cold War was no longer as prominent as it had been (although it still hung over and infected every aspect of U.S. politics—domestic and international--up to and through the collapse of the

Soviet Union in 1989). Strong social movements like the Civil Rights Movement and the

Women’s Movement had brought a gamut of social issues to the forefront of domestic attention during the 1960s.

Between these years (1958-1972) Steinem, too, had changed – from a bright and adventurous but naïve girl to a mature professional woman with the skills and determination to make a real impact in the world. The curiosity that drove her to leave

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the United States and participate in meaningful exchanges with people of different backgrounds, including those she disagreed with, and her talent to cultivate and maintain those friendships, enabled her to rise in the ranks within the sexist environs of diplomacy and the fields of journalism. At the same time, her diplomatic skills increased with age, as did her ability to think critically.

In India, Steinem had developed a sense of confidence and a set of skills that were unusual for a woman her age. In her resume from 1958, she described herself as single, 24 years old and in good health. She described her skills as follows: “know

French well, speak memsahib Hindi, am practiced at making travel arrangements, can operate simple sound and movie equipment, type newspaper style but am working to improve, work well in irregular, dead-line schedules.”6 With that kind of resume and background, she expected to find plenty of opportunities. However, she recalled,

“nobody at all was interested in my experiences… Nobody was interested in student politics in those McCarthy days, not my friends or any employers.”7

Her initial goal was to find a job that would utilize her knowledge of India and her interest in journalism. Steinem lived on friends’ sofas for three months, looking for a job that would fulfill those goals. Steinem thought of the media as a way to bridge her zeal for India with her interest in journalism. “I wanted to get into television. I thought it was the fastest way to get the message across to the most people about what the rest of the world was like.”8 Thus, she tried to get a job with the Ed Sullivan show. “I’m just back from two years in South Asia, mostly India, on writing assignments and…heard that Ed

6 Steinem curriculum vitae ca. 1958, Steinem papers, 1:1. 7 “Who’s Who in America” questionnaire, ca. 1982, Steinem papers, 1:3. 8 Newsweek profile draft “Steinem on Steinem,” page 8, August 3, 1971. Steinem Papers 4:3.

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Sullivan was planning an international series and that the first show is to originate in

India. This is exactly the sort of series on which I would like to work. I think I could be of use to you,” she declared to the show’s organizers.9

While she was applying to jobs, she used her considerable networking skills to build an image of herself as an expert in the field of Indian affairs. She started giving talks to civic groups and universities on “the social revolution of India,” where she talked about the contradictions in Indian society and its attempts at modernization. In a newspaper interview she gave in 1960, she made confident declarations about the state of Indian affairs and its position vis-à-vis the world at large, remarks that were both naïve and prescient. “Everywhere the contradictions are evident, such as the oxcart with rubber tires, the people carrying bricks and glass and steel on their heads to build super modern technology,” she declared. “Europe is yesterday, we’re today, and Asia is tomorrow. Everything there is a crisis. You live in an atmosphere as intoxicating as being on drugs. You face problems like starvation, like life and death—not questions of whether the educational system needs improvement or whether firemen should get more pay.”10

None of her attempts to secure a job that would merge her interest in India and in journalism worked. She was turned down for a position in public relations working for the India Committee of Asia Society, and by the Ed Sullivan Show. She was turned down for writing and editorial positions by magazines because she was a woman, and she was considered overqualified for secretarial jobs because of her academic

9 Quoted in Heilbrun, 86. 10 Betty Reef, “Pretty Girl Genius” Oklahoma November 13, 1960. In Steinem Papers 1:10.

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credentials.11 So, at the end of 1958, after three unsuccessful months of searching,

Steinem took an opportunity which she was not thrilled about, but which had a far- reaching influence on her career and reputation. Steinem moved to Cambridge,

Massachusetts, to accept a position as the Director for the Independent Research

Service, an organization with a complicated and controversial history steeped in Cold

War politics and a longstanding affiliation with the National Student Association and

Center Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The National Student Association had been founded in 1947 in response to a similar soviet sponsored organization, the International Union of Students.12 By 1951, the CIA (which had also been established in 1947, by the National Security Act of 1947) became one of the principal funders of the National Student Association.13 At the time he CIA was “considered a glamorous Ivy League enclave (Yale was a prime feeder) and a haven for liberal internationalists.”14 With 200-300 student members across the United

States, the National Student Association sought to represent American students’ interests both internationally and domestically.15 In the late 1950s, ex-National Student

Association members formed the Independent Research Service, the organization that

11 Newsweek profile draft “Steinem on Steinem,” page 8, August 3, 1971. Steinem Papers 4:3. 12 The International Union of Students was a Soviet-run organization which had organized its first conference, the World Student Congress, in Prague in 1946. Twenty-five US students who attended were supposedly “shocked by the party-line rhetoric of the Soviet representatives and by their ability to manipulate the organization” and founded, one year later, the U.S.-based National Student Association. For a more detailed discussion, see Stern, 108. 13 According to Sydney Stern, “the CIA funded most of the NSA’s international activities, underwrote the budget of the International Student Conference (ISC), and recruited former NSA leaders as contract agents in the ISC secretariat.” Stern, 109-110. 14 Stern, 110. 15 Activities included representing students at the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and sending students to other national and international conferences; lobbying on student-centered issues like lowering the voting age and desegregation; and running a travel bureau. For more information, see Stern, 108.

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Steinem headed for three years from 1959-1962. Its function was specifically to help create a strong American presence at the Communist Youth Festivals, and, it too, like the National Student Association, was primarily funded by the CIA.

Steinem was aware of the CIA’s funding of the Independent Research Service, although perhaps not when she accepted the position. “Everybody knew it. We thought it was terrific. We thought we were ripping off the government. There was the CIA giving money to all these crazy left wing organizations like NSA [National Student

Association].”16 As the Director of the Independent Research Service, Steinem encouraged (and financially sponsored) young Americans to attend the festival, interact with participants, and was responsible for creating publications and printed materials to distribute at the conferences to counteract Soviet propaganda.17 In the height of anti- communist sentiments in the United States, the American-based, American-run, and

American-funded organization “was especially concerned with countering some of the work done by Communist Youth Festivals in other parts of the world,” Steinem explained to Jean Kennedy in 1964.18

Steinem’s involvement with the Independent Research Service lasted from 1959 through 1962 and afforded Steinem more opportunities to travel and an opportunity to directly engage with some of the questions she had been exploring on her own for the last two years about communism and democracy, humanism, and theosophy. As

Director of the Independent Research Service, Steinem attended two Communist Youth

Festivals, one in 1959 in Vienna and one in 1962 in Helsinki.

16 Newsweek profile draft “Steinem on Steinem,” page 9, August 3, 1971. Steinem Papers 4:3. 17 Heilbrun, 87. 18 Steinem to Jean Kennedy, May 29, 1964. Steinem papers 1:2.

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She had been recommended for the job by Clive Gray, an American PhD student working in India whom she had met while living there.19 Gray had been the international vice president of the National Student Association, and was also an agent for the CIA who was contracted with identifying useful student leaders in India and South Asia and developing connections with them. Grey had probably interested Steinem in the

Communist Youth Festivals while they were in India in 1957, as she tried to attend the

Communist Youth Conference that was held in Moscow in 1957. In the end, she did not because some Indian friends with whom she wanted to travel had trouble securing visas.20

The first trip she took as Director of the organization was to Vienna in 1959. It was exhilarating and gave Steinem visibility into the way things worked at the highest echelons of power. The trip, as she described to her aunt and uncle in a letter, was

far more hectic, worthwhile, and eye-opening than I had ever imagined. I really had a Europe-1937 sense of urgency once I got there and saw how much there was to do and how few people were there to do it. I think it struck a lot of us the same way. It’s a realization that, pretty often, the men who run everything are just guys with gravy on their vests and not too much between the ears and that you (one) can do something toward putting wrenches in totalitarian works and convincing the uncommitted that it’s smarter to stay that way than to trade Western colonialism for Communist imperialism.21

The Festival was attended by so many high-ranking officials that Steinem declared, “if Vienna had blown up, the Kremlin would have been pretty short-handed…

It was fun, in a deadly sort of way (“In one hour, we could take Berlin, in six days, Paris!” said K’s [Kruschev’s] son-in-law also editor of Izvestia over brandy).” The festival was

19 “Who’s Who in America” questionnaire, ca. 1982, Steinem papers 1:3. 20Stern, 111. 21 Steinem to Janey and Bob, ca. 1959. Quoted in Heilbrun, 89.

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filled with activity, including smuggling the Dalai Lama’s brother into the festival.

Steinem worked with other editors to set up a trilingual press bureau which reported on the Festival. As she described, the festival consisted of “working all day, holding meetings all night and living on stay awake pills… I suppose that this was my small world equivalent of going off to join the Spanish revolution.”22

Steinem’s excited participation in leftist activities conflicts with her anti- communist position at the Independent Research Service. On the one hand, as evidenced by college papers, Steinem expressed an early interest in communism as a political philosophy and in its modified application -- she was drawn to Radical

Humanism and other Indian models of communalism and cooperation and coordination of capital and land distribution, for instance. She was also opposed to American red- baiting tactics, protesting against a college visit by Senator Joseph McCarthy while at

Smith. On the other hand, her decision to lead an organization such as the

Independent Research Service, with its direct ties to the CIA, leads to many, probably unanswerable, questions about what her real involvement was with the secret service organization. The evidence available on the subject is inconclusive – Steinem’s interviews and recollections downplay her involvement, and the allegations launched against Steinem in later years (covered in Chapter 5) only muddy the record even more.

Finally, there are few primary sources in Steinem’s papers about the time period in question.

Although it’s impossible to assess the extent of Steinem’s involvement in the CIA, one can make other assessments about the skills she developed during this time period

22 Steinem to Janey and Bob, ca. 1959. Quoted in Heilbrun, 89.

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(1959-1962) and how they helped her in later years. As Director of the Independent

Research Service, Steinem honed her diplomatic skills and learned to keep the CIA’s involvement in the organization to herself. According to newspaper designer Sam

Antupit, who was with Steinem in Finland in 1962, Steinem told him the newspapers had been subsidized by foreign businessmen who didn’t want to see Finland go under, not mentioning the CIA’s involvement.

I never thought to ask her about the details. And you know, Gloria asks so nicely. Of course no one ever dreamed there was any hanky-panky. In fact I can remember one Harvard kid there running up to us at lunch and screaming, ‘There’s government money behind this! ‘Ridiculous!’ I said and talked the kid out of it while Gloria sat there and never said a word. Afterward she said to me, ‘Sam, you were just beautiful.’ I always wondered what she meant by that.23

Though Steinem was naturally gifted at communicating, she honed her skills over time. She became an expert at networking and maintained several important connections with people she met in India, and in the Communist Youth Festivals, which she deftly parlayed into opportunities for her budding career as a journalist. One of these connections was with Walter Friedenberg, a foreign correspondent for the

Chicago Daily News who lived in Delhi at the same time as Steinem was living at the

Miranda House in 1958. Steinem and Friedenberg became romantically involved in

India, and for several years after that the romance continued in the United States.

Friedenberg would visit her in Cambridge and, on one visit in 1959, he introduced her to his college roommate, Harold Hayes. At that time, Steinem was still the director of the

Independent Research Service and Hayes was at Harvard on a one-year fellowship for journalists. More significantly, Hayes was also an editor (soon to be editor-in-chief) at

23 Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.” Esquire October 1971, 208.

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Esquire, a hip and successful magazine. Steinem and Hayes became friends, and he introduced her to his co-workers.

Perhaps sensing the opportunity to pursue her journalistic ambitions, after the

Vienna trip came to a close in 1959, Steinem moved the Service from Cambridge to

New York City. She kept working part-time in planning US involvement in the next

Communist Youth Festival – which took place in 1962 in Helsinki - but also started working part-time in journalism. She started to write short, unsigned pieces for Esquire magazine and received her first byline in 1961.

By hanging around the Esquire offices, Steinem met two important people in her life: Robert Benton, art editor at Esquire with whom Steinem fell madly in love; and Clay

Felker, also an editor at Esquire, who would be a close professional collaborator for many years. In 1968, Felker would found New York Magazine and seek Steinem out to help on this venture. In 1960, however, it was Steinem who was in a position to help

Felker. In 1960, Felker quit Esquire when he was passed up for a promotion to editor-in- chief and found himself in need of a job. It was Steinem who gave him the opportunity to travel with her to Helsinki in 1962 as a correspondent.

In 1962 she traveled with Felker to Helsinki for the Communist Youth Festival there. Like she had been in the previous festival, she was in charge of several foreign- language newspapers and was responsible for a press-service for foreign journalists.

Felker came to appreciate Steinem’s keen political instincts. After the Helsinki Festival ended in 1962, Steinem dropped all but advisory work for the International Research

Service, although she still kept the title of “Executive Director.” She began seeking full-

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time employment in journalism.24 This is where her connections to India once again paid off.

Aside from Walter Friedenberg, Steinem had met other important contacts in

India who would help launch her professional career and develop her political connections. One was Abe Rosenthal, who was on his first international journalistic assignment in New Delhi. Rosenthal would later become executive editor of the New

York Times, overseeing, among other things, the coverage of the Pentagon Papers.

Steinem and Rosenthal disagreed about practically everything, however, they were connected by their “mutual love of India”.25 Even though they did not see eye to eye,

Steinem’s connection to Rosenthal was significant: she had a personal connection to one of the most powerful journalists in the United States.

Another contact Steinem made in India was John Kenneth Galbraith, public intellectual, Harvard economist, advisor to John F. Kennedy and United States

Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963. Galbraith admired Steinem’s tenacity and intellect, and they developed a life-long friendship. 26 He even authored an introduction to her first book, Beach Book, a “non-book of things to do on the beach” which he agreed to do not because he thought the book had any substantive merit, but because he wanted to help develop her career.27 More significantly, he introduced her to

24 Steinem to Jean Kennedy, May 29, 1964 Steinem Papers, 1:2. 25 Steinem to Heilbrun, August 23, 1989, Steinem papers 1:7. 26 Eugenia Sheppard, “A State of Mind” New York Herald Tribune, n.d., in Steinem papers, 1:10. 27 A German newspaper translated an excerpt from The Beach Book. The article included a section on Milltown, Ohio, a place near Gloria’s maternal grandmother place of birth. The article describes the dangerous mass migration of the small town of Oberzell in Germany to Ohio following a period of starvation by tracing family names. “Milltown – neues Oberzell in USA.” In Steinem Papers, 1:10.

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individuals in the highest echelons of political society, like John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate George McGovern, both of whom she volunteered for.28

By nurturing connections she made in India in the late 1950s, Steinem was able to grow her career to become one of the most well-known journalists and figures in the

United States by the mid-1960s. Her early connections to the editors of Esquire (which she had made through her Indian experience) provided the foot in the door that Steinem needed to break into the journalism world in New York. For the next decade, she worked her way up in the journalism field, writing special interest, non-political, and women’s articles for Glamour, Ladies’ Home Journal, The New York Times, Vogue, Life,

Harper’s Magazine, McCall’s, and New York magazine. Even though she clamored to cover “hard” journalism topics, she was constantly assigned “soft” articles like “the

Biography of a Fashion” for the New York Times, which she characterized as “an example of dullness, worst of all articles I’ve written.”29

In 1963, Steinem became a nationally known figure for writing a Playboy bunny exposé for Show which criticized the glamorized and hyper-sexualized reality of Hugh

Hefner’s female wait staff. To write the article, Steinem worked undercover as a bunny for a few weeks, learning about the challenges faced by the women and the sexism in the industry. The article catapulted her into the national limelight and resulted in a million dollar lawsuit, telephone threats, and years of type-casting as a Bunny making it even harder for her to get political assignments.30 “For two years after it, all the jobs I was offered were the same kind of thing…. Everybody at a party would say, ‘This is

28 Heilbrun, 141. 29 Notes, n.d., Steinem papers, 1:2. 30 Notes, n.d. Steinem papers, 1:2.

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Gloria Steinem. She used to be a bunny.’ It was awful.”31 She characterized the experience as a mistake, but gained popularity as one of the most well-known female journalists in the United States. By 1965, Writer’s Digest declared her “Journalism’s Girl of the Year.”

Steinem used international experiences served to set her apart from her milieu.

Aided by her cosmopolitan verve, tenacity, intelligence, charms and good looks, in

1964, by age 30, Steinem had achieved a career goal that most women in the United

States could not fathom – she was earning $30,000 a year as a free-lance magazine writer, appearing on television, participating in New York high life, dating high-profile men, and being extolled by newspapers and the media nationwide for her sense of fashion. “She is one of the bold spirits, with a sense of intrigue and humor about the way she looks and lives,” extolled Glamour; “I think I’d like to be her if I weren’t me,” quipped Julie Andrews.32

Steinem attributed her sense of style to her international influences. “Gloria

Steinem began to develop her own look in her third year at the University of Geneva where high heels and make-up were an everyday classroom matter. Later, on a fellowship to India, where even small children’s eyes are black-lined with kohl, she picked up the ‘all-day eye habit’ of makeup. ‘I felt like an unmarked Anglo-Saxon rabbit without it,’ she said.”33

31 Steinem quoted in “Thinking Man’s Shrimpton, Time, January 3, 1969, 38. In Gloria Steinem papers 1:10. 32 Harvey Aronson, “The World’s Most Beautiful By-Line” Newsday, September 25, 1965, in Gloria Steinem papers 1:10. 33 “Gloria Steinem: A Girl Signed Herself,” Glamour, February 1964, 108, in Gloria Steinem papers 1:10.

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Her style and good looks helped land her on inside pages of magazines, modeling clothes and resulting in write ups of her parties, dating life, and travels.34

Newspapers reported on her trips to Paris and the designers she bought and hair stylists she frequented, like Vidal Sassoon, whom she described as “an intellectual, instead of a hair dresser.”35 However, she was quick to dismiss any images of her as a rich girl. “Say that I have always worked for a living, my own living, that I buy my dresses off the rack,” she pleaded to a reporter.36

The newspaper industry, defined by its sexism, frequently mentioned Steinem as a figure with both brains and beauty. A 1960s news article quipped, “It’s hard to believe, looking at cool Miss Steinem across a desk at Help’s crowded little Madison

Avenue offices, that so much I.Q. buzzes away behind those big brown eyes.”37This focus on her looks was a source of constant anguish for Steinem, who recounted in the

HBO documentary about her, Gloria: In Her Own Words, “People think being pretty or beautiful solves everything, which, of course, it doesn't. The hard part, for me, I must say the painful part, is I work really hard, and then the result is attributed to looks. That's

-- it's really painful, and you would think at 76 that would go away, but it's still there sometimes.”38

34 “The Gift of Beauty” Glamour December 1964, in Gloria Steinem papers 1:10. 35 Eugenia Sheppard, “A State of Mind” New York Herald Tribune, nd. Steinem papers, 1:10. 36 Lynn Sheer, “Gloria Steinem: Everygirl’s Dream of Making it Big” Chicago Sun-Times April 5, 1970. Steinem papers 1:10. 37 Betty Reef, “Pretty Girl Genius Helps Edit ‘Help! For Tired Minds” November 13, 1960. In Steinem Papers, 1:10. 38 Gloria Steinem and Peter Kunhardt, Gloria: In Her Own Words. New York: HBO, 2011.

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One of the ways in which she countered the focus on her looks was by questioning American society, especially the political landscape, in international references in the press. After being asked about what she would do if Nixon won a second term, Steinem replied “I’ll leave the country first and live abroad… I couldn’t bear to contemplate that.” Africa appealed to her, she was quoted as saying, but not

Europe. “Europe’s over, past. Very pleasant, a very interesting combination of amusement park and museum. There’s really no reason for going there except relaxing after doing something else.” Though writing in the margins indicates Steinem felt misquoted, the article continued to develop the international persona that set Steinem apart from other New York and American women.39

By the same token, Steinem used her image as a glamorous and cosmopolitan

New York journalist to get international assignments. And even when on those, she found herself profiled by the local news. In 1966, Steinem was sent to London by

Glamour to write a profile on “the hip, swinging city of the ‘60s.” The London organ the

Daily Mail published a fluffy sexually-charged interest piece on her visit in which

Steinem compared her experience in London in the 1950s with her experience of the city ten years later.40

In 1968, at age 34, Steinem finally achieved an opportunity to write on the subject that most interested her: American politics. Clay Felkner, her colleague at

Esquire and in Helsinki, had started New York Magazine and asked Steinem to join as contributing editor for a weekly column called “The City Politic.” According to

39 Stanley Burch, “Gloria, the Liveliest Lady in Town Banned by the White House Courted by High Society,” nd Steinem papers 1:10. 40 “Enter the girl from Glamour” Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 30, 1966. In Steinem papers 1:10.

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Newsweek, who profiled her, the column consisted of “little sermons on the evils of

Vietnam, Richard Nixon, [and] all New York Politicians.” In her column, Steinem championed the new Left, minorities, the poor, and women.41

She championed these causes not just in the press, but also through her actions.

In the mid-1960s, Steinem was involved in Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta’s National

Farmworker’s Association (later United Farm Workers – or UFW), as well as in the civil rights and Anti War movements.42 Her most grass-roots involvement was with the UFW and the Delano Grape Strike.43

She was drawn to Chavez because, “against enormous odds – without money, education, or power of any kind – as a farm worker himself, he has really changed a situation and the lives of the people around him… Cesar has changed people’s lives and changed the power situation through the use of nonviolence. I’m sure his own people – the farm workers – laughed at that in the beginning.”44 Her experience with the

Farmworker’s Alliance had obvious transnational dimensions as well.

She joined the movement after a friend sent movement organizer Marion Moses to stay with Gloria in NY. As Steinem recalled, “Chavez had given her no money and orders to stop the grape shipments to the entire East Coast.” She did. Steinem’s first job was to help the Farm Worker’s Movement gain media attention – their only protection at that point against violence from the growers. She also helped with the first big benefit

41 “Gloria Steinem: A Liberated Woman despite Beauty, Chic, and Success.” Newsweek, August 16, 1971, 55. Steinem Paper 4:3. 42 Heilbrun, 82. 43 For more on Delano Grape Strike and United Farm Workers, see Susan Feriss et al. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1998.) 44 Steinem quoted in Today’s Health “Gloria Steinem: 10 Men I admire as Truly Liberated.” Today’s Health November 1973, 47. Steinem Papers, 1:10.

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for the Farmworkers at Carnegie Hall, organized a fund-raising party for grape-pickers on Long Island, which one newspaper reported was the party “Ethel Kennedy chose to make her first post-assassination public appearance” and picketed supermarkets with a boycott crew of Filipino men sent by Chavez to NY. 45

Steinem traveled outside of NY to help with the Farm Worker’s movement as well. As she recalled later, “I also went on their march across the desert to the Mexican border to elicit media coverage which they weren’t getting (for little reasons like 120 degree heat and no airports) which caused the lifting of my American Express card, since I’d charged the march to it.”46 She continued her support of the UFW through the years. In 1974, for instance, she demonstrated in solidarity with the United Farm

Workers lettuce boycott in Chapel Hill, NC and in 1979, she hosted a fundraising dinner on Cesar Chavez’s behalf in New York City to support the 1979 California Lettuce

Strike.47

She was also active in various civil rights and social justice campaigns, including the Committee for the Legal Defense of Angela Davis, for which she served as treasurer from 1971-1972. In 1971, she also publicly supported the Black Panthers, Young Lords,

Chicano and Native American activist groups. For example, when listing the top 10 men she admired, Steinem selected Bobby Seale among her group. “for Seale, being the most public black I know of, to say that women were and should be full members of the

Black Panther party is astounding. So many whites view the Panthers as the very

45 Lynn Sheer, “Gloria Steinem: Everygirl’s Dream of Making it Big” Chicago Sun Times, April 5, 1970. In Steinem Papers 1:10. 46 Steinem to Heilbrun, nd. Steinem papers, 1:8. 47 David Ennis, “Steinem aids UFW protest.” The Daily Tar Heel, Feb 8, 1974; Invitation to Chavez Fundraiser, 1979 in Steinem Papers 187:6.

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symbol of violent manhood, to be hated and feared. But in his book, Seize the Time,

Seale included a chapter on his thoughts about women as a political issue. He says in a

Panther household everybody should wash the dishes, sweep the floors, make the beds, etc., because real manhood depends on the subjugation of no one.”48

The year 1968 also marks Steinem’s association with the women’s movement.

In 1968, the women’s liberation movement entered the mainstream of American consciousness when a group of young white women protested the Miss America pageant held in Atlantic City, NY. The activists, most of whom had come from New York

City, infiltrated the ceremony and unfurled a large banner with the words “women’s liberation” painted across it in large, black letters. On the sidewalk in the streets, they staged their own version of the beauty pageant, comparing contestants to cows a cattle auction, declaring them prized pieces of meat to the broader, male-supremacist nation.

As New York-based movement organizer Carol Hanisch wrote a few months later, “the action brought many new members into our group and many requests from women outside the city for literature and information. A recurrent theme was, ‘I’ve been waiting so long for something like this.’”49

A full-fledged independent women’s movement emerged in the late 1960s, spurred by the Civil Rights and New Left movements, with a strong current of influence coming from the labor movement and hippie movements. Often divided into the categories “liberal”, “radical”, and “cultural feminist”, the American women’s movement

48 Steinem quoted in “Gloria Steinem: 10 Men I admire as Truly Liberated Individuals.” Today’s Health, November 1973, 48. In Steinem Papers 1:10. 49 Carol Hanisch, “What Can be Learned: A Critique of the Miss America Protest” November 27, 1968. In Sophia Smith Collection vertical file “Redstockings.” Sophia Smith Vertical File, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

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during the 1970s and 1980s was in fact diverse and often splintered, with many people who never formally associated with any group.

Issues the movement organized around included gender equality in the workplace and the home front, reproductive rights--including abortion—as well as health, labor, sexuality, religion, the arts, the environment, and geo-political concerns such as global peace activism and nuclear disarmament. Identity-based movements, focused on race, cultural heritage, sexuality, and world-view emerged concurrently with the feminist movement and often merged into sub-groups--lesbian-feminist, black- feminist, Chicana-feminist, and eco-feminist, to name a few--often resulting in tensions about the nature of feminist struggles. In spite of their differences, the thousands of women’s groups and organizations that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s positioned women and gender inequity at the center of their analyses.

Steinem did not attend the Atlantic City protest, but she began covering the women’s movement in the same year. On August 11, 1968, she wrote a book review for the New York Times of Caroline Bird’s Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping

Women Down, which articulated Steinem’s budding interest in feminist theory. Using a title paying homage to Virginia Woolf, “Anonymous Was a Woman,” Steinem began the review by positioning her own personal experience within the context of the book’s argument. “Since I became, at least by the standards of the Internal Revenue Service, a professional writer,” she wrote,

people have been asking me on the average of once a week if this sort of work isn’t more difficult for women than for men. And once a week, I have been answering no, of course not, it’s just the same. Equal rights were

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won by our grandmothers in a necessary but rather quaint revolution, or so I was told in college. Besides, it seemed unfeminine to complain.50

However, she continued, “Caroline Bird’s very serious and heartfelt book has convinced me that I was wrong to trust self-righteous teachings of the fifties and wrong to dissemble about observations of my own.”51

Steinem began covering more women’s movement activities and went from supporting the women’s movement to identifying as a feminist one year later, in 1969.

She joined the movement after being assigned to cover a speakout on abortion organized by the radical feminist group Redstockings in 1969. As she recalled in

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, “it wasn’t until then that the politics of my own life began to explain my interests… Suddenly, I was no longer learning intellectually what was wrong, I knew.”52 Steinem wrote about the experience in The

City Politic in an article titled “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation.” The article later won her a Penny-Missouri Award in Journalism for being one of the first articles to successfully explain this new incarnation of the American feminist movement to the world.53

Other scholars have examined the impact of this moment in radicalizing Steinem, which Steinem described as “the great blinding lightbulb.”54 As Ruth Rosen explains in her wide-reaching history of the feminist movement, A World Split Open, “Steinem’s

50 Gloria Steinem, “’Anonymous’ Was a Woman” New York Times, August 11, 1968, BR8. Accessed online from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 51 Gloria Steinem, “’Anonymous’ Was a Woman” New York Times, August 11, 1968, BR8. Accessed online from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. 52 Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 21. 53 Patricia Cronin Marcello, Gloria Steinem: A Biography, (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2004), 104. 54 Steinem quoted in Heilbrun, 170.

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conversion in 1969 irreversibly altered the direction of her life. She spent the next three decades traveling, lecturing, writing, editing, publishing, and campaigning for women’s liberation.”55

Steinem’s “conversion” to feminism did not mean that she abandoned her interest in high-level politics; on the contrary, once she became a self-identified feminist, she used the tools of the feminist movement, both theoretical and practical, in her work.

In addition to reporting on the women’s movement, Steinem kept writing on heavy- hitting topics in American politics, including American foreign policy vis-à-vis Vietnam and the war in South East Asia. Beyond simple reporting, she began making feminist arguments that connected foreign policy and gender inequity. For example, in 1971,

Steinem wrote an editorial in New York lambasting Richard Nixon and charging

Kissinger and Nixon for being sexist in dealing with female journalists, citing as an example them turning down an interview with Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, chief Vietcong delegate to the Paris peace talks, who had requested an interview with Kissinger. She remarked, “When Madame Binh was first appointed, after all, there were some backstage American grumblings that the negotiations had been downgraded by the appointment of a woman, though her high position in the North Vietnamese hierarchy made that highly unlikely. Could it be that sexism is an element in our diplomatic failure, just as both racism and sexism are elements in the atrocities committed by American soldiers in Vietnam?”56

55 Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, (New York: Penguin, 2001), 208. 56 Gloria Steinem, “What Nixon Doesn’t Know About Women” in the City Politic Column, New York, Feb 26, 1971, page 9. One year later, in 1972, President Nixon was caught on tape in a secret White House recording having a conversation with Henry Kissinger about her. Nixon was complaining about a question Dan Rather had asked in an interview on CBS. “He asked a silly goddamn question about ‘Ms.’.

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Steinem joined the rising tide of American voices who spoke out for an end to

Vietnam, but she did so from a new-found feminist perspective. In September 1971, she was invited before the New Democratic Coalition Foreign Policy Hearings and spoke out vocally against the war on behalf of the Democratic Policy Council and National

Women’s Political Caucus Policy Council. In her speech, she placed blame on the administration’s foreign policy in making the US “the most destructive of the world’s great nations.” She blamed a culture of hyper-masculinity, what she termed, borrowing from Betty Friedan, the “masculine mystique” as the phenomenon “fundamental to our destructiveness, domestic and international.”57

She explained that gender as a cultural construction has had a deleterious effect on US engagements overseas. “Since World War II and the sanctifying of our overseas interventions, foreign policy has provided the ideal arena for politicians and intellectuals who feel the cultural need to play tough.” She argued that to counter this, it was vital to put women in positions of power within foreign policy, as “challenge and change from women may be exactly what some men are afraid of, but that’s their problem.”58

She took other, more grassroots approaches as well to speak out against the war. Like any American citizen could, she wrote Richard Nixon denouncing the war against Vietnam with Coretta Scott King’s People for Peace mail campaign. “I grew up in the 1950s thinking this country had an unfortunate tendency to back all the wrong horses. Now I think it is the wrong horse. We have become the most destructive country

You know what I mean? For shit’s sake, how many people really have read Gloria Steinem and give one shit about that? You know what I mean? That’s a silly thing.” Recording played in Gloria Steinem and Peter Kunhardt, Gloria: In Her Own Words. 57 Testimony Before New Democratic Coalition Foreign Policy Hearings, Steinem papers, 100:2 58 Testimony Before New Democratic Coalition Foreign Policy Hearings, Steinem papers, 100:2

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in the world and we are on our way to becoming the best defendant slum in the world.

The war in Vietnam is obscene and must end.”59

While Steinem continued to be involved political causes like opposing the war in

Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, and the United Farm Workers, she found herself increasingly involved in women’s movement activities, and (as explored in the next chapter) defining these more and more broadly to include international issues. Her main vehicle for integrating international women’s issues into the American experience of feminism was through Ms. magazine.

After coming to feminism in 1969, Steinem started involving herself in a variety of organizations and groups in women’s issues, like the National Women’s Political

Caucus in 1971, and she started speaking about women’s liberation to a variety of audiences. In May 1970, she testified in front of the U.S. Senate hearings on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment. In August of the same year, she gave her first public speech on behalf of women’s rights at the Strike for Equality March in New York City.

A few months later, she gave a commencement address at Vassar College. Titled,

"Living the Revolution," the address caused a controversy among the college administration and students alike. Steinem argued that a feminist revolution was necessary to improve society. “[T]his revolution has to change consciousness,” she argued, “to upset the injustice of our current hierarchy by refusing to honor it, and to live

59 Gloria Steinem to Richard Nixon Feb 3, 1970. Steinem papers 89:6. Steinem also joined, in 1969, representatives from two groups – the Vietnam Moratorium Committee- and Congress Action Now, including former associates of Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, George McGovern, and Eugene McCarthy. They met at Steinem’s apartment to discuss making the 1970 congressional elections a referendum on supporting an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. See article “Peace Vote Sought by 2 Groups” in Miami Herald-Chicago Sun-Times. In Gloria Steinem papers, 1-10. She also worked on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Adlai Stevenson, Robert Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm. See biographical material section in Steinem papers, 1:3.

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a life that enforces a new social justice. Because the truth is none of us can be liberated if other groups are not. Women’s liberation is a bridge between black and white women, but also between the construction workers and the suburbanites, between Nixon’s silent majority and the young people they hate and fear.”60 The next year, she delivered a similar commencement address to Harvard Law School.

Steinem began looking for ways to help women more directly. In 1970, she co- founded the Women’s Action Alliance (WAA) with Brenda Feigen Fasteau, Catherine

Samuels, and others to help women overcome sexism and discrimination by providing a variety of resources. These resources included offering information and extending assistance designed to "allow women to maximize their chances for change by working together across traditional boundaries of class, race, age, and ethnic group."61

Within months, the new organization received hundreds of letters asking for information and support. This inspired Steinem to create a magazine which would be able to provide the information and resources to a far larger audience. As she explained,

We got many letters and requests for information, very important, serious letters, which we didn’t have the resources to answer as individuals….we needed money to support it, so we decided to have a newsletter. Then, when we had researched it a little bit, we discovered that we were very naïve because no newsletter makes money unless they are Wall Street newsletters and besides, they speak to the converted. You really need a magazine if you want to reach out to people.62

60 Steinem’s commencement speech quoted in Notes from Vassar July 1970. In Steinem Papers, 1:11. 61 Articles of Incorporation, Women’s Action Alliance, Women’s Action Alliance papers 1:1, Sophia Smith Archives. Smith College. Northampton, MA. 62 Steinem quoted in “ZONIT interview: Gloria Steinem” ZONIT, April 1972, 8. In Steinem papers 1:10.

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Steinem realized that "that there really was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women,” leading to the formation of Ms. magazine.63 The magazine was conceived as an aide to the movement that understood the goal of feminism was to enact deep-seated revolutionary change. According to founding editor Pat Carbine, on the first year anniversary of the magazine “there is still a great deal of controversy involved in trying to change the world, which is really what we’re about.”64 Carbine was not speaking in hyperbole – it was really the magazine editors' chosen role to use the magazine as a flank of the women’s revolution. As Steinem said, “There really isn’t another magazine where you can get the kind of guidance on equalizing salary, on trying to find free and more compassionate lifestyles for ourselves and for our children, that you can get in Ms., and we do hope, we believe that it comes into people’s houses like a friend, with advice and support and compassion and humor and entertainment, that can’t be found anywhere else.”65

Through the magazine was by and large exceptionally well-received (a subject further explored in the next chapter) many in the movement charged that Steinem and

Ms. were only representing a watered down version of feminism. As Barbara

Ehrenreich explained, some feminists, like Kathie Sarachild of the Redstockings saw

Steinem as a “symbol of bourgeois feminism.”66 This view had become popular not just

63 Gloria Steinem video interview, In Her Own Words, HBO documentary. 64 Transcript of Interview by Scott Morrison with Patricia Carbine on Ms. First Anniversary, 1973. Steinem Papers 228:3. 65 Audio tape transcript, Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem discussing Ms. Circulation, 1974. Steinem papers 228C. 66 Ehrenreich argues that, in part, tis characterization is due the fact that while Steinem became a household name, others, who worked equally hard for the movement, did not receive nearly as much public recognition. Quoted in Heilbrun, 284.

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in the United States, but also abroad. In 1978, Miriam Frank wrote an article in the New

German Critique about feminist publications in West Germany. She explained that

“when Ms. became a successful mass-distributed magazine that projected aspects of feminist politics to an American audience which would otherwise have little contact with

USA movement, criticisms and complaints arose among radicals that Gloria Steinem and the Ms. staff were making feminism palatable to the general public by removing its political and revolutionary meaning.”67

However, Steinem’s personal views – and those represented in Ms. – were much more complex. For instance, Steinem supported far-right feminist revolutionaries like Jane Alpert with statements like “Bombing of buildings is justified when you have removed human beings from target areas. I think you must make a distinction between human life and property,” she said in 1971.68 She visited and correspond Alpert in prison well 1970s, sharing news of trips to France with her.69 Ms. and Steinem also supported lesbian rights at a time when taking the position was very risky because of lesbian-baiting that attempted to discredit the movement. On the other hand, as the next chapter explains, the magazine’s decision to accept corporate advertisements, its more conservative positions on questions like pornography, and its attempt to make feminism seem “so smooth and easy and cheerful” served to alienate more radical feminists in the US and around the globe.70

67 Miriam Frank, “New Publications in West Germany Today” New German Critique, (Winter 1978, No 13, pp 181-194), 183. 68 Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem.” Esquire October 1971, 208. 69 Jane Alpert to Gloria Steinem, April 29, 1977. Steinem papers, 84:5. 70 Miriam Frank, “New Publications in West Germany Today” New German Critique, (Winter 1978, No 13, pp 181-194), 183.

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By 1972, Steinem’s star had risen so high McCall’s magazine called her “Woman of the Year”. The magazine extolled “Her greatest contribution has been to bridge the gap between the early militants, whose vehemence frightened away the people they wanted most to reach, and the thoughtful, dedicated women who understand that women’s status must change. She is, in short, a transitional figure, proof that change is not so frightening after all, and that it has to come – for the good of women and men alike.”71

At the age of 37, Steinem had become a household name, not just in the United

States, but also in Europe.72 Her early experiences in India and with the Independent

Research Service were critical in helping Steinem reach success in her career and fame. By the time she came to identify as a feminist, in 1969, she had developed into a sophisticated thinker, and a cosmopolitan woman with powerful connections. This positioned her to take a prominent role in the feminist movement from the very beginning. As the years passed, she came to believe that a mainstream magazine was a perfect and needed medium for the new movement. Thus, she created Ms. which became the vehicle for her to be able to reach women and to share her feminist message nationally and internationally.

71 Marilyn Mercer, “Woman of the Year: Gloria Steinem.” McCalls, January 1972, 67. 72 News of Steinem’s award of Steinem as Woman of the Year was published by Italy’s premier daily magazine, Oggi, with a title that translates to “We Want Men in the Kitchen”. Gino Gullace, “Vogliamo Gli Uomini in Cucina.” Oggi ca. 1972 in Steinem papers 1:15.

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CHAPTER 4 MS MAGAZINE AS TRANSNATIONAL NEXUS

Ms. will be an open forum, a place where women of many different backgrounds can find help and information to improve their lives. - Gloria Steinem, 1972.1

During the 1970s, Ms. magazine was the most well-known feminist publication in the United States, taking the pulse of mainstream American feminists and sharing the issues that mattered to American women in general with its vast readership. Ms. started publication in December 1971 with 300,000 test copies as an insert in New York

Magazine. The response was to the magazine was tremendous. When the first regular issue hit the stands in July 1972, few people expected it to do as well as it did. Eight days later, it had sold out of newsstands around the United States. With half a million copies in circulation worldwide and three million estimated readers from its inception to

1987, it quickly become the most widely read feminist publication of the United States.2

This reputation quickly spread world-wide. In a 1975 mainstream German newspaper, Ms. was described as the ideological central organ of the US women’s movement. According to an Austrian newspaper, Ms. was necessary reading (when available) for activists in Europe. It also noted, however, that German readers were aware that the magazine represented mainly the view of “white, academically trained, socially and financially secure middle class.”3

1 Gloria Steinem, Ms., Introductory article, Spring 1972, 3. 2 These statistics are explored further by Elaine Elmaleh, “Évolution du discours féministe dans le magazine americain Ms. des origines à 1987.” Dissertation manuscript, (University of Tours, 1996), 11. Her statistics came from Mary Thom, Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement (New York: H. Holt, 1997), 18; and Amy Erdman Farrell, Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1998), 1. 3 “Zwischen Frau und Fräulein: Gloria Steinem, US-Women’s-Lib-Führerin, Gast des Renner-Instituts” Arbeiterzeitung, Feb. 8, 1975, p. 3. (Translation by Jessica Lancia)

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Although there has been a fair amount of scholarship devoted to Ms. and the role it has played with American feminism, scant attention has been paid to the transnational history of the magazine.4 This chapter corrects this oversight by highlighting a variety of ways in which the magazine served as part of an international feminist network. First, this chapter shows how Ms. provided Steinem, the magazine’s staff, and its readers in all parts of the world a vehicle to learn about women’s struggles worldwide. It did this through communication exchanges like letters to the editor received from abroad, some of which were published, and through articles about international women’s movements, political figures, and struggles, many written by Steinem herself. The magazine included coverage of events that received little or no attention in the mainstream press, like

International Women’s Year, the Brussels International Tribunal for Crimes against

Women, female genital cutting, and international abortion trials.

The chapter further argues that Ms. magazine served as a transnational nexus, linking up feminist groups across national boundaries and providing assistance and inspiration for feminist political projects. In 1975, for instance, Ms. provided a global listing of feminist organizations, and, a year later, of feminist publications to its now global readership. The contact information they shared helped put groups in touch with one another. For instance, Australian feminist groups were inspired by Ms.’ ranking of political candidates on a range of feminist issues. This inspiration fueled the creation of a powerful women’s political constituency that helped install a more pro-woman government in Australia.

4 There are two main works on Ms.: Mary Thom’s institutional history, Inside Ms. and Amy Erdman Farrell’s Yours in Sisterhood, which explores the development of the magazine’s attempt to create and represent popular feminism. Thom was a co-founder of the magazine with Steinem and long-time editor.

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Second, this chapter examines how Ms. served as a catalyst or model for feminist magazines around the world. As one of the first mainstream feminist publications in the US with a wide global reach, Ms. inspired other feminist magazines, like the French F, begun by Claude Servan-Schreiber, a Ms. contributing editor and close collaborator. The staff at Ms. also shared lessons with other magazines and their editors, such as the German Emma, the Italian Effe, and England’s Spare Rib, with whom the American magazine exchanged article ideas, office visits, magazine space, and fund-raising appeals. Ms. had fewer relationships in the Global South, although it did assist with women’s magazines in Ghana and South Africa. Ms. also gave opportunities for professional advancement to the many writers and editors who came knocking on its doors from India, Japan, Sweden, and a number of Latin American and

African countries. Of course, Ms. used those networks to its own advantage, as well, as the chapter describes.

Finally, the magazine’s headquarters in Manhattan also served as a part of this transnational feminist nexus, providing an “underground railway stop for international feminists” by hosting groups of individuals from foreign countries, including governmental agencies like foreign embassies and the State Department, and international aid foundations.5 Its staff members were also often invited to participate in sharing insight and information on women’s issues at international feminist meetings, and threw their weight behind foreign feminist projects.

5 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Files (unprocessed). Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Temporary Location 61A.

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From its very first issue, Ms. set itself up as a magazine that had the potential to speak to women across national boundaries. “Ms. will be an open forum, a place where women of many different backgrounds can find help and information to improve their lives,” stated Steinem in the introductory article.6 By the time Ms. celebrated its 21st anniversary in 1993, the magazine had subscribers in 117 countries and substantial international newsstand sales, proving her statement’s accuracy.7 Beyond that, however, a distinctive function of Ms. Magazine was its “early and continuing role as part of a growing, international feminist network.”8

Both internal and external forces influenced the development of Ms.’s transnational presence. Key to this development was the makeup of the editorial staff, which, of course, varied throughout the years, but was nonetheless defined and directed by magazine editors with a variety of international perspectives. While Gloria Steinem’s international experience has already been explored, it is important to note that other key staff members had international travel and work in their backgrounds. Robin Morgan, who was a contributing editor starting in the mid-1970s and wrote many feature articles for the magazine throughout the 1980s, was herself a world traveler and hard at work on an anthology of international women’s movements, Sisterhood is Global, which came out in 1984.9 Letty Cottin Pogrebin, co-founder of the magazine, was an American Jew actively engaged in Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. Bea Feitler, art director, had

6 Ms. Spring 1972, 3. 7 Statistics from Lang Communications spokesperson quoted in Martha Thomas “Revolution from Within.” Folio Sept 15, 1993. Ms. Magazine Files (unprocessed), temporary location: 61A. 8 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Files (unprocessed), temporary location: 61A 9 Robin Morgan, ed. Sisterhood is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books), 1984.

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come to New York from Brazil in 1959.10 Collectively, the editors, though they were all

Americans, had a history of engaging with the broader world.

The international perspectives of the founders of the magazine were present in the very first visuals presented to the readers of the new magazine in 1971. The cover image, which Steinem chose over the strong objection of New York editor Clay

Feldman, presented a drawing inspired by a mythic Hindu goddess–a blue female figure with many hands who was juggling the many tasks of a woman’s life. “It was the image that had come out of my Indian past,” Steinem recounted.11 Making the figure blue worked for the staff because they wanted the magazine’s appeal to be as broad as possible, and not racially exclusive.12 According to Steinem, the image “had a universality because it’s harking back to a mythic image—the many-armed Indian God image.”13

These key players’ personal lives intersected deeply with their professional lives at Ms. For instance, Gloria’s travels around the world often resulted in articles about the women’s struggles she witnessed and in which she became engaged, such as a trip to

Egypt in which she interviewed Jihan Sadat and Egyptian feminists.14 Other editors’ personal experiences had similar impact on the content. Letty Cottin Pogrebin was a co- founder of the magazine who was interested in Arab-Jewish relations. She was also a

10 Thom, 23. 11 Gloria Steinem quoted in Thom, 17. 12 Thom, 16. 13 Gloria Steinem quoted in Abigail Pogrebin, “How Do you Spell Ms.” New York Magazine, October 20, 2011, np. Accessed on September 12, 2014. http://nymag.com/news/features/ms-magazine-2011-11/ 14 Gloria Steinem, “Two Cheers for Egypt – Talks With Jihan Sadat and Other Daughters of the Nile” Ms., June 1980. Steinem Papers 115:11.

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co-founder of the International Center for Peace in the Middle East. Because of this interest, the magazine sponsored a trip to Israel led by Pogrebin and another Ms.

Editor, Susan Levine.15 They led 50 women and four men to Tel Aviv, where they visited women’s centers, a kibbutz, and traveled around Israel.

The editors were encouraged to explore international topics by the strong engagement of international readers, and the support and feedback of international non- governmental organizations and grassroots women’s movements. Because of its visibility internationally, organizations and activists sought out Ms. to get information about international feminist activity, prompting Ms. to publish that information. Sections such as “News from Abroad” and blurbs in the Ms. Gazette routinely informed US readers of feminist activities in other parts of the world, including such events as the founding of feminist organizations, the creation of feminist publications, and the publication of interviews with foreign female politicians and feminist theoreticians. The magazine published periodic listings of international groups that served to put them in touch with one another. One such listing was published in 1975 and a listing of international feminist publications was published in 1976. These listings also helped to put US-based organizations in touch with their parallel organizations in other countries.16

That information was then often disseminated further through formal and informal channels. For example, Lois Lenderking, editor of the Organization of the American

15 Letti Pogrebin and Susan Levine, “If it's Tuesday, it must be the Telaviv Women's Center: what Happens when 52 women and Four Men Sign up for a Feminist Tour of Israel.” Ms., March 1979. 16 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A.

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States’ Inter-American Commission of Women, requested a list of international feminist publications from Ms., which she intended to share with the delegates of her commission and others “interested in feminist thought.”17 In response, she received the

1976 issue containing the Gazette Section, “The World Is Our Beat – International

Feminist Periodicals” and a request, from Ms. to be put on the mailing list of the

Commission. In addition, they requested the Commission to let them know if they had left out any publications in Latin America to add to their next iteration of the publication.18 In this way, Ms. assured not only that it was a source of information, but also that it was a source that was continually replenished with new and up-to-date information.

The magazine’s information about feminist activities and organization internationally was stored in an extensive vertical file kept by the magazine’s staff in its headquarters in New York City. Ms. received up to 1000 pieces of mail a day, and filed relevant literature in a massive vertical file that, taken together, allows an understanding of the extent to which Ms. was aware of international feminist activity.

It also allows us to understand the extent to which US organizations were involved in organizing abroad. Not all of these activities were explicitly feminist.

Community Service, Inc.’s newsletter landed in the vertical files at Ms. It relayed that the

Ohio-based non-profit had been funding and collaborating with a school-community project in Mitraniketan, India since 1968. Funds from the non-profit, which varied from

17 Lois Lenderking to Joanne Edgar, May 24, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A. 18 Darcy Gilpin to Lois Lenderking, June 18, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A.

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year to year, were used to provide resources towards educational activities, a health center, and basic food and shelter. The newsletter reported something about the goals of Community Service, which are very much in line with feminist international outreach mentalities of the time “Mitraniketan is a unique education center in India…trying to blend Eastern and Western ideas in a program of change. We want to support it in this effort without playing a paternalistic role. The initiative must always be Indian. We certainly have a valuable relationship to maintain, despite the difficulties and a unique opportunity to demonstrate international fellowship and share with their creative struggle.”19

In that way, then, the information contained in the vertical file demonstrates that

Ms.’ interest in international affairs matched that of its American readers. Ms. was not an anomaly, pushing information about the broader world at its ignorant and disinterested readers; rather, it was speaking to a community of readers already interested and engaged with the broader world.

The types of documents saved in the vertical file include newsletters, articles of interest internationally, reports, pamphlets, guides, proposals for international women’s workshops, and other miscellaneous materials. Some of the materials demonstrate how central Ms. was as a nexus of communication exchanges. For example, in 1975,

Hephzibah Hauser from the London-based Centre for Human Rights and

Responsibilities sent Steinem a proposal for a “Transnational Women’s Workshop for

Tomorrow.” Her accompanying letter sought out the support of Steinem and the

19 Community Comments Newsletter, Community Service, Inc., ca. 1973. Vertical Files, Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A.

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magazine. “You will be having a letter from Carmel Budjardo, a friend of ours who runs

TAPOL, the Association for Indonesian Political Prisoners,” she wrote. “Whatever you can do to enable her to be heard by numbers of women (or anyone else) would be very much appreciated. She… endured three years of fiendish imprisonment in Indonesia.”20

Ms. Magazine received news of all kinds, including notifications of peace and nuclear disarmament movements and international engagements sent from high government officials. For example, Petra Kelly, the Head of the Green Party in West

Germany, enclosed a copy of a speech she gave in Trafalgar Square in London in

March 1980. Women, she spoke “have vividly, with great courage and creativity, demonstrated that energy and peace are feminist questions, feminist issues…. I call on all women here and in other parts of Europe, in the world, to resist with our hearts, our actions, with our rage, this final threat to our survival.”

The physical location of Ms.– its headquarters on Lexington Avenue, in New York

City -- also served an important function for the development of grassroots feminists globally by providing a space for feminists to gather and interact. The office of Ms. constantly welcomed visitors, some of whom wrote to thank the editors for their visit. For example, feminist H. Rindolf explained in a letter dated May 30, 1978 that “having been one of the German women who had the privilege of visiting your offices on Monday April

24 I want to tell you that I not only enjoyed meeting some of your staff but since have carefully studied the March, April, and May issues of your magazine. I think you are doing a marvelous job … wishing you further success and good luck I am sending kind

20 Letter from Hephzibah Menuhin Hauser to G. Steinem March 5, 1975; Proposal “Workshop for Tomorrow” by Center for Human Rights and responsibilities, 1975. Vertical Files, Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A.

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regards to Karin Lippert and other members of the staff who gave us such a nice welcome and a very interesting afternoon.”21

The staff of the magazine was fully aware of the significance of their physical location. “[T]he Ms. offices play a role as a kind of underground railway stop for international feminists,” they wrote.22 Indeed, the Ms. office was a space where, in addition to putting together the magazine, groups and organizations came together for meetings, briefings, and film screenings. This included both grassroots organizations and high-level political officials. As they explained, “Feminists and women leaders from other countries, as well as male leaders interested in this international movement, often ask to meet with the Ms. staff. The State Department, foreign embassies and foundations hosting foreigners also call to schedule such meetings.” Visitors in 1977 included representatives from the African Leaders Program; Elizabeth Reid, the Director of the U.N. Asia and Pacific Center for Women and Development and later Australian prime minister; Erin Pizzey, founder and director of the first shelter for battered wives in

England; the German Frauenrat, members of 36 West German women’s organizations;

Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch; and Ama Ata Aidoo, a Ghanaian novelist and poet. According to the Ms. staff, at those meetings “We provide information, but the discussions also add to our insights and research and often spark new articles.”23

21 H. Rindolf to Ms. Magazine staff, May 30, 1978. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A. 22 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A. 23 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A.

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Because of its success infiltrating US and global markets, for many feminist journalists and publishing executives, Ms. served as a unique example of a successful business in a hostile environment. Launched with a circulation of 250,000, the magazine almost doubled its circulation in two years. The renewal rate at the end of its second year – the number of subscribers who chose to renew their subscription - was 76%, eclipsing the mainstream industry standard of 30-45% by almost double. At a cost of $1 an issue or $10 a year, a great deal of the income that covered the magazine's operational expenses came from advertisements. At the end of its second year, the magazine had increased its ad revenue by 60%, adding 42% more in advertisement pages. While many readers critiqued the ads, professionals in other countries looked in awe at the overwhelming success of the magazine, and reached out for help and advice.

Key to the financial success of the magazine was Pat Carbine, the magazine’s de-facto publisher and one of its founding editors. With great acumen, she propelled the magazine’s international reach. Beyond that, the magazine’s unique scope and perspective interested not just the US market, but international publishing companies as well. In its first year, international publishing companies began expressing interest in syndicating the magazine in other countries.

Letters to Pat Carbine from 1972 show multiple companies-- both US based and internationally based--interested in marketing material available from Ms. abroad. The editorial director of the New English Library asked Letty Pogrebin if they had “any thoughts about putting it out on the British market – or trying to sell any of the material

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here.”24 American-based company King Features Syndicate courted the magazine for the rights to resell material from Ms. abroad, promising to provide promotional material and translation for 50% of the gross amount collected after commissions.25

The interest in syndicating the magazine extended beyond English-speaking countries as well. Starting in late 1972, the Japanese company Orion Press declared themselves “anxious to represent” the magazine “as an exclusive agency in Japan, and to introduce the texts carried in Ms. Magazine thru our clients’ magazines.”26 Swiss,

Italian, Australian, British, and Swedish companies made similar requests in the same year. Most of the requests were to syndicate feature contents and images within their national contexts. There was also interest, however, for world-wide syndication, such as from the British company Camera Press, which syndicated stories of universal interest to 44 countries including Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,

Ecuador, Egypt, Hungary, India, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland,

Portugal, Rhodesia, South Africa, Turkey, USSR, Venezuela and Yugoslavia.27

Initially, US distribution was handled by Independent News Co, Inc., a New York based company. For tax purposes, their subsidiary organization, Independent Export

Sales, Inc. handled overseas shipments, including those of Ms. starting as early as

24 Peter Haining to Letty Pogrebin March 1, 1972. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed). 25 Philip G. Reed to Pat Carbine July 14, 1972 and June 7, 1972. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed). 26 Goro Kuramochi to M. Hicks, January 29, 1973. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed). 27 T.L. Blau to Patricia Carbine September 3, 1973. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed).

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1972, with the first issue, shipping to Canada.28 As the magazine grew into its second year, Boarts International, an international periodicals distributor, took over their foreign account to ramp up their sales to the global market. In February 1973, foreign circulation was 4,775; by August, foreign circulation almost doubled to 8,645 copies distributed to foreign countries on a monthly basis, mostly to English-speaking countries

-- England (2000), Australia (2000), New Zealand (1500) – but also to Denmark (300),

Mexico (250), and Venezuela (300).29 They pushed for more coverage still, urging their foreign distributor to expand outside of English speaking markets “There is surely a vast

European market for this magazine, the British Isles in particular.”

Local distributors in other countries also sought out Ms. and solicited

Independent News Co for the opportunity to distribute the magazine. For instance, in

1974, local Australian distributors Bertram Horne & Co. wrote Independent News Co.

President Robert Weissberger to seek out the possibility of distributing Ms. in Australia.

“We are of the opinion that Ms. is a magazine with considerable market potential in

Australia.”30

While international syndication boosted the reputation of the magazine abroad, it was not a lucrative endeavor. However, it was an endeavor Ms. was committed to on a political level. As they explained,

Because we publish many international articles and listings – and because we make an effort to distribute Ms. to key groups and individuals in many other countries (an expensive effort, since advertisers do not count

28 Territorial Breakdowns of Independend News Co., Feb 13, 1973. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed). 29 Report from Sam Taylor at Independent News Co. to Rita Cooper at Ms. Magazine, August 27, 1973. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed). 30 R.M. Chihrin to Robert Weissberger April 4, 1974. Pat Carbine Files in Ms. Magazine papers, (unprocessed).

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international circulation, and postage is high)—Ms. has had an effect on the international replication of feminist self-help projects and issues, as well as a unique function in linking up feminist groups across national boundaries.31

One of the connections they noted was in the replication of their editorial choices.

For example, in its first issue, Ms. had ranked the presidential candidates in the US

(Nixon vs. McGovern) based on how they addressed feminist issues such as child care, reproductive freedom, equal pay, number of women staffers, and use of violence as conflict resolution. This inspired, according to the New York Times, Australian feminist groups to follow suit in their elections. The Australian effort proved more successful than the American one, as they were credited with creating a powerful women’s constituency that subsequently voted in a Labor Government.32 Five years later, France’s F magazine created a similar rating system for its first issue, independently judging candidates for its national elections.33

Because of its success, foreign journalists visited the Ms. offices in New York

City to exchange information. They received visiting writers and editors from Puerto

Rico, India, Japan, Sweden, and many Latin American and African countries, including

South African Journalist Cheeta Aasim and Lourdes Arizpe, Mexican anthropologist and editor of ‘Fem” magazine.34

31 Impact Statement for 501(c) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Ms. Magazine Papers (Unprocessed). Temporary Location 61A. 32 Robert Trumbull, “Women Emerge as a Force in Australian Election; Lobby Organized to Influence Male-Dominated System – Candidates Quizzed” New York Times, November 26, 1972. Page 24. 33 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Unprocessed Ms. Magazine Files. Temporary Location 61A. 34 Ibid.

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The visitors often asked for briefings on how they got started, exchanged articles and use their “existence as an example to skeptics in their own countries; either to increase feminist articles and departments in existing, conventional magazines, or to begin their own woman-controlled ones.”35 For example, in 1978, black South African editors Obed and Phumie Kuneme requested Steinem’s help in hosting a fund raising party, getting contacts with prominent black feminists like Toni Morrison, and bringing black women journalists from South Africa for training in the US in order launch an independent feminist publication entitled Sisters. “Could you investigate for us all?” they asked her.36

The news of Steinem’s involvement in helping train black South African journalists spread to other South African editors through the conference circuit. The next year, Steinem received a letter from Jane Rahaely, editor of the South African women’s magazine Fair Lady¸ “Someone who was lucky enough to hear you speak at the Oslo conference reported that you said you were running a training scheme for black South

African women journalists,” she wrote. The editor asked for details in order to publish them in her magazine.37

The Ms. staff was aware of their potential to help a fledgling magazine find its voice and support during a bitter time in South African history. Steinem’s support of the magazine, and that of Ms. was whole-hearted. “Because the South African Government does not take women’s publications as seriously as others, and because there is a chance to establish a distribution network in black areas of South Africa that the white

35 Ibid. 36 Obed and Phumie Kuneme to Gloria Steinem May 10, 1978. Steinem Papers, 186:9. 37 Jane Raphaely to Gloria Steinem June 22, 1979. Steinem Papers, 186:9.

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Government cannot duplicate, the Kunemes believe that this specifically feminist magazine could be both an effective political voice and one of the rare black-controlled publications there.”38

Sisters was not the only magazine that Ms. supported internationally. In a statement written while trying to acquire non-profit status, they explained how many other many other magazines they had helped.

In France, for instance, the year-old and very successful magazine F was begun by Claude Servan-Schreiber, our contributing editor there, and an active feminist who had not only participated in our development from the beginning, but explicitly watched it as an object lesson for French readers… In Germany, an equally successful magazine called Emma was begun in January 1977, by Alice Schwarzer, a writer and feminist who had contributed to Ms., and with whom we had begun to share the lessons of our early years soon after our first issue. In Italy, there’s the feminist magazine, Effe, for example; and in England, Spare Rib is the most widely distributed of the small feminist publications, and one with which we share office visits, article ideas, ad space and fund-raising appeals. The publisher of the only woman-controlled magazine in Ghana contacted us through the IWY Conference in Mexico City for an exchange of publications and article ideas.39

Steinem was instrumental in forging significant connections with feminist newspapers in other countries for Ms. and used her name and reputation to help feminist magazines in other countries develop. For example, Steinem whole-heartedly supported the efforts of Claude Servan-Schreiber, a frequent Ms. correspondent, to start a mainstream feminist magazine in France. In 1977, Steinem wrote a letter to

Jerry Schecter at the Press Office at the White House on behalf "of a new and important news magazine in France called F, and the request of its editor, Claude Servan-

38 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Unprocessed Ms. Magazine Files. Temporary Location 61A. 39 Impact Statement for 501( c ) (3) application “A Magazine of Record” notebook, n.p., 1979. Unprocessed Ms. Magazine Files. Temporary Location 61A.

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Schreiber, to interview President Carter while he is in Paris next month.” Even though F had not yet published its first issue, Steinem made the case for it and vouched personally for the editors. “I think it would be an important statement of [Carter's] own sensitivity and priorities if he were to grant time to this new publication, whose primary audience is informed and activist women."40

Ms. also forged connections with magazines in other countries who wanted to reprint their articles. In July 1979, the Japanese magazine More requested rights to reprint a Ms. article from March 1979 on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Steinem was friends with the translator, Michichita Kyoko, a Japanese feminist who became involved in the women’s movement in the United States while a journalism student at the

University of Wisconsin in the early 1970s. She was also a skilled videographer, whose

Being Women in Japan: Liberation Within My Family was one of the earliest videos exploring women’s traditional roles within family life in Japan.41 Kyoko and Steinem probably met initially while Steinem was in Japan for More’s International Cultural

Symposium in November 1978 and then rekindled their acquaintance when Kyoko travelled to New York with her organization in March 1979. Steinem did two days of interviews with them, resulting in a four-page personal profile that featured her rather than her philosophy, because, the Japanese editors feared the rest of the interview contained “too dangerous messages”.42 Despite it not being used in the Japanese

40 Letter from Steinem to Jerry Schechter, December 12, 1977. Steinem papers. 190:7. 41 Jayne Wark, Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America, (Montreal: McGill- Queen's Press, 2006), 109. 42 Michishita Kyoko to Gloria Steinem, July 20, 1979. Steinem Papers 88:20.

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magazine, Kyoko sent a full transcript of the interview with Steinem (over 100 pages) to a Japanese journalist whom she had been supplying with “feminist information.”43

Kyoko was one of many female journalists around the world who offered to assist with Ms., describing herself as a “self-appointed Ms. agent in Japan.”44 She also assisted Steinem in making her views accessible to Japanese readers by translating selected writings for a Japanese-language book published by Mikasa publishing house in 1985. The publisher invited Steinem to travel to Japan to promote the book. She agreed and visited Tokyo in June of 1985. This provided Steinem other opportunities to engage with Japanese feminists and to share her ideas with a global audience. She gave a lecture at the Tokyo American Center, which was published in TRENDS magazine in October and was distributed by the US embassy in Japan to 15,000

“leaders” of all fields in Japan.45

This trip led to another invitation to visit Japan in October for an international symposium on “Women in a Changing World””. The trip, which she declined, would have been paid for by the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s leading daily newspaper, and included first class round-trip airfare, accommodations and expenses, and an honorarium of $10,000. Her schedule was to be intense, with 12-hour days of back-to- back interviews for various magazines, interrupted only by 45-minute lunch breaks.

During her visit in June, Steinem met with women’s groups such as the Family

Planning Federation of Japan, who wrote to her after she returned to New York thanking her for the visit with effusive praise “It was indeed an exciting experience for us to

43 Michishita Kyoko to Gloria Steinem, July 20, 1979. Steinem Papers 88:20. 44 Michishita Kyoko to Gloria Steinem, July 20, 1979. Steinem Papers 88:20. 45 Michishita Kyoko to Gloria Steinem, September 27, 1985. Steinem Papers, 88:20.

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exchange views and opinions with you on our common concern, abortion. We were much impressed with your philosophy and the way to translate it into practical terms.

You have such a charming and convincing manner. It was our pleasure to find that our standpoint that the reproductive freedom is a key factor in enabling women to enjoy their rights was basically shared by you. We are looking forward to another chance of meeting you and discussing further on how women can strengthen their solidarity at the international level… We would much appreciate your keeping in touch with us from now onwards. You are an inspiration for us.”46

She also had opportunities to reconnect with acquaintances from other activist engagements. For example, Kimi Kubo, Japanese women’s activist and editor of a

Japanese women’s newspaper, had worked with Steinem for Bella Abzug’s election campaign in 1977. She wanted to reconnect with Steinem “as a gesture towards establishing a friendly tie with Ms.” and offered herself up as a source of information on feminism in Japan.47

Letters to the editor received from all over the world show that readers clamored for a more global exchange of information. From 1971 to 1980, Ms. received hundreds of letters from abroad. In South and Central America, letters came from Argentina,

Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Caribbean contributors wrote in from Haiti, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, and Barbados. In Europe, letters came from

Austria, England, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, West

Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia. Asian contributions came

46 Yuriko Ashino to Gloria Steinem, July 29, 1985. Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed. 47 Albert Novick to Gloria Steinem, June 3, 1985. Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed.

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from Japan, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, and the

Philippines. In Africa and the Middle East, readers wrote in from South Africa, Tanzania,

Rhodesia, the Ivory Coast, Israel, Kuwait, and Iran. Several letters also came from

Australia and New Zealand, and many more from Canada.

Collectively, the letters reveal that readers around the world avidly consumed Ms. from the magazine’s inception. Because the focus of the magazine was not primarily on international feminist issues, many foreign readers urged the magazine to become more international in scope and content, and wrote in to educate and cajole the magazine in this direction.48

Readers also stressed a desire for the magazine to include more foreign content, from coverage of specific feminist actions, to the development of feminist movements in other parts of the world, to examinations of the political and socio-economic situations of women in various nation-states. It was not only foreign readers who clamored for this content – Americans did, too. They were especially interested in receiving reports of the various International Women’s Years conferences, starting with the one in Mexico in

1975.

While readers of Ms. demanded more foreign coverage, they also did not expect the magazine to be intimately acquainted with the happenings in their parts of the world.

Many wrote in informing the magazine editors of what was going on in their counties.

They explained how and why their movements were developing, compared their movements with the movements in the United States, discussed particular feminist or anti-feminist events, and attempted to correct misunderstandings that had been printed

48 Letter to the Editors (name withheld). Ms. June 1979, 8.

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about their countries. For example, one American expatriate woman wrote from Paris, correcting an article published in November 1974 on the women’s movement in France.

The author, Jane Friedman, had stated that most feminists in France adhered to Marxist ideologies. This woman corrected Friedman and proposed a more nuanced understanding. 49 She argued that there were many more approaches to feminism in

France, including women who saw Marxism and feminism as working hand in hand, women who rejected Marxism, and women who eschewed political labels and feminist denominations but were nonetheless “determined to do something about their oppression.” 50 She wrote:

Not all women in France who do call themselves feminists hold the view that the class struggle must be part of broader social change brought about through the elimination of artificial distinctions and stereotypes based on sex! Others see the two channels of struggle as equal in importance and feel that neither the class struggle or the feminist struggle can succeed if the other fails, or is neglected.”51

Foreign readers engaged intellectually with the magazine because they perceived Ms. as a representative of American feminism around the world, and wanted to participate in a dialogue with American feminists. For example, when Ms. published a special issue on sexuality in 1977, a European reader wrote in, “Congratulations on your sexuality issue! But why are Americans always reading reports about and inquiring

49Like all other letter authors, this woman cannot be identified by name because of restrictions on accession of the collections put in place by Ms. Most of the letters are housed at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University. A small percentage (and a later accession) is housed at Smith. Smith, on the other hand, retains the rest of the Ms. Magazine papers, which are unprocessed. For the sake of clarity, I identify Ms. Magazine Letters as the Schlesinger accession and Ms. Magazine Papers as the Smith one. 50 Letter from reader, December 31, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, Harvard University. 1:32. 51 Letter from reader, December 31, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:32.

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into, their sex lives? In Europe we simply do it without trying to determine how we're doing. The less one tries to rate oneself or find her place on a graph, the better."52

To foreign readers, Ms. functioned both as a barometer of women’s movement issues in the US and as a point of comparison between movements. A Londoner wrote in “I always turn first to [the] ‘no comment’ [section] and my reactions vary between ‘well it’s pretty bad over there but not as bad as it is over here’ and ‘MY GOD it is even worse there than here.”53

U.S. citizens also used the magazine to make comparisons between their host country and their home country. However, rather than expanding cultural vistas, Ms. didn’t always bridge isolated individuals and became a means of imposing distance.

From an American in Iran came the note, “Ms. is a pleasure to read, particularly living in a country where a woman must have her husband’s written permission before she is allowed to leave the country (and we foreign wives of Iranian men fall under the same laws)…”54 Here, the comparison between America and Iran that the U.S. reader makes serves to further distance America from Iran and American women from Iranian women.

This feeling of distance and separation from one’s host country was echoed in many geographical settings. “I have been living in France now for ten years and can tell you from experience that French male chauvinism makes the American variety look like child’s stuff,” commented one reader. “First of all, women in general seem less aware. If you try to talk to them about MLF [French women’s liberation movement] they

52 Letter to the Editor, name withheld, Ms. March 1977, 15. 53 Letter from readers, June 23, 1974, Ms. Magazine Letters, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, Harvard University. 1:12. 54 Letter from Reader, nd, Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:16.

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immediately reply that American Extremists are asking for the moon.”55 Similar critiques came from another reader in talking about Mexico, after having completed a six-week tour of Morelia. ”I feel there is an unusually large amount of lack of awareness on the part of our Mexican sisters,” she stated. “Many of the Mexican women I talked to were not even aware there is such a thing as ‘liberation de mujeres.’ [women’s liberation]

When I tried to explain to them some of the ideas of women’s liberation, such as equal pay for equal work, they were aghast. They found it difficult to believe that anything like that could happen anywhere, especially in Mexico.”56

While some American readers living abroad used the magazine to reinforce a feeling of separation and superiority, others recognized that Ms. represented American feminism to the greater world, and urged the magazine to recognize that role and become more international in scope. “We must not lose sight of the fact that our individual existences and our collective existence as American women are not on another plane apart from the world,” wrote one reader living in Norway. “I have had the opportunities to become acquainted with the feminist movements in Norway, Denmark,

England, the Netherlands, and Australia. Because I subscribe to Ms., my friends have received a different impression about the American feminist movement than those which they have received from the European media,” she wrote.57 “It is your responsibility, Ms., to present seriously women, sexism, and the solutions for the

55 Letter from Reader, May 22, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:15. 56 Letter from Reader, May 23, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:10. 57 Letter from Reader, March 30, 1980, Ms. Magazine Letters, 7:220.

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common problems that everyday woman faces because you are looked upon as a leader, if not the leader, of the feminist movement in the US today.”58

American feminists living in other countries also reached out to Ms. as individuals, requesting the opportunity to translate and publish articles. One woman,

Diana Horino, wrote the publisher in 1974, requesting the right “to help and challenge the consciousness of the Japanese woman.”59

The magazine seems to have served an important emotional function to its foreign readers. Consuming the magazine helped women who felt isolated in their communities develop a sense of connectedness and create a sense of solidarity with one another. They saw Ms. as a force that could serve to connect and inform women’s movements in different parts of the world, and hoped Ms. would do just that. As members of the National Organization of Women in Gisborne, New Zealand exclaimed,

"It's great to get the magazine: it gives us the support we need when sometimes we feel desperately isolated, particularly in our provincial centre where feminists are considered to be distinctly odd birds."60

Many letters echo this sentiment, disclosing a sense of solitude and disconnection, feelings of alienation, frustration, and hopelessness. For instance, a

South African woman wrote: "I write to you with great envy for the freedom you have to express yourselves in your society. Here in South Africa a feminist is a branded person with labels of 'lesbian, nuts, bitter and twisted’…At present there is an awareness of black oppression but mention of female oppression, it just does not exist. I feel

58 Letter from Reader, March 30, 1980, Ms. Magazine Letters, 7:220. 59 Diana Horino to Ms. Magazine, Feb 25, 1974. Pat Carbine Files, Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed. 60 Letter from Reader, February 23, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:28.

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extremely isolated..."61 Others wrote in expressing these feelings of personal growth for which they credited the magazine. A young German woman wrote, “Ms. has helped me to get in contact with my feelings about myself, as a woman and a person.”62

The lengths to which foreign readers went to get the magazine further support the idea that the magazine carried meaning and value for many feminists outside of the

United States. Letter writers reveal that obtaining the magazine was often a difficult task, especially in the early years, and foreign readers spent a considerable amount of resources trying to get access to the magazine. To begin with, the cost of obtaining the magazine could be prohibitively expensive.63 As one Costa Rican reader explained

“American publications are sometimes difficult to obtain, and when obtained, oppressively expensive. Ms. costs me $1.63 a month. The November issue finally appeared on the stands here in January, 1973.” In spite of the cost and the delay, she continued, “I went dashing home, my Ms. clutched tightly in my hot little hands, to read my kind of magazine."

Secondly, the publication was banned in some countries, like Rhodesia (now

Zimbabwe), and, at least in its early years, difficult to obtain around the globe.64 Fans of

Ms. would bring the magazine back with them from the US, ask friends to bring them copies, and request subscriptions. One reader commented, “If your best friend were going to Pakistan for a trip, what do you think she would bring back as a gift for you?

61 Letter from Reader, October 8, 1977. Ms. Magazine Letters, 4:135. 62 Letter from Reader, July 21, 1977, Ms. Magazine Letters, 4:135. 63 Letter from Reader, April 12, 1973 Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:16. 64 One traveler to Rhodesia (now Botswana) in July 1974 informed the magazine that Ms. had been banned “from the first issue,” explaining that “the system there is to ban one edition which discourages importers from risking trying other ones.” Letter from Reader, September 11, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:18.

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Well, mine brought back the latest copy of Ms., something I've not been able to buy here in Iran yet.” 65 It was apparently just as difficult to gain access to the magazine in

1974 in Germany as it was in Iran, and copies that were acquired were often shared between several women. For example, one French reader commented, “(n)othing like

Ms. exists in France. Every copy I received is read by several other women, hungrily." 66

However, access to the magazine increased with time, at least in Western Europe, and was common enough that it prompted conversations among European feminists. For example, in 1983, a Danish woman wrote saying that she had “Just returned from visiting friends in Paris and was very surprised and pleased at the reception your magazine has been receiving from the French.”67

Ms. fans frustrated by the lack of availability of the magazine in their countries often took matters into their own hands rather than relying on the fickle availability in newsstands and supermarkets. Due to problems acquiring the magazine in public spaces, subscriptions were by far the most common way that foreign readers were able to obtain Ms. Readers confirmed that the magazine had been shipped to them from

France, Mexico, Denmark, Scotland, and Venezuela, even though some bemoaned having to go to these lengths. In one and a half years, between August 1972 and

January 1974, the magazine processed 137,379 subscriptions outside of the 50 United

States.68

65 Letter from Reader, n.d. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:18. 66 Letter from Reader, December 31, 1974. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:32. 67 Letter from Reader, May 5, 1983. Ms. Magazine Letters, 1:12. 68 Figures collected from Audit Reports and Circulation Analyses, Ms. Magazine Records, Smith College, unprocessed collection. Total figures as follows: AUGUST 1972 – 139,597 US states, 2838 Foreign (including US possessions); APRIL 1973 – 188740 US States, 2754 Foreign (not Canada), 8953 Canada,; Military or Civilian Personnel Overseas 842; May 1973 – 198,502 US States, 10,559 Foreign

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Through their editorial choices, the editors of Ms. proved that they were listening to their foreign-based readers and responding in kind. Between 1972 and 1980, the magazine published dozens of articles on international subjects ranging from women’s activism in the USSR to female genital mutilation in parts of Africa. They also created specific sections designed to incorporate a global perspective into the magazine.

The magazine published on international subjects even when they were not considered newsworthy by other news organs. In 1975, for example, the editors decided to make International Women’s Year the cover story even though the subject had received almost no national attention. They published several articles on the subject, including an exposé of sexism in the workplace at the UN and an article listing female political prisoners and explaining the sexual humiliations and tortures to which they were subjected. The impact of the IWY on the Ms. staff, especially Steinem, and the resulting connections are explored in depth in the next chapter.

Many readers disagreed with the editorial content of the magazine and penned trenchant critiques of the Americanist bent of the magazine. Northern European readers especially, charged the magazine as overly focused on sexuality, concerned with trivial matters, and lacking the willingness to call for systematic changes in the social fabric in regards to class issues. One woman charged that by publishing “chatty and trivial” articles, she believed Ms. editors were “consciously undermining the

(incl. US possessions); JAN 1974 – 234,643 US States, 10,234 Foreign; 1455 (US possessions); NEWSTAND SALES (SINGLE ISSUE); AUGUST 1972 – 339,790 US ; 21,520 Canada; only 200 in US Possessions and other areas ; APRIL 1973 – 162,569 US; 11854 Canada; 1000 Foreign not Canada, Military or Civilians Overseas 1594 Single issue ; MAY 1973 - 297,100 US; 21,640 Canada; 5,775 US Possessions and other areas ; JAN 1974 – 294930 US; 7365 US POSSESSIONS and other areas; 29,795 Canada.

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progress” they had made, and concluded that by allowing this, the editors were

“contributing to making a mockery of the American feminist movement in Europe [and] leaving yourselves open for that to happen in the US.”69 The perception of the U.S. movement as overly focused on the personal also negatively influenced some foreign readers’ perceptions of the US movement as represented by Ms. magazine.70 Often, the critiques were launched against “the Americanism of the magazine,” the inward looking bent that failed to fully recognize the world-wide appeal of the magazine.71

To some, the magazine’s articles on foreign issues actually did more harm than good, and they wrote in to call the editors out on their privilege and ignorance. An Indian reader wrote the magazine from Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1976 after reading an article on India. “After finishing it,” she wrote, “I thought I couldn’t just dismiss the whole issue as another example of America stereotyping my country.” She makes the point that the article was simplistic and reinforced stereotypes about India. “I have written not to justify my country being what it is, not to wave its flag, not to ask for apologies. I have written to ask American women to go beyond the written word, to question sweeping generalizations. Ms. should not allow itself to be carried away more by ‘effect’ rather than ‘essence’.”72

69 Letter from Reader, March 30, 1980. Ms. Magazine Letters, 7:220. 70 In a particularly vicious letter, a woman from Copenhagen who identified herself as a long time reader of the magazine railed in 1977 that “many of you are too busy talking and masturbating and engrossed in your orgasm and lesbianism to clean the streets – do something about the dirty streets and the lonesome and crippled people in their rotten apartments… MS is just too stupid for my taste and many other European women who both work long hours and raise children” Letter from Reader, July 25, 1977. Ms. Magazine Letters, 4:135. 71 Letter from Reader, nd, Ms. Magazine Letters, 4:103. 72 Letter from Reader, December 24, 1976. Ms. Magazine Letters, 4:103.

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These critiques increased with time and in response to globalization. In response to the 10th Anniversary issue of the magazine, a woman in Hong Kong wrote, “I hope that you, the editors of Ms. Magazine, will pay special attention to the international concerns of women over the past decade in your tenth anniversary issue. The world is getting smaller, and we must learn to improve conditions everywhere, not just in our own country.”73

Steinem’s own understanding of the women’s movement as global was represented well in the 5th anniversary issue of Ms. The cover image, which showed a mixed media tree collage by artist Miriam Wosk with dozens of prominent female figures' heads in its branches (including, front and center, Gloria Steinem herself), was accompanied by an identification key and an editorial comment by Steinem that put the magazine cover choice in context. “Ms. is only one forum in a big, national movement.

To include the active feminists of this or any other country would take millions [of faces].

And there is now no nation in the world without feminist stirrings against the established patriarchal and racist order. So take this image and enlarge it into a global tree, with roots reaching through the center of the world.”74 The news and reports that the Ms. editorial staff decided not to use speak clearly to the editorial policing of the content to match the point of view of the Ms. staff.

For example, “A Letter to the Women of the Western World” was sent anonymously to the readers of F Magazine, which then found its way to the Ms. vertical files with note from Steinem – “good – let’s use,” about an account of an Iranian woman

73 Letter from Reader, February 26, 1982. Ms. Magazine Letters, 13:22. 74 Gloria Steinem, editorial. “Special 5th Anniversary Issue” Ms. July 1977, p. 47.

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speaking out against the mandatory imposition of women’s wearing of the veil following the mandate of the Ayatollah Khomeini after his successful revolution in 1979. “Woman of the Western World, I am talking to you. Listen to me, you cannot remain indifferent to my hopes,” she began, and then continued:

Our revolution has become a reality, but the veils have not fallen. Those veils will continue to hide the faces of Iranian women for a long while… Islamic law has been imposed upon us. Now, it is imposed more strictly than ever. Seventeen million women, all the victims of deceptive illusions. One form of bleak totalitarianism has been replaced by another and I, desperately, am talking to you.

The story identifies the author as Farin Mirvahabi, an Iranian feminist lawyer who had published in legal journals on the status of women in Iran.75 The staff decided to reprint an excerpt from the story “Women and the Chador” that talked about the veil as an oppressive force for women starting with the 1930s. However, someone on the Ms. staff crossed out with a big “x” mark the next section of the story – one that talked about the liberation of Iranian prostitutes, written by the same author and addressing western feminists directly, which brought the story of Iranian feminist activism into the present day. The author described events surrounding the first week of March 1979, when

Iranian prostitutes in the city of Abadan petitioned the Ayatollah Khomeini to reopen the brothels which had been closed. When he did not, they joined in a massive protest against the Ayatollah along with 15,000 other Iranian women. This, she argued, “should clarify one thing to the religious leaders of Iran; they cannot suppress the Iranian

75 Farin Mirvahabi, “The Status of Women in Iran,” Journal of Family Law 14, no. 3 (1975): 383-404.

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women. An Iranian woman will speak up whether in veil, or blue jeans, and whether as a college student, housewife or a prostitute.” 76

That Ms. chose not to print this particular section but instead gave space to one that reified white, mainstream, Western notions of the region speaks to the limits of the magazine as representative of only certain feminist perspectives. The editorial choice of the magazine to print the section of the article on the chador versus the other on the rights of prostitutes, is not surprising given the personal politics of the editors, who understood prostitution and pornography as a form of violence against women.

Steinem considered prostitution commercial rape, and was an active and lifelong anti- pornography activist, aligning herself philosophically with the work of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon and heavily involved in the anti-pornography organization,

Women Against Pornography, co-founded by Steinem and nine other women, including

Ms. editors Robin Morgan and Letti Cottin Pogrebin.77 According to Steinem,

“pornography is not about sex. It’s about an imbalance of power that allows and requires sex to be used as a form of aggression.”78

Ms. floundered in its dealing of pornography in print. As former editor Harriet

Lyons expressed, “Pornography was one of the subjects on which there were divergent opinions; Ms. either shied away from them or burned itself out giving diverse opinions.”79 The magazine, which started reporting on the issue which editorials by

Steinem in 1977, did not fully address the question of pornography in an “objective”

76 Farin Mirvahabi “History is Repeating Itself” and “A Letter to the Women of the Western World,” ca. 1979. Ms. Magazine Papers, Vertical Files (unprocessed). 77 Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, (New York: Dial Press, 1999), 298-299. 78 Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, 241. 79 Quoted in Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 260.

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format until 1985, in an article by Mary Kay Blakely, which tried to address all of the perspectives on the issue, and resulted in pleasing nobody.80

Steinem, too, wrote on the issue in an article exposing the violence and abuse suffered by many women in the industry by profiling the story of pornography actor

Linda Lovelace in a May 1980 article, which was subsequently anthologized in her collection of essays, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. Steinem reported that the famous protagonist of Deep Throat had been “beaten and raped so severely and regularly that she suffered rectal damage plus permanent injury to the blood vessels in her legs.”81 Unfortunately, the magazine’s inability to deal with this complex issue meant that international perspectives like the events described by the Iranian lawyer in her letter to Western feminists, found no presence in mainstream outlets. In this sense, Ms. participated in mainstream censoring of outside perspectives.

The international history of the magazine came full circle on the anniversary of its

15th year, when Ms. was sold to two Australian subscribers, Sandra Yates and Anne

Summers, two feminists involved in journalism and magazine publishing and in charge of Fairfax US, a subsidiary of John Fairfax, Ltd., an international media company.

Describing the initial meetings, Steinem said “When Ms. board members and staff met with Anne and Sandra, they clicked with us: their international backing, publishing expertise and feminism could guarantee Ms.’ tradition, and bring new strength and perspective to Ms. magazine and to the women’s movement here.” The board of the

80 Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 261-262. Steinem wrote several editorials on the question of pornography in Ms.: “Pornography – Not Sex but the Obscene Use of Power” (August 1977); “Erotica and Pornography – A Clear and Present Difference” (November 1978); “Linda Lovelace’s Ordeal” (May 1980). 81 Quoted in Heilbrun, The Education of a Woman, 345.

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Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication (a subsidiary of the umbrella organization the Ms. Foundation, under which Ms. had incorporated in 1979) voted to transfer ownership to Fairfax US. Under it, Ms. Magazine’s size, paper quality, editorial pages, and circulation promised to be increased. Anne Summers served as editor in chief, and promised to return Ms. to having the political teeth that had restricted its reporting on elections and politics.82

Almost immediately after it was founded, Ms. became a transnational forum for exchanges in communication between feminists in America and around the world, which on the one hand promoted a limited global feminist consciousness and helped to increase readers’ sense of identity as feminist activists and, on the other hand cultivated a sense of separation and superiority on the part of American readers living abroad, who encountered within the pages of Ms. validation for their US-centric world view.

While the letters from readers demonstrate the agency and ingenuity of feminists outside of the U.S. who used what was essentially an American feminist magazine for their own particular purposes, there were definite limits to the international exchanges in which Ms. took part.

When it was created, Ms. hoped to be an “open forum”, a space that would champion an exchange of ideas and provide struggling women with a network of support. At best, this hope was naïve, the product of the simplistic understanding of a privileged few. Yet for some English-speaking women, the magazine fulfilled its aim, and helped to create an unmistakable sense of international solidarity. In a limited capacity, the magazine helped to connect isolated individuals and make them feel like

82 Gloria Steinem “Editorial, Ms. 15th Birthday” ca. 1987, draft in Steinem Papers, 111:26.

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they were part of a global women’s movement. Meanwhile, for others, the magazine became representative of some of the problems associated with the US and its feminist movement, projecting and reinforcing America’s image of itself as the apogee of cultural development. To these critics, Ms. provided an avenue through which to voice their disapproval. Further, rather than creating international feminist solidarity, to some

Americans, the magazine functioned as a means of generating distance between themselves and their host-countries, while for foreign readers, it served to reinforce ideas of US feminism’s disconnect and disinterest with the rest of the world.

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CHAPTER 5 INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S YEAR, 1975: STEINEM AS FEMINIST AMBASSADOR

I have a feeling that, at the bottom, organizing the world is not so different from organizing in our communities and our neighborhoods. - Gloria Steinem, 19751

By the mid-1970s, when Steinem was in her early forties, Gloria Steinem was a household name known nationally and internationally. She had co-founded Ms. magazine, the Women’s Action Alliance, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the Ms. Foundation for Women. She was frequently featured in print, TV, and radio, and she had become a popular public speaker and lecturer. Steinem’s lecture schedule from

1970-1975 was intense – she traveled domestically almost every week for most of the year. She spoke at universities, press clubs, business and other association meetings, political rallies and various social gatherings. By 1971, Steinem was so sought after as a lecturer that her agency bragged “it could book her twice a day every day of the year.”

She received $750 a lecture, half of which she donated to women’s liberation efforts.2

During these years, Steinem was also a frequent international traveler, visiting Europe on an annual basis, giving lectures in Austria, the Netherlands, and Japan. But it was still perhaps a shock to receive an invitation from the United Nations (UN) to speak at the first International Women’s Year Conference, held in Mexico City in 1975.

This chapter explores Steinem’s involvement in the United Nations’ IWY conference, arguing that this event launched Steinem into a new role: as a “global ambassador” of feminism representing the United States. For Steinem, the International

Women's Year conference was a watershed moment that opened the door to

1 Debbie Jamail, “Journalists Link Women and Peace,” The News, Mexico City, June 19, 1975, 17. 2 Leonard Levitt, “She: The Awesome Power of Gloria Steinem,” Esquire, October 1971, 208.

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professional opportunities both in the United States and internationally. Her participation in the conference resulted in her being internationally recognized as a global figure in the struggle for women’s rights and moved her activism into a more global dimension.

Despite the fact that she endured some ad-hominem attacks in the process, the UN conference provided a much wider platform for Steinem to both increase her knowledge about global feminist issues and to make connections with international feminist activists. It provided Steinem (and many other American and international feminist activists) a chance to learn from and about women in different countries and the struggles they faced through face-to-face interactions. She also became starkly aware of the problems with a large bureaucratic organ such as the United Nations and its ability to effect change.3

In 1972, the leftist non-governmental organization Women’s International

Democratic Federation persuaded the United Nations Commission on the Status of

Women to propose a United Nations Year of the Woman. Adopting their proposal in

1972, the General Assembly of the UN declared 1975 International Women’s Year, the purpose of which was to promote equality, increase women’s involvement in development, and contribute towards world peace. The UN urged all member nations to start collecting data on the status of women in their respective states to be presented at a world conference that was originally scheduled to be held in Bogota, Colombia in

3Steinem is the only US individual quoted in several articles on the issue published in The New York Times: James P. Sterba, “Stark Picture of Women’s Lot Emerges at U.N. Parley,” New York Times, June 26, 1975, 2, accessed online April 18, 2013, Proquest. Judy Klemesrud, “International Women’s Year World Conference Opening in Mexico.” New York Times, June 19, 1975, 1, accessed online April 18, 2013, Proquest.

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1975, but political unrest in Colombia led to a change in venue and preparations began for Mexico City in June 1975.4

In anticipation of the conference, the UN’s general assembly declared March 8,

1975 International Women’s Day.5 This was not a historical first. International Women’s

Day was first observed in the United States on February 28, 1909 by the Socialist Party of America to honor the 1908 garment worker’s strike in New York. By World War I,

International Women’s Day had become a mechanism for protesting the war, and was observed around Europe on March 8.6

Though most Americans were not aware of the anti-war and labor history of the day that the UN had officially re-kindled, many eagerly showed their support for the globalization of the women’s movement within the United States by attending the first late twentieth century incarnation of the International Women’s Year rally and march in

New York City. One of these was Gloria Steinem.

On March 8, 1975, Steinem joined an estimated 1200 to 2000 people in a march and rally in New York City in a celebration of what many believed was the first

International Women’s Day in history. Steinem found herself in the midst of thousands

4Virginia Allan, Margaret Gallay, and Mildred Persinger. “World Conference of International Women’s Year,” in Report of the World Conference of the International Women's Year, Mexico City, 19 June-2 July 1975. (New York: United Nations, 1976), 29. This article also contains more on the history of the IWY and the conference in Mexico City. 5 The event’s longevity was solidified in December 1977, when, according to UN records, “the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions.” See “History of International Women’s Day.” UN Women Watch: Information and Resources on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women. 2013. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/history.html. 6 “History of International Women’s Day.” UN Women Watch: Information and Resources on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women. 2013. Accessed October 10, 2014. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/history.html.

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of people excited about international recognition of women’s issues and concerns. The parade route stretched for 25 blocks, from the New York Public Library to Union Square, where the rally was held, and drew a coalition of 50 women’s groups under a chilly and windy, but sunny, Manhattan sky. Steinem was in well-established company at the rally, which included feminist icons like Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan.7

The political tone and content of the march was remarkably similar to that of six decades prior, with a strong labor component. Making the first page of the New York

Times, the rally included speeches that called for an end to the Vietnam War while women held placards and signs such as “We Refuse to be Shock Absorbers for

Capitalism’s Crisis,” and “Reduce Military Spending- Use Funds for People’s Needs.”

These were paired with more women-focused demands, such as equal pay for equal work, an immediate ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, support for women’s reproductive rights, and civil rights for lesbians.8

The march in New York City was one of many IWY-related occasions in which

Steinem participated that year. 9 In the months preceding the conference, she had started giving radio and newspaper interviews for foreign papers, meeting with individuals from a variety of international women’s groups, giving speeches and talking on the radio and TV about International Women’s Year. For example, on January 10,

1975 she taped a 15-minute segment of the CBS morning news on IWY. She was busy lecturing, crisscrossing the nation by traveling to California, West Virginia, Chicago,

7 Judy Klemesrud, “March and Rally Celebrate First International Women’s Day.” New York Times, March 9, 1975, 1, 52. 8 Judy Klemesrud, “March and Rally Celebrate First International Women’s Day,” New York Times, March 9, 1975, 1, 52. 9 Steinem daily planner, April-June, 1975. Steinem papers, 7:1.

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Texas, and around the Northeast. She also traveled internationally before the conference, going to Europe in mid-February to give a speech in Austria.10

The amount of energy Steinem invested in IWY related activities is not to say that she was naïve about the limited role the United Nations had played in helping women’s lives. In a speech she gave in Vienna in February 1975, she discussed the international significance of women’s movements and proclaimed the UN’s IWY as “almost meaningless” as it was only symbolic, especially since the UN was discriminating against women in its own agency.11 When she arrived to Mexico City on June 15, 1975,

Steinem was prepared to express these concerns in front of the august body itself. Still,

Steinem believed that there was an inherent value in the conference, because it brought people from different backgrounds together to share experiences about gender discrimination and make connections that could be useful.

In spite of concerns that many, including Steinem, shared about the United

Nations, the IWY in Mexico City was a historic event. As the largest and most diverse conference involving women at the United Nations, it was the first time women and men representing 133 national delegations, 113 non-Governmental organizations, and 7 liberation movements came together to discuss women’s issues. The number of female delegates –891—by far exceeded any at previous United Nations conferences, and the mass media and auxiliary events surrounding the conference attracted the most

10 Steinem daily planner, Jan-March 1975. Steinem papers, 7:1. 11 Sigrid Löffler, “Die feminine Feministin” Feb 16, 1975. Steinem papers 1:16. ; “Zwischen Frau und Fräulein: Gloria Steinem, US-Women’s-Lib-Führerin, Gast des Renner-Instituts” Arbeiterzeitung, Feb. 8, 1975.Steinem Papers 1:16.

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attention of any United Nations conference to date, with 1500 mass media representatives and 5,000 participants in parallel activities.12

The official United Nations conference was attended by UN diplomats, and excluded non-diplomatic individuals. However, a concurrent and affiliated conference, the International Women’s Year Tribune, welcomed 2,500 delegates from nongovernmental organizations and the interested public. American participants in the tribune included Betty Friedan, civil rights activist Angela Davis, and actress-turned- activist Jane Fonda. Because she was not a diplomat, Steinem participated in the tribune and not the official conference, although as a member of the press she possessed special privileges.

The Tribune was organized by a committee of non-governmental organizations appointed by the Conference in agreement with the United Nations and the Government of Mexico.13 Unlike the heavily bureaucratized official conference, the Tribune did not have the power to make official recommendations to the United Nations, nor did it adopt formal resolutions or recommendations. Nonetheless, it served as litmus test of a wide swath of women’s opinions.

The official conference and the Tribune were separated from one another by a thirty-minute taxi ride. This geographical separation, according to some, was not accidental. Some women felt that the two conference sites were chosen because of

12 Statistics taken from a statement made by Helvi Sipila, Secretary-general of International Women’s Year on July 7, 1975 at the UN office in Geneva and reprinted in Parashakti: International Women’s Year Newsletter in Steinem papers, 194:12. These numbers differ slightly in another account, which claims 6000 people participated in the Tribune, and 192 NGOs in consultative status. See Allan et al, “World Conference of International Women’s Year,” 33. 13 United Nations Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City 19 June – July 2 1975, (New York: United Nations, 1976), 198.

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their distance from each other, making it difficult for American feminists to disrupt the official conference. According to the New York Times, United Nations planners were worried that “third-world women would feel intimidated by large numbers of American feminists and their sometimes abrasive tactics.”14

According to UN documents, the Tribune “had platform speakers, arranged cross-cultural dialogues and received a daily briefing from representatives in the conference and United Nations staff on the progress being made by the Conference.”15

It discussed issues including education, health, agriculture, urbanization, population and family planning, employment, the arts, and efforts for peace. Alongside formal sessions, in which papers were read, there were film shows, art exhibits, and an information and documentation center, which allowed participants to exchange news, views, and data.

Though the many voices in the official and unofficial conferences agreed that women’s status in the world needed improvement, there was no consensus as to how this was to be achieved. Proposed models of change included armed revolution, consciousness raising, state-sponsored modernization schemes, and the like. These disagreements over ideology--which devolved into heated arguments over whether women’s emancipation must precede or follow economic justice—clashed with identity- based representation and politics over the course of the two-week conference.16

These factors combined to create an atmosphere of tension around questions of representation. As Jocelyn Olcott explains, the issue was “not only over the question of

14 Judy Klemesrud, “International Women’s Year World Conference Opening in Mexico.” New York Times, June 19, 1975, 56, accessed online April 18, 2013, ProQuest. 15 United Nations Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City 19 June – July 2 1975, (New York: United Nations, 1976), 198. 16 Olcott, “Globalizing Sisterhood,” 283.

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who would speak for ‘women’ as a coherent subject but also over who would attend the

IWY events and for whom they spoke, the relationship between the intergovernmental conference and the NGO tribune, and the expectations for democratic process at both venues.”17

Beyond representing Ms. Magazine, which was gaining international popularity every year, and which had dedicated its latest cover to the International Women’s Year,

Steinem was invited to report on the conference by the New York Times. She was paid to write a 750-800 word special guest report for the newspaper highlighting the events at the Encounter of Third World Journalists, a three-day prelude to the United Nations

Conference for International Women’s Year. The article was syndicated internationally and domestically and gave her credibility in this international setting as well as extending her reach even further into the world. However, the real impact of her participation was not in the reporting of the event, but in her participation in it.

Steinem had the special privilege of being invited to speak at the Encounter of

Third World Journalists. She was the only representative from the United States, and the only speaker from an “over-developed” country to be asked to give an address. The prelude was organized by the United Nations Centre for Economic and Social

Information and the secretariat of International Women’s Year and was held at the

National Medical Centre from June 16 - 18, 1975. It was intended for 53 professional journalists from developing countries and ten speakers, though it was open to all journalists accredited by the conference. Recognized by the United Nations as an

“internationally known personality,” Steinem was asked to speak on the final day of the

17 Olcott, “Globalizing Sisterhood,” 282.

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Journalists Encounter, a Friday, which was devoted to the theme “Media Attitudes to

International Women’s Year.”18

The speech Steinem gave to the assembled journalists informed many aspects of Steinem’s approach to international politics and her personal views on global feminist organizing. She touched on subjects such as race and global inequity, capitalism, and the effect of patriarchy on women’s lives. She did not apologize for U.S. foreign policy and tried to position herself at once as a part of an oppressed class of women, but also as a subjugated subject herself. In the speech, Steinem saw her role as to inspire others to decide their own future actions; she was reluctant to tell her listeners what to do, although she had strong ideas about how to organize effective protests, how to use the media, how to apply financial and political pressure. Her primary goal, though, was to use the speech as a platform to participate in a global exchange of information. Her tactical choices in attempting to address these topics illustrate why Steinem served as an effective, if unofficial, feminist ambassador for the United States.

The first thing that stands out in her speech is the manner in which she self- consciously and honestly acknowledged the result of her social status and advantaged position as a white person and as an American citizen. "I had the special privilege of being born white in a racist society," she said in her opening remarks. Like a good debater, she addressed the source of tension in the room – the fear that radical white feminists would try to coopt the conference for their own aims. “It is said that feminism is a U.S. product, but we are only trying to put our experiences before you as examples of

18 United Nations Report of the World Conference of the International Women’s Year, Mexico City 19 June – July 2 1975, , (New York: United Nations, 1976), 199.

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what it is like for the universal woman.” By positioning herself and American feminists as

“the universal woman,” she articulated the same perspective that troubled many activists in the Global South to begin with.19

However, as she continued talking, she clarified her position in a way that shows a strong attempt to make feminism palatable to an international audience, whom she understood was skeptical about the ways that U.S. feminists were part of a western effort to disrupt traditions, and promote ‘man-hating’ and to try to change perceptions about US feminism. “I know there has been a considerable amount of opinion in the press that somehow feminism is an American export,” she began. “Well, I confess to you that if it were true, I would find it the only healthy American export. But I still don't wish it to be true because we have no intention of following the male pattern of dominance. We want instead to put our experiences before you as women and to see what there is that is useful for us to learn from each other.”20

To Steinem, the true value of the IWY was that it served as another mode of connection between women who might not otherwise find their paths crossing.

We have come to know each other in many ways across the boundaries of our nations and of our cultures. For me, that is reason enough to have called this meeting, because I have a feeling that, at the bottom, organizing the world is not so different from organizing in our communities and our neighborhoods. What matters is knowing the individual active people who care and who have the compassion, and the working together with those people. If we do that, this meeting will have served a great service.21

19 Debbie Jamail, “Journalists Link Women and Peace” The News, Mexico City June 19, 1975, 17. 20 IWY Speech, Steinem papers, 100:8A. 21 IWY Speech, Steinem papers, 100:8A.

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Though these statements could be understood as an expected and politically savvy move on the part of a US feminist seeking credibility in an international setting, it formed the basis of her understanding of feminism as a global concept. The common bond that Steinem stressed was one based on a global inequity faced by women around the world. She articulated this by using the language developed by feminist theorists in the United States in the early 1970s. For example, utilizing a theory advanced by Gayle Rubin in the seminal article, The Traffic in Women: Notes on the

“Political Economy” of Sex, she called women a "sexual caste”—meaning--“a visible mark of sexual difference, like that of sex or race” that affected women around the world, in spite of their other privileges.22 The goal of feminists, according to Steinem, was "to overturn this caste system [through] a long term and difficult revolution."23

In order to connect the idea of caste with the need for a women’s revolution,

Steinem borrowed heavily from a concept articulated in the Marxist feminist materialist critiques put forward by thinkers like Roxanne Dunbar, who expanded Marxist analyses of dialectical and historical materialism to argue that the women’s liberation movement had to be viewed within the context of international social revolution.24 Steinem argued

22 Gayle Rubin, “Traffic in Women: Toward a ‘Political Economy’ of Sex” in Rayna Reiter, Toward an Anthropology of Women. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 157-210, Roxanne Dunbar, “Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution.” Pamphlet, Boston, 1970. Re-published online by Flatbush, NY: El Libro Libre, 2013. Available from http://www.waste.org/~roadrunner/RDO/_single_RDO_Female_Liberation_as_Basis_for_Social_Revoluti on.pdf 23 Steinem brought up the idea of sexual caste as early as 1973, relating it to race. “Eyewitness News Conference” transcript, December 30, 1973. Steinem Papers 4:5. In an interview for Christopher Street in 1977, she articulated the idea thus “women are actually a caste, not a class, since we are marked by physical differences that can’t be changed, as are racial groups and so on. Whether or not society focuses consciously on its desire to control the production of citizens and to decide which groups produce and which groups don’t produce, it is a fundamental component of nationalism as we know it.” Dorianne Beyer, “Interview: Gloria Steinem,” Christopher Street, August 1977, 7. 24 Roxanne Dunbar, “Female Liberation as the Basis for Social Revolution.” 1.

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that women, distributed throughout populations, without any territory of their own, yet oppressed in all societies, needed to bond together and realize that breaking the caste system and recognizing the value of their bodies was key. 25 She articulated the idea most clearly in an argument to a news reporter in 1977. “Nationalism has two components—territory and people – and the control of the production of population, whether it is to decrease or increase the population, is vital. Moreover, it is vital for inheritance purposes to keep certain castes or classes “pure” in order to pass down property and so on. What that means is that the patriarchal state must not only control the means of production, but must also control sexuality.”26

Steinem also connected the idea of race to this caste-based system of global inequality by borrowing from black feminist thinkers. "We must also ask if the sexual and racial caste systems are not so deeply intertwined and interdependent that, in fact, they can only be fought together,” she stated. This idea of the intersections between class, race, and gender, was something borrowed from black American feminist and womanist thinkers like Florynce Kennedy, Alice Walker, and Barbara Smith.

Intersectionality (using today’s term) formed not only the basis for Steinem’s involvement in international women’s politics, but also her relationship to black women’s

25 Debbie Jamail, “Journalists Link Women and Peace” The News, Mexico City, June 19, 1975, 17. 26 Dorianne Beyer, “Interview: Gloria Steinem,” 7. In a speech she gave to the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1979, Steinem went even further and connected this idea to Americanism “Nationalism is a limited political form and it attempts to say that people own some of the earth because they are sitting on it.” “Gloria in excessus?” Columbus Citizen-Journal July 18, 1979, 4. She also felt that principles of human rights were so universal that “the extent to which a nation goes against human rights, the nation becomes less important than the rights.” Steinem quoted in Pauline Wessa “Economic Survival is Toughest Problem for Women, Gloria Steinem Says Here,” Columbus Citizen-Journal July 18, 1979, 9. Expectedly, she was met with criticism for this. A local newspaper columnist from Mercer County, Ohio, quipped “When you put feminism above patriotism the other day in Cincinnati you damaged the image of us all…When you put feminism above your country you spit in the face of your mother country.” Pat Carolan, ”Pay on Politics” Mercer County Messenger, July 19, 1979. In Steinem Papers 2:2.

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movement activists.27 In a TV appearance in 1973, Steinem was asked if minority women were not getting involved in feminist movements because they faced more “nitty gritty problems like food, shelter and clothing to get them really involved.” Steinem responded keenly in the negative. A Black woman, she stated,

can’t say to herself I’m being discriminated Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday because I’m Black and Saturday and Sundays because I’m female. She has to struggle against both of those forms of discrimination. And I think it’s terribly important, I mean probably ultimately the most important thing that we, that the protest groups in this country understand that we must not be turned against each other in order to struggle for 5% of the pie while guess who has 95, right? We have to unite in order to get what we’re really after which is about 70%.28

Further, as she articulated in McCall’s magazine’s Woman of the Year feature on her in 1972, “Black women and white women have more in common than they have dividing them. As long as society is sexist, it holds back half the white community, as well as half the whites, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and other minorities. All women have to work together against this common injustice.”29

The ultimate goal of uniting as disparate women was to reach a time and place in which equality was finally achieved. To that aim, she linked feminism as the largest, and most necessary stepping stone on the road to humanism. "The air is alive with possibilities among us. One thing we now understand is that revolutionary feminism is the only path to humanism," she argued to the UN journalists.

27 The term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her insightful essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, 139–67. 28 WABC-TV Eyewitness News Conference transcript, December 30, 1973, 25, Steinem Papers, 4:5. 29 Gloria Steinem quoted in Marilyn Mercer, “Woman of the Year: Gloria Steinem.” McCalls, January 1972, 69.

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As Steinem understood it, humanism, a product of eighteenth-century enlightenment and nineteenth-century “free thought”, championed reason, morality and individual human rights. Steinem had been making statements about humanism and its connection between race and class to US audiences for several years. For instance, in a New York Times article from 1972, she stated, “We all understand that black power is a necessary stage to humanism. And so woman power is a necessary stage to the same thing, and we are all still in that stage.”30

Undoubtedly, to a modern audience, and probably to many in attendance at her speech in Mexico, Steinem’s articulation of humanist as the ultimate goal seems politically naïve, especially after she had demonstrated in her speech and to her readers that she understood complex dynamics of race, gender, and class. Why then, bring up this subject? First, she believed in humanist values and had been influenced in the direction of radical humanism since her time in India, as described in Chapter 3. 31

Second, she was attempting to take the diversity of her audience into account, and trying to appeal to as broad a base as possible. Making claims about humanism and the possibility for world peace and equality made her seem moderate to the government elites of the world, especially compared to some of the American radical feminists in attendance, and allowed her to introduce more challenging and radical concepts such the need for a world-wide women’s revolution to her audience of mainstream journalists

30 Steinem quoted in Dierdre Carmody, “Feminists Rebut Friedan Charge” The New York Times, July 20, 1972, 29. 31 In later years, she pulled back from the concept of humanism. Women, she argued in a keynote address to the Women in Planning and Government Conference in 1979, must be careful not to “skip to humanism too soon. You notice that we have women feeling anxious about excluding men, but we don’t have men feeling uncomfortable about excluding women.” Quoted in Elaine Woo “The Way the World Would Be – If Women Planned it” Los Angeles Harold Examiner, May 14 1979. In Steinem Papers 2:2.

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and non-Western listeners. She used a similar tactic in bringing up the concept of world peace, which was one of the three stated conference goals, by making the case that without equality for women, world peace would never be achieved. "As long as we continue to reward male people for aggression and we continue to reward female people for submission,” she argued, “we will have set up a very dangerous dichotomy....

Therefore, feminists not only ask how women can contribute, but we assume that the cause of peace cannot go forward without equality."

To further connect to her audience, she used the opportunity to bring up anti-

American sentiments shared by many in attendance. Speaking in a harsh tone, she critiqued the United States, especially its capitalist system, touching on a subject for her foreign audience that she was cautious to address in the United States. For example, she joined the international community in critiquing the US for setting "a bad example”.

The US "exports inequality in many ways," she stated, one of them by inculcating gendered labor practices detrimental to the lives of women. "We will, with our foreign aid, go into a Third World country in which women may be a prime agricultural worker, perhaps even the primary agricultural worker, and yet we will still teach the agricultural skills to the man. We will do the same thing with technology.... this is a prejudice in

American foreign policy we are protesting, yet it continues."

She also did not shy away from discussing the crimes of the United States against citizens in other parts of the world, especially women, and, in a move reminiscent of 19th century women’s activists and abolitionists, linked American feminism with the crusade for world peace and justice. "We understand that the United

States and other industrialized countries have often exported kinds of birth control to

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Third World counties that have not been properly tested… This is something American feminists very much protest."

The geopolitical context of the conference and her own convictions likely carried more weight in affecting the content of her encounter with the journalists to whom she was speaking. This is because Steinem understood the strong anti-American sentiment felt by her audience, all members of the Global South, after years of unwarranted involvement in Vietnam, the fall of Saigon that same year, the perilous state of US politics following Nixon’s resignation due to the Watergate scandal, and the still tense relations between the US, the Soviet Union, and many nations and movements in

Southeast Asia and Latin America.

After deftly stressing the inequities and crimes in the United States, and their effects of women globally, she quickly moved to widen the base of her message by critiquing all industrialized societies and capitalist economies, and linking the struggle of women in the US with that of women world-wide. Industry has given men more power than women, she argued, because "It has ghettoized the wives and the children farther away from the places of power and decision-making. We do not in the least feel that the word "advanced" or "developed" means that feminism is more developed in our countries. We feel only that we have a great deal in common as women, that we have common problems of achieving reproductive freedom, or achieving autonomy, of over throwing the case system... and that we need to confer with each other, to learn from each other, to talk to each other."32

32 Steinem IWY Speech; Steinem Papers, 100: 8A. Aside from a desire to connect to her audience, her focus on international economic issues of global inequity were not surprising given the spirit which had led to the conference in the first place. In the 1974 General Assembly sessions, the Group of 77, a loose coalition of the most recently accepted nation-states from the Global South, managed to pass two key

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Finally, as she had articulated in the speech she gave in Austria in anticipation of the conference, she used her speech in Mexico City, in front of the United Nations itself, to speak in front of a body of people who did not share her views or opinions. To her, this was an opportunity not only to try to convince a group of people about the value of women’s movement activism but also to express her concerns about the IWY and large international conferences in general based on the “great deal of worry that it will somehow trivialize the women's revolution; that it will make it seem a mere reform and not the revolution that it truly is.” She expressed the fear that the “IWY will simply co- opt the big and deep ideas of the feminist revolution -- and that next year we will be nothing but the people of last year."33 And, she stressed, there was a real need to resist that watering down of feminist goals in every way possible.

Steinem’s speech garnered international media attention. The English-language

Mexico City News published an article on the speech quoting parts of it and summarizing major themes. A major daily newspaper of Mexico City, El Sol de Mexico published an interview feature with her on the first page that reified many of the

“traditional” Second Wave discussion points she brought up in US news features – equality in legal structures and an end to discrimination practices, the need for

documents aimed to take the emphasis of development away from the Global North. As Judith Zinsser explained, the Group “embraced the evidence of women's disadvantaged status, the designation of a Women's Year, and an International Women's Conference as another opportunity to illustrate and decry the consequences of the unequal global economy.” This is not to say that the Group of 77 or the United Nations was either committed to or took seriously taking steps towards changing the status of women in the world. Evidence of this recalcitrance is obvious in the allocation of funds and time towards planning the conference. The International Women’s Year Conference, organized by the Commission on the Status of Women, was organized in six months with a budget of under $350,000, a stark contrast to the Population Conference of a year prior, which had been planned for 2 years with a budget of $3 million. Judith Zinsser, “From Mexico to Copenhagen to Nairobi: The United Nations Decade for Women, 1975- 1985,” 146. 33 IWY Speech, Steinem Papers, 100:8A.

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reproductive control, and a discussion about dismantling patriarchal systems. Asked her opinions on the Mexican and Latin American women’s movements, Steinem said she was not in a position to comment on those movements, adding only that “the fight extends internationally.” She also stated specifically that the IWY conference “has the advantage of expanding the geographical reach of women’s movement activism."34 This is a key point that she emphasized not only in the Mexican press, but also in the US, stating in the New York Times, “I don’t really know what it will accomplish, but it’s important that women can meet here to communicate with one another across all territorial boundaries.”35

The sentiment articulated in the aforementioned quotes represents the significance of Steinem’s participation in the IWY. To Steinem, the value of the conference extended beyond being able to champion, however clumsily, ideas about a need for women’s revolution. It was more significant to her because of the numerous connections she was able to forge with activists, and for the impact that these connections had in her future.

The meeting allowed Steinem to connect with powerful women from around the globe, especially in the media circuit, which benefited the expansion of her feminist network, but also expanded her worldview and understanding of women’s issues from the perspective of women involved in them. For instance, it is at this conference that she learned about the Algerian revolution from a Middle Eastern woman, and the still inferior position of women there in spite of the hopes and dreams of Arab women in the

34 Gerardo Bolaños, El Sol de México. June 18, 1975, 17, in Steinem Papers, 139:2. Translation by Wanda Ibanez-DePaz. 35 Judy Klemesrud, “International Women’s Year World Conference Opening in Mexico,” 56.

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area, which may have been set back by the Revolution. She also met and exchanged contacts with women from the Mexican women’s liberation movement, the Movimento

Nacional de Mujeres, and made notations in her calendar of other international conferences surrounding women’s issues.36

The excitement at cross-cultural collaboration did not extend, however, to the other US women in attendance. In fact, though many hoped the conference would result in a show of solidarity between activists of many nations, it was the first of many conferences mired by internal conflict within the feminist movement in the United States.

As Joselyn Olcott argued, U.S. activists floundered at creating a sense of unity.37

Steinem found herself in the center of some of the tension, as radical feminists and

Betty Friedan smeared her character, following accusations by the New York-based radical feminist group Redstockings of her being a CIA operative. This rumor and the tension surrounding it resulted in a controversy that had the potential to affect the extent to which international activists interacted with Steinem.

Just a month prior to the conference in Mexico City, Redstockings, under the direction of Kathie Sarachild, released a document, which was distributed widely at the

Tribune, accusing Gloria Steinem of being a CIA operative with the goal of subverting the existing women’s movement.38 The “proof” of Steinem’s involvement in the CIA was

36 Steinem daily planner, April-June, 1975. Steinem papers, 7:1. 37 See Olcott, “Globalizing Sisterhood” for a full discussion. 38 The pamphlet was first presented at a New York journalists’ convention in May of 1974, Sarachild and the Redstockings organization distributed a 16-page statement “devoted to presenting evidence purporting to indicate Ms. Steinem was involved in a CIA plot to subvert the radical wing of the movement with the reformist politics of Ms. magazine.” Lucinda Franks, “The Feminist Movement is hit by dissension and in-fighting” New York Times September 7, 1975, 32. The Redstockings later tried to publish an anthology of their most critical pieces and sought to include this one – Steinem threated to sue them for libel, and the article was removed, which further fueled the debate. Redstockings, eds. Feminist Revolution. (New York: Random House, 1978.)

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a 1967 interview with the New York Times, where (as discussed in Chapter 4) Steinem disclosed that she had been aware that the Independent Research Service, the organization she had worked for after returning from India, was partially funded by the

CIA. She had told the New York Times that she was “happy to find some liberals in government in those days who were far-sighted enough and cared enough to get

Americans of all political views to the festival.”39

Redstockings charged that Steinem had a ten-year-long association with the CIA, which she had misrepresented and covered up, and the group further charged Steinem with using Ms. magazine to gather intelligence about feminist organizations for the

CIA.40 The accusations quickly took hold and were reprinted in media outlets around the country.

The particular tensions and rivalries surrounding this controversy must be situated within the context of the very real COINTELPRO (and other) government programs attempts to infiltrate, disrupt, discredit and destroy New Left and radical movements and organization in the 1960s and 1970. Globally, the CIA’s connection to the larger Cold War foreign and military policies, and the broad, generalized climate of anti-communist hysteria had developed over decades in the US since the McCarthy era.

Within this context, associations with the CIA in particular were extremely damaging within the political climate of the 1970s.

The allegations were also, however, damaging to Steinem personally. When the allegations resurfaced a month before the conference in Mexico City in 1975, Steinem

39 Katy Butler, “Steinem: Is She Ms.Understood?” San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 9, 1975. Steinem Papers, 203:16. 40 Berkeley Barb “Gloria Steinem’s CIA Connection” May 30, 1975. Steinem Papers, 203:16.

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decided she would not respond to the charges. Later, she denied the allegations after they did not dissipate on their own.41 However, at the time, she could not prevent the accusations from traveling across national boundaries. Betty Friedan tried to get the international press in Mexico City to cover the story, without much success. According to Phyllis Chesler, Friedan’s efforts went so far that she “paid the fares from New York to Mexico City for a couple of young women who were distributing Kathie’s charges.”42

For her part, Betty Friedan alleged that she had been contacted before the conference (by whom, it is unclear) to hold a press conference “exposing” Steinem’s alleged link to the CIA. As Friedan recalled, “The Redstockings document linking Gloria

Steinem to the CIA had been released in Mexico before I arrived, and she had left the conference. I said I didn’t know whether the charges were true, but that anyone responsible to the women’s movement had to be concerned over increasing evidence of governmental attempts to infiltrate and manipulate it.”43

41 In a 3-page long article to the feminist press organ “Women’s Community Journal” dated September 1975, Steinem stated that “the [Redstockings] ‘release’ contains no new and accurate facts, draws wrong conclusions from facts that have long been public knowledge, and is self-serving.” Gloria Steinem, “Dear Sisters of the feminist Press” Her-self Women’s Community Journal Sept 1975, 4. Steinem Papers 203:16. 42 These charges were further developed in Betty Friedan’s 1976 autobiography, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement. It charged Gloria Steinem with political opportunism, female chauvinism, manipulation, and generally being a fiend, rather than friend, to the women’s movement, and a master manipulator. Her opinion of Steinem had developed between 1971 and 1972. Five years prior, in 1971, Friedan was quoted in a newspaper saying, “The fact that Gloria is very pretty and chic is nice for the movement, but if that’s all she was it wouldn’t be enough. Fortunately, she is so much more.” However, by July 1972, Friedan called her and Bella Abzug, then member of the House of Representatives “female chauvinists” at a news conference. Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement. (NY: Random House, 1976); “Gloria Steinem: A Liberated Woman Despite Beauty, Chic, and Success.” Newsweek, August 16, 1971, Steinem Papers 4:3; Deirdre Carmody, “Feminists Rebut Friedan Charge.” The New York Times, July 20, 1972, 29. 43 Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life, 446.In an interview with the Phil Donahue talk show later, after receiving word from Steinem’s lawyer to choose her words carefully, Friedan backtracked, explaining that she was really a victim of the situation. “A longer documented thing was issued just before the Mexico conference and that’s where, against my own wish I somehow got brought up because people wanted, some people seemed to want me to fan it and I wouldn’t.” Transcript of Betty Friedan interviewed by Phil Donahue on the Phil Donahue Show, ca 1976. Steinem Papers, 228C.

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The effort to discredit Steinem went beyond the international arena of the IWY in

Mexico and followed her on other travels. According to Steinem, Sarachild “planted these accusation not only in Mexico City, but later in India when I went there.”44 The allegations continued to surface internationally in later years as well. In 1980, Berlin- based feminist magazine COURAGE distributed in the Federal Republic of Germany published a four-page article that furthered the allegations of Steinem’s CIA involvement and the conservatism of Ms.

In spite of her critics, Steinem’s involvement with the United Nations continued after the conference in Mexico City, in part because of the results of the conference itself. One of the major goals of the 1975 United Nations conference had been to articulate ways to achieve the objectives of the conference: equality, development, and peace. Though there were many disagreements at the conference, one point of conversation was the idea that the objectives of the IWY could not be achieved in a single year, leading to the UN declaration of 1975-1985 as the Decade for Women and

Development.

The World Plan of Action, which was adopted unanimously at the conference in

Mexico, and approved by the UN General Assembly on December 15, 1975 by a vote of

107-1, approved the suggestion to hold a second international conference in 1980 in

Copenhagen with the goal of reviewing the implementation of the Mexico decisions.45 Its main directive was to set guidelines urging governments to “accelerate the full participation of women in the economic, social, political, and cultural lives of their

44 Fax from Steinem to Heilbrun, August 7, 1993, Steinem Papers 1:7. 45 “Parashakti: International Women’s Year Newsletter”, 7.

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countries.”46 It made several arguments calling for increased access to education and training for girls and women, for advances in areas of health and nutrition, housing, and economic discrimination.

Steinem also continued her involvement in trying to help change discriminatory policies at the UN itself. Upon returning to New York, she participated in a protest of work-place gender inequities in the United Nations. In 1975, women comprised 21.7 percent of the UN’s professional workforce and suffered from gender bias in Secretariat recruitment policies, promotions, and salaries as well as in the attitude of male colleagues towards them.47 So, in December of 1975, Steinem picketed the United

Nations headquarters in New York with women staff members of the UN, calling attention to gender biases in the system.48

She was a guest speaker to the 400 participants. Tellingly, though Steinem was one of a “score” of guest speakers, she was the only one mentioned by name in the

New York Times article that reported on the subject.49 She had, however, already spoken out against this issue in her speech in Mexico earlier on in the year, saying that one of the goals of feminists would be “to change the employment policies of the United

Nations, which is not an equal opportunity employer." She was not the first to bring up the issue, which had been officially protested at the United Nations headquarters in NY

46 Press Release by National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. Office of Public Information, U.S. Department of State. March 1977. In Steinem Papers, 142:5 47 Judy Klemesrud, “March and Rally Celebrate First International Women’s Day,” New York Times, March 9, 1975, 52.; Kathleen Tetsch, “Women on Staff at U.N. Fight ‘Male Chauvinism,” New York Times, December 10, 1975, 10. 48 “UN Women’s Solidarity Rally” United Nations photo archive, accessed from http://www.unmultimedia.org/. 49 Kathleen Teltsch, “Women on Staff at U.N. Fight ‘Male Chauvinism,’” 10.

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since March of 1975 with a day-long conference and a petition calling for “an end to discrimination against women at the United Nations” signed by 2700 of 3000 UN employees. The UN was an easy target for Steinem and other feminists because the

Charter of the United Nations, signed on June 26, 1945 in San Francisco, affirmed the principle of equality between women and men. In its preamble, the Charter states one of the reason for the establishment of the organization was to support “the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” Further, the Charter’s first article states that the purpose of the United Nations is, among other things, “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.”50

Because of the declaration of the Decade for Women, Steinem found herself invited to participate on a formal level in a variety of other UN sponsored activities. For instance, in 1979, she was invited by the Asian and Pacific Center for Women and

Development to participate in a workshop on feminist ideologies and structures to take place before the second international women’s conference, in Copenhagen in 1980. In

April 1980, she was invited by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research

(UNITAR) to participate in a seminar on “creative women in changing societies” to be held in Oslo immediately preceding the conference in Copenhagen. The seminar was to

“bring together approximately 35 women from all regions and cultures” to focus on “the way in which creative women have and have not managed to overcome obstacles in order to succeed in their respective professions” as well as to “put their knowledge into

50 (Emphasis mine) Charter of the United Nations. Signed June 26, 1945. UN website. Accessed from http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml; Judy Klemesrud, “March and Rally Celebrate First International Women’s Day,” 52.

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political practice and thus influence the developmental process both within and beyond the national level.”51

Other attendees included Robin Morgan, Maria Lourdes Pintisillgo, Nawal el

Saadawi, and Phyllis Chesler. Steinem agreed accepting “with pleasure” and “looking forward to the opportunity to meet with women of such dedication, accomplishment and diverse cultures.52 In addition, Steinem agreed to go to Copenhagen as an accredited journalist representative for Ms, along with Charlotte Bunch.

After Steinem had made all the travel arrangements she decided at the last minute to forgo the trip. The reasons, as she stated to the UNITAR conference attendees in an apologetic letter, were financial, political, and personal.53 She did not mention, in this letter, what was the likelier reason: her invitation had been revoked by

Fran Hosken, an American citizen who was coordinating the efforts of the committee.

Hosken was also the founder of Women’s International Network (WIN), an open quarterly reporting from 140 countries that described itself as “a world-wide open communication system by, for & about women of all background, beliefs, nationalities, & age groups.” Steinem subscribed to the publication as did Ms. The two likely met while in Mexico City, and Hosken reached out to Steinem a few months after the conference

51 Davidson Nichol, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UNITAR to Gloria Steinem, April 10, 1980. Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed. 52 Steinem to Davidson Nichol May 19, 1980. Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed. 53 Financially, she argued, “the steep inflation has hit us very hard” and “I don’t feel I can leave my colleagues at a time of fund-raising”; politically, she argued that “the upcoming US Elections have been even more crucial by the recent and tragically close opinion of the supreme court that congress can vote to deprive poor women of the funding for medically necessary abortions” and that she saw it as her duty to try to stop Reagan from getting elected. Personally, she concluded, she felt she could not get away at this time given that her mother had recently been in the hospital and that, at “over 80 I feel that I should take her away for vacation while that is still possible.” Letter from Steinem to UNITAR. Ms. Magazine papers, unprocessed.

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hoping Ms. would publish one of her articles on female genital mutilation. Steinem was not impressed with the quality of the work and respectfully declined the offer. They kept in touch, though, with Hosken sending Steinem articles about female genital mutilation until 1980, right before the conference in Copenhagen, when the situation escalated.

In February 1980, Ms. published an article written by Steinem and Robin Morgan on the international practice of female genital mutilation. Hosken charged Steinem with omitting mention of her work in the field, printing false information, and plagiarizing from her.54 Hosken’s criticism received limited international traction. After she sent a press release lambasting the article and Ms. magazine to some United Nations friends, magazines, and feminist groups, some responded with letters to the magazine.55

In spite of these charges leveled against her by some American feminists,

Steinem continued to work in the international arena and reap the benefits for her career. For instance, after having bolstered her international credentials through her participation in the conference in Mexico, she was invited by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. The

Commission organized the national Houston Conference of 1977 which resulted in a

National Plan of Action that was submitted to the President in March 1978, and led to

54 Hosken to Steinem Feb 27. 1980, Ms. Magazine papers, unprocessed. 55 For example, in March 1980, Patricia Lone, Assistant Editor of the Kenyan magazine VIVA, wrote expressing support for Hosken and stating that the article had down-played the existence of an “American based co-ordinating body with valuable resource lists, addresses, and a Human Rights/ Health Action network, organized specifically to fight female mutilation. In a major feature article dealing with genital mutilation, by American Writers and for American audiences, a strong focus on existing channels of information and action in America such as this could have been invaluable .Patricia Lone to Robin Morgan, April 2, 1980, in Gloria Steinem correspondence in Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed. Also, Postcard from Petra Kelly, Head of the Green Party in West Germany writes from London, “I have just revisited the March 80 MS issue in Bruxelles and was shocked over your article on genital mutilation in which you give no credit whatsoever to the work of Fran Hosken” Petra Kelly to Gloria Steinem April 8, 1980, in Gloria Steinem correspondence in Ms. Magazine papers, unprocessed.

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the establishment of a National Advisory Committee for Women as well a three-year extension for ratification of the ERA within a year of the Houston meeting.56 She also became more heavily involved in international politics, as described in the next chapter.

In describing the International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City for the

New York Times, Steinem expressed frustration with the “terminal politeness” that afflicted the event and the slow opening up of discussion. Yet, in spite of the ambivalence she described, for Steinem, the International Women’s Year conference in

Mexico City was a watershed moment. Up to this point, her association in international feminist politics had been primarily second hand, through Ms. Magazine and the correspondence she received from abroad, informing her of social movements outside of the United States. It was only though her participation in the IWY that her full-fledged involvement in the international feminist movement and the global recognition of her role as an adept politician began. During the conference, she became integrally involved in connecting American women’s struggles with those of women around the world.

Steinem’s participation in the conference was also important because hers was one of few voices and reports that mainstream Americans heard quoted in an international context.

56 The National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year created by President Carter by Presidential Order in January 1975 and presided over by New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug. A U.S. Department of State Office of Public Information press release stated the importance of the occasion. “For the first time in history, grassroots American women from a spectrum of ages, incomes, ethnic, racial and religious backgrounds have been given federal money and backing to press for changes in policies that obstruct women’s equality.” Steinem was one of Carter’s 42 appointments to the IWY commission, which included Former First Lady Betty Ford and Civil Rights Activist Coretta Scott King. She was appointed to New York State Coordinating Committee, where she served as an ex-officio member, along with ten other women, including Ruth Abrams, Executive Director of the Women’s Action Alliance (co-founded by Steinem, who was Chair of the Board at the time). There were 80 women whom the IWY Commission designated to serve as members of the NY state coordinating committee for the women’s meeting.

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Though unhappy with the United Nation’s diplomatic ineffectiveness and its own discrimination against women on its staff, Steinem came to realize first-hand that the problems with a large bureaucratic organ such as the United Nations and its ability to effect change for women worldwide could only be rectified by the creation of meaningful interactions among activists. Though she faced serious ad-hominem attacks in Mexico

City concerning her alleged involvement in the CIA, she used the conference to broaden her connections and professional networks. A decade after the conference, Steinem, ever the optimist, penned a few tempered remarks about International Women’s Year that explain the value she perceived in this gathering of women: “At least,” she wrote,

“the UN banner has given women an internationally respectable reason for gathering, and an occasion for pressuring their own governments to produce statistics and some show of interest in equality for the sake of world opinion."57 To Steinem the conference provided a stepping stone into the world of foreign relations, and a chance to articulate, in front of a global audience, the need for a global sisterhood and worldwide feminist revolution.

57 article draft by Steinem : "Prediction: Global Feminism" Steinem Papers, 114:15.

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CHAPTER 6 STEINEM AND GLOBAL POLITICS

It is clear to me that I have more in common with and I feel more loyal to feminists, women and men, in other countries, than I do to my own government. - Gloria Steinem, 19761 By the 1970s, Gloria Steinem and other mainstream US feminists had become deeply enmeshed in the major geo-political debates of the time, especially in regard to the global South -- Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia, including the Middle

East. At times, these engagements moved beyond rhetoric, as Steinem and Ms. involved themselves in tackling delicate political and cultural situations outside the

United States. In some instances, these actions proved to be valuable intercultural exchanges that informed and connected disparate parties, benefitting all involved. In others, they proved far more problematic and displayed imperialistic and racist tendencies that permeated elements of the US feminist movement. These contradictions illuminate the complexities that defined the parameters of transnational feminist engagements in the 1970s. This chapter explores two of these interchanges within the context of the mid to late 1970s, a highly charged moment in US foreign policy and global politics.

The first part of this chapter examines some problematic interactions in the

Middle East in which Steinem, Ms. editors, and mainstream feminists were involved, focusing on the case of Iran at the time of the overthrow of the Shah and installation of the Ayatollah Khomeini. These efforts revealed the extent to which western feminist ideologies about women’s rights clashed with those of women in the Global South. In

1 Mukherjee and Pande, “A Conversation with Gloria Steinem,” 94.

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1972, Steinem refused a visit to Iran at the behest of the Pahlavi Empress because of concerns that grassroots feminists in Iran brought up with her. They feared the Pahlavi regime had invited her to try to legitimize their own limited support of women’s rights.

Steinem backed down, but Betty Friedan, the other American feminist invited, didn’t.

Friedan’s aggressive prima donna behavior in Iran caused tension and confusion between Iranian and Western feminists. Five years later, in 1979, the political regime in

Iran changed as the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. This time, a group of grass- roots feminists invited Western feminists to participate in the struggle against the anti- woman policies – like mandatory veiling - that the Ayatollah was trying to install.

Steinem again chose not to travel to Iran, but supported the efforts of Simone de

Beauvoir and other Western feminists who did. Once again, there was tension and criticism about how Western feminists interacted, especially in their insertion in Iranian political affairs and questions about the veil.

The second example examines a different cultural exchange involving Steinem’s experience in India in the mid-1970s. In 1976, at the request of her Indian friends and feminist colleagues, Steinem returned to India for the first time since living there from

1957 to 1958. During this trip, she shared some of her experiences but spent most of the time listening and learning about the dimensions of the Indian women’s movement.

She traveled with Indian colleagues and learned for the first time about micro-financing and other local initiatives to stimulate the economy and provide a living wage for Indian women in the lower classes. She then returned to the US and shared those encounters with her peers at Ms. and the global network of the magazine’s readers. In contrast to the experience in India, this interchange demonstrates how US women’s activists could

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learn about events and movements in different parts of the world and grow from these interactions in ways that were positive and illustrative of the celebration of difference within a communally defined movement. Both of these interactions, in Iran and in India, happened within Steinem’s orbit and within the context of Ms. magazine and the highly charged 1970s.

The contexts for these engagements are particularly complex and significant.

The mid-1970s were a pivotal time in global political interactions, especially in the economic arena, and in defining the shape of modern America. In the United States, novelist Tom Wolfe famously dubbed the 1970s as the “Me Decade”, describing a shift away from communal thinking and towards “atomized individualism” in a cover story for

New York magazine.2 On a general political level, the decade started with Richard

Nixon’s pragmatic conservatism and ended with Jimmy Carter’s attempts to fix a troubled economy defined by recession, inflation, and an energy crisis at home. Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s pardon of him frames up much of the popular political memory of the middle of the decade. Alongside that came the conclusion of the Vietnam War, a much-anticipated event for some, and a humiliating loss blamed on the student movement and the New Left for others.

During the 1970s, the U.S. feminist movement was at its height, with Betty

Friedan and Gloria Steinem emerging as two of its most prominent proponents, although with very different public images. Both felt the pressure to keep the movement

“respectable” – responding to red-baiting and lesbian-baiting, for instance – and

2 Tom Wolfe, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening.” New York, August 23, 1976. Accessed online March 12, 2013. http://nymag.com/news/features/45938/

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maintaining an image of the feminist movement in the United States as a strong, organized and united front in spite of deep fissures and ruptures at the grass-roots level.

One of the elements of their discourse, which they shared, was an emphasis on a global sisterhood that stressed a shared and universal women’s oppression. They were criticized by women of color, working class women, and lesbian activists within the

United States and internationally for speaking about inclusiveness within the movement while privileging the voices of white “sisters.” Edited volumes by women of color, such as Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back, and Gloria T.

Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith’s All The Women Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave highlighted the separation and exclusion of women of color from mainstream feminism.3

In spite of severe rifts within the movement, the movement was mythologized in images of solidarity and cooperation against a larger, patriarchal oppression. This myth of the “golden age of feminism” was promulgated by many in Steinem’s circle, including most prominently her friend and fellow Ms. editor, Robin Morgan, whose edited works,

Sisterhood is Powerful and Sisterhood is Global, emphasized differences within feminist thought while stressing solidarity.4 In this book, Morgan represented what Judith Zinsser has called the “classic positive image of international feminism.”5 A trenchant critique of

3Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981); Gloria Hull et al., eds., All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. (Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1982). 4 Nima Naghibi, Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 76. Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1984); Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movements, (New York, Random House, 1970). 5 Judith Zinsser, “From Mexico to Copenhagen to Nairobi: The United Nations Decade for Women, 1975- 1985.” Journal of World History 13:1 (Spring 2002, 139-168), 141.

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this particular failing of mainstream feminism was levied in 1986 by bell hooks, who argued that the problem with the language of feminism at this time was the assumption of a common oppression between women. As hooks wrote, “The idea of ‘common oppression’ was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women’s varied and complex social realities. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices.” By bonding as “victims” with women of color, hooks pointed out, white feminists were able to absolve themselves of the responsibility of confronting their own complicities in larger structures of oppression.

What hooks argued was sorely needed was a willingness on the part of white feminists to back off from taking control of the movement, and to revise their agenda by taking the lead from non-white women in order to create a true solidarity with women of color.

Nevertheless, even hooks understood that “abandoning the idea of Sisterhood as an expression of political solidarity weakens and diminishes feminist movement.”6 In order to sustain and succeed as a political movement for social change, hooks believed feminists would need to show a united front. “There can be no mass-based feminist movement to end sexist oppression without a united front – women must take the initiative and demonstrate the power of solidarity.”7

As the second part of this chapter argues, Gloria Steinem was one of few white

American, high-profile feminists who connected with marginalized women in the way that bell hooks argued needed to be the case. At the same time, Steinem also took seriously the responsibility of keeping up the feminist movement’s visibility. One of the

6 bell hooks, “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Between Women,” Feminist Review, (Summer 1986): 127. 7 Ibid., 127.

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ways in which Steinem projected a strong image was by making statements about US policies in a global political context. For example, in January 1978, Steinem made headlines for saying that President Carter was a male chauvinist “deep down” because he did not speak out when women were excluded from a state dinner Carter attended in

Saudi Arabia as part of an effort to advance peace negotiations in the Middle East, and to stop OPEC’s raising oil prices, all indicative of continuing tensions surrounding energy that had come to a head with OPEC’s oil embargo of 1973.8 In support of

Steinem’s position, NOW staged a protest rally “in front of the US-Arab chamber of commerce in Los Angeles.”9

The news media responded in a variety of ways, indicative of how polarizing

Steinem’s remarks were to the general public. In Ohio, one editorial lambasted Steinem for her political naïveté, arguing that “deep down” she must understand that “Issues of war or peace, prosperity or recession hung in the balance and Ms. Steinem wanted a speech on women’s rights to a country that can’t even comprehend them.”10 A reader of the same newspaper, however, piped up in support of Steinem’s statements. “I have no way of knowing how Gloria Steinem felt ‘deep down’ about criticizing President Carter for acquiescing without protest in the sexist rituals of Saudi Arabia. I do know how I felt when I heard that the wife of the President of the United States, had to walk a required number of paces behind her husband and was excluded from the stag dinner which

8 “Steinem Gets Silly” Dayton Daily News, January 13, 1978, 22. Steinem Papers, 2:1 9 Betty Beale “Word from Washington” Houston Chronicle, Jan. 22, 1978. Steinem Papers, 2:1: 10 “Steinem Gets Silly” Dayton Daily News, January 13, 1978, 22. Steinem Papers, 2:1

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passes for a state occasion in that bastion of male supremacy. I felt betrayed and humiliated, and I wondered if Rosalyn Carter didn’t feel that way, too.”11

Houston Chronicle columnist and white house correspondence Betty Beal argued

Steinem had no grounds to protest. “Anyone who was horrified that the First Lady followed her husband has never been to a state dinner at the White House,” she argued. “Not only do all women follow their husbands through the receiving line, but our presidents and all male visiting chiefs of state precede their wives down the stairs.” She also asked, pointedly, why Steinem and NOW waited until the Carters’ visit to Saudi

Arabia to criticize the situation, and not in other foreign visits or state dinners.

[W]here was NOW when then-Israeli Prime Minister and Mrs. Rabin came here last March and only the prime minister was invited to the President’s dinner?... Where was NOW when only President Sadat was invited to President Carter’s dinner at the White House while Mrs. Carter made herself scarce by going to the Egyptian embassy for dinner with Mrs. Sadat? And why didn’t the libbers scream when Prime Minister Begin was treated to a dinner at the White House while Mrs. Begin went with Mrs. Carter to see ‘Porgy and Bess’ at the Kennedy Center and didn’t even get dinner?12

Steinem never responded to Betty Beale, but she did not stop from engaging in similar debates. By criticizing Carter’s lack of chastisement of foreign dignitaries,

Steinem maintained the feminist movement’s visibility in the press. This bid to relevancy in foreign affairs did more than highlight the presence of a feminist movement, however.

Global political engagements like the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle Eastern oil crisis, and the revolution in Iran provided an opportunity for feminists with political clout like

Steinem to participate in a continuing conversation about international feminist issues.

11 Lenna Mae Gara, letter to the editor, Dayton Daily News January 18, 1978, 10. Steinem Papers 2:1. 12 Betty Beale, “Word from Washington,” Houston Chronicle, Jan 22, 1978. Steinem Papers 2:1.

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In this sense, Steinem’s actions show the US feminist movement engaged in responding to vital issues of the day as much as creating opportunities for the feminist movement to maintain a presence in the news cycle.

Sometimes, the efforts of feminist activists extended beyond vocal critiques and resulted in international coalitions of grass-roots efforts. Of course, Steinem was not the only U.S. feminist engaged in foreign affairs. Throughout the 1970s, U.S. women’s activists collaborated extensively in feminist engagements with international implications that extended into issues of national sovereignty and self-determination. One example that illustrates this perfectly is the concerted effort of feminists from the Global North in engaging with the state of Iran on issues of feminist politics.

On March 19, 1979, a delegation of 18 feminists, 17 European women and one

Egyptian woman calling themselves le Comité international du Droit des Femmes, the

International Committee of Women’s Rights, traveled to Tehran to speak with the

Ayatollah Khomeini, who had taken over the reins of government a month prior, following Shah Mohammed Reza’s abdication and exile in January 1979. Many Iranian feminists supported Khomeini during the Iranian revolution but changed their positions almost immediately after he took office. Some context about women’s movement activism in Iran helps shed light on this apparent paradox and illuminates the role of

U.S. feminists within the complex dynamics at play.

Various independent women’s groups had formed in Iran in the mid-20th century.

However, by the late 1950s, these were directly controlled by the newly formed High

Council of Women’s Organizations, headed by the Shah’s twin sister Ashraf Pahlavi. In

1966, the Shah attempted to exert even greater control, dissolving all of the

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organizations and replacing the Council with the state-run Women’s Organization of

Iran.13 While representing herself as a progressive feminist, Princess Ashraf and the state-sponsored feminists did little to advance the cause of women’s rights for rural and urban working class women.14 Iranian grassroots feminist activists, who were active during this period in spite of efforts to repress them, supported the Iranian Revolution in the hope that the new regime would be more responsive to their demands.

Unfortunately, their hope was misplaced, since instead of improvements in the status of women, the new regime was responsible in subsequent years for significant setbacks for women in terms of participation in public life and supporting women’s rights generally.15

Steinem was both aware of this dynamic and supportive of the grassroots efforts of anti-Shah Iranian feminists before the Revolution. In 1972, Steinem was invited to

Iran at the behest of the Women’s Organization of Iran, the Empress Farah Pahlavi and

Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, in order to “visit Iran and advise Persian women on women’s liberation.”16 Steinem refused to go, citing solidarity with Iranian women’s groups.

Writing her biographer, she commented that she “had refused the trip at the request of

Iranian women’s groups here who were protesting the Shah’s torture.”17

13 Naghibi, “Rethinking Western Sisterhood,” 78. 14 Naghibi, “Rethinking Western Sisterhood,” 79. 15 This apparent paradox is explained by considering revolutionary activity as religious activity, and the actions of the women engaged in supporting the Ayatollah’s initial bid to power as within the social, cultural, and religious parameters of traditional womanhood. See Mary Hegland. “Aliabad Women: Revolution as Religious Activity,” in Women and Revolution in Iran, ed. Guity Nashat, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983), 171-194. 16 Friedan, It Changed My Life, 71. 17 Gloria Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, n.d. Steinem Papers, 1:8.

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However, three other women, including one other prominent American feminist, did attend. The first was Germaine Greer, Australian feminist and noted author made famous by her 1970 book The Female Eunuch, which attracted a great deal of attention in the U.S. and around the world and was published in eleven languages.18 A second was Finnish diplomat Helvi Sipila, the first female Assistant-Secretary-General of the

United Nations. At the time of the delegation to Iran, Sipila was working as UN Assistant

Secretary General for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs. The third famous woman was American feminist Betty Friedan.

Friedan’s infamous visit to Iran in 1973 sullied relationships between American feminists and Iranian activists and epitomized the problematic dynamics of cross- cultural feminist interactions. In some part, as Steinem recounted, it was because of what Betty said. According to Steinem, “Betty went and praised the Empress as a feminist… We spent a long time answering for that.”19 According to Germaine Greer,

“Betty’s line was that American feminists had taken power, that everything was on the move and the Iranian women should follow suit."20

In larger part, however, it was not what Friedan said but what she did that showered embarrassment upon American feminists. Her behavior at the conference put off many international feminists from wanting to engage with the United States.

When she arrived in Tehran, Friedan announced “that she would see nobody, nobody, not even the shah himself, until she had recovered from the flight.” The situation went

18 Germaine Greere, The Female Eunuch, (London: Paladin, 1970); W.H. Wilde, et al., eds; The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), 271. 19 Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, n.d. Steinem papers, 1:8. 20 Germaine Greere, “The Betty I Knew” The Guardian, Feb. 6, 2006. Accessed online from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/07/gender.bookscomment.

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downhill from there. As Greer recounted, “Friedan demanded a respirator for her hotel room and one was brought over from the children's hospital. Three days later the courtiers asked me if it would be possible to remove it, as the hospital only had two and she wasn't using hers. I told them to go ahead and grab it, and that I would deal with

Betty myself, but she didn't seem to notice that it was gone.”21 Beyond her imperious and insensitive demands, Friedan exhibited strange behaviors that the Iranian contingent found difficult to understand. Again, Greer was asked to account for

Friedan’s behavior: “our escorts, aristocratic ladies with bleached hair and eyebrows, dressed from head to toe by Guy Laroche, would ask me to explain Betty's behaviour.

‘Please, Mrs Greer, she behaves so strangely, we think she may be drinking. She shouts at us, and when we try to explain she walks away. Sometimes her speech is strange.’22 Greer, however, had no answers for Friedan’s behavior, and worked to distance herself from these embarrassing interactions, of which there were many. For instance, Greer recounted:

As we were leaving our farewell party to go back to the hotel, Betty propped herself in front of our Cadillac and refused to get in. "Dammit!" she shouted, "I wunt, I deserve my own car! I will nutt travel cooped up in this thing with two other women. Don't you clowns know who I am?"

"Mrs Greer," pleaded the courtiers, who were shaking with fright. "What shall we do? Please make her quiet! She is very drunk."

Betty wasn't drunk. She was furious that the various dignitaries and ministers of state all had their own cars, while the female guests of honour were piled into a single car like a harem. Helvi and I looked on from our Cadillac at Betty standing there in her spangled black crepe-de-chine and yelling fit to bust, "I will nutt be quiet and gedinna car! Absolutely nutt!"

21 Germaine Greere, “The Betty I Knew.” 22 Ibid.

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Eventually one of the ministers' cars was sent back for Betty. As it pulled out of the gateway I caught sight of her, small, alone in the back, her great head pillowed on the leather, eyes closed, resting after this important victory.23

Of course, Friedan recounted the events in completely different terms. “My first few days in Tehran were strictly caviar and jet lag and a sense of being strangely at home,” she boasted in the Ladies’ Home Journal.24 As Nima Naghibi has argued,

“Friedan’s portrayal of her fawning reception by Iran’s royalty and the WOI serves to reposition her at the center of the second-wave feminist movement” at a time when

Friedan’s star had fallen in America.25

Friedan’s initial sense of connection was due to the elitism and class privilege espoused by her hosts, the state-sponsored feminists. It was a response to this elite class that purported to represent women’s interests in Iran that drove grassroots, revolutionary feminists to protest against the Shah and demand an overthrow of the

Pahlavi regime along with the majority of the Iranian people. They were successful in

February 1979.

In March 1979, an estimated 100,000 women gathered at the University of

Tehran to celebrate the Shah’s abdication. However, just a few days later, these same women came together to protest the fundamentalist regime that was quickly taking its place. Within a month of taking power, the Ayatollah had abolished the Family

Protection Act of 1975, which granted women the right to divorce and limited polygamous practices. In addition, he proclaimed, in a statement, the virtues of women

23 Ibid. 24 Betty Friedan, “Coming Out of the Veil,” Ladies Home Journal Article, Mary 20, 1975, 98. 25 Naghibi, Rethinking Western Sisterhood, 85.

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wearing veils to cover themselves. The women who had supported the Revolution quickly came to realize that the Ayatollah had no notions of helping them.26

On March 8, 6,000 women marched in Tehran, shouting “In the dawn of freedom, there is no freedom!” A few days later, 15,000 women came together and seized the

Palace of Justice, and women’s protests erupted in cities and towns across Iran and the world. Western women quickly joined in various displays of solidarity with Iranian women protesting the new regime. Beyond protesting in their own countries, several groups of feminists traveled from their respective countries as self-appointed representatives of feminist movements globally. The philosophical mother of feminism herself – Simone de Beauvoir – traveled from France as the official leader of the

International Committee of Women’s Rights. She announced the committee at a press conference in Paris. According to Claude Servan-Schreiber, an Iranian man spoke up at the conference telling the committee that this moment was not the right moment for this type of event. To that, Simone de Beauvoir replied, “I’ve seen many countries, and

I’ve seen many revolutions, and each time the question of defending women’s rights came up, I was told it wasn’t the time.”27

Although Gloria Steinem did not attend the meeting in Tehran, she was part of the organizing group and was engaged in the committee’s efforts in the United States.28

She and Ms. colleague Robin Morgan, as well as Betty Friedan, staged a 200-person strong demonstration in front of Rockefeller Center, outside of the office of the representatives of Iran’s provisional government. The demonstration was a protest

26 Nahgibi, “Rethinking Western Sisterhood,” 92. 27 Simone de Beavoir quoted in Naghibi, Rethinking Western Sisterhood, 99. 28 Note from Steinem to Heilbrun, August 23, 1989 in Steinem Papers, 1:7.

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against the new regime’s law that women be forced to wear the chador, the traditional veil, in public. This protest, the activists declared, was part of an international feminist action that included demonstrations in Paris, London and Rome.29 Steinem told the New

York Times that she and other American feminists had “sought assurance from women’s rights leaders in Iran that support from the Americans was welcome and that the Americans had also obtained assurances from the Committee to Defend Human

Rights.”30

She said the demonstration was inspired by televised reports of Iranian women’s demonstrators “out in the streets fighting for their rights” while being beaten, cursed, and spat upon without protection. “This demonstration is to show our support for their demands and to say to the provisional Government of Iran, whose consulate is in this building, that these people need protection,” she said.31

The speakers cited by the New York Times include Betty Friedan and three of

Steinem’s close collaborators, famed actress Marlo Thomas, whom Steinem had brought into her circle of feminist friends and who considered Steinem a “touchstone” to the movement, black feminist activist lawyer Flo Kennedy, who had been Steinem’s speaking partner, and Susan Brownmiller, who was at this point heavily involved with

Steinem in the anti-pornography movement.32

29 Judith Cummings, “Demonstrators in City Back Iranian Women’s Rights.” New York Times, March 12, 1979, A7. Accessed from http://search.proquest.com/docview/120961233?accountid=10920 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Marlo Thomas, “A Candid Conversation with Gloria Steinem.” Huffington Post, March 13, 2011. Accessed from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marlo-thomas/marlo-thomas-gloria- steinem_b_835092.html. For more on Steinem and Brownmiller’s involvement in Women Against Pornography, see Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution.

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Back in Qom, the religious center of Iran, the Ayatollah gave five minutes to a meeting attended by Simone de Beauvoir and seven other women from the committee, including two of Steinem’s closest friends and collaborators, Laila Abou-Saif, and

Claude Servan-Schreiber. Also present was German feminist leader and magazine owner Alice Schwarzer, with whom Steinem had collaborated in the past. These connections left Steinem with intimate connections to over half of the committee that met with the Ayatollah. The meeting between the committee and the Ayatollah was a big disappointment for the women. After they were ushered before him without any formal introduction about the committee and its function, the Ayatollah gave thanks for their help against the dictatorship and expressed hope for future collaboration in the reconstruction and development of the country. The women responded by asking him a barrage of questions about women’s rights in Iran. According to the committee, the

Ayatollah’s response was “total silence”.33

After a few minutes of pleasantries, they were dismissed, and left highly disappointed and frustrated. A European journalist in attendance, Katia D. Kaupp, expressed the following premonition: “from the bottom of my soul, because women do have souls, I only had one desire that night, immense like the mass of covered women: to be wrong.”34

Kaupp’s dramatic statement was meant in solidarity but exposed a problematic understanding that Chandra Mohanty has called third-world difference, “that stable, ahistorical something that apparently oppresses most if not all the women in these

33 Laila Abou-Saif to Claude Servan-Screiber, nd. In Steinem Papers 184:16 34 Katia D. Kaupp, “Les Visiteuses de l’ayatollah” n.d. in Steinem papers 184:16. Translation by Jessica Lancia.

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countries.” As she explains, “It is in the production of this ‘third-world difference’ that western feminisms appropriate the constitutive complexities which characterize the lives of women in these counties.”35

The committee of international feminists came to Tehran with the support of some Iranian activists, who were themselves deeply engaged in fighting the Ayatollah

Khomeini. However, there were tensions within the committee itself, especially in relation to outwards appearance, which was at the heart of feminist activist debate within Iran at the time. The feminists in attendance covered their heads with a veil in their meeting out of respect for the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was trying to pass a law that required women to wear headscarves in public (he later succeeded). While the

European feminist members of the committee did not object to this, Steinem’s good friend, Egyptian feminist Laila Abou Saif, strongly critiqued the move. Laila argued that

“as international feminists, we should not have been ushered into a meeting with one of the religious leaders wearing a veil…as a group of international feminists our concern with upholding women’s rights in Iran needed to be manifested outwardly in our behavior. With all my respect to the Iranian national dress and to the sensibilities of religious leaders, wearing the veil went against this, as did sitting on the floor before him.”

Saif's views were quoted in a local newspaper, which drew harsh critiques from local readers. An anonymous source reported just how distanced Laila Abou Saif’s

35 Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review, No. 30 (Autumn, 1988, 61-88), 63. In 1978, the concept of difference and ethnocentrism had just been articulated by Edward Said, who argued that Western people legitimized their perspectives by setting themselves up in contrast to the Eastern “Other”. Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Random House, 1978).

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views were from that of other Islamic women. Saif, “made over-riding mistakes in the article she published … where she declares that for a middle-eastern woman to wear the “hijab” (veil) is reactionary and uncivilized, and a threat to the freedom and progress of women… Dr. Laila is a refined artist, but her mind is made in the U.S.A…. and that is why we demand that others recognize the sanctity of our own borders, which (we will not allow to be transgressed), even if this is under the camouflage of freedom, progress, or the international rights of women. And you, international old hags, I am very happy that the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini treated you with contempt.”36

It is impossible to know how many shared the opinion that the international feminists were unwelcome in Tehran in 1979. Colorful use of language aside, Saif’s critic did, in fact, correctly identify Saif’s upbringing and westernized perspective.

Steinem considered Laila Abou Saif one of her “permanent friends.” An Egyptian feminist playwright and educator, Saif lived with Steinem for long periods of time.

Steinem went to Egypt with her and visited women’s groups there (which she wrote about in Ms).37 As a vocal critique of the Egyptian government, she founded a theater, which she used to critique the status of women in her country. One of her shows involved turning traditional troubadour tales on their heads by telling them from the woman’s point of view. She also wrote and directed a film of a real cliterodectomy, which she showed in the Ms. offices in NYC.38

36 Anonymous letter, nd, Steinem Papers 184:16. 37 Steinem, Gloria, “Two Cheers for Egypt – Talks With Jihan Sadat and Other Daughters of the Nile” Ms. Magazine, June 1980. Steinem Papers 115:11. 38 Note from Steinem to Heilbrun, August 23, 1989. Steinem Papers, 1:7.

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Saif came to feminism through her education in the United States, a fact for which she was criticized by her Iranian peers. The daughter of a doctor, she attended

American University in Cairo and had a westernized upbringing, although she was still expected to conform to traditional gender roles. She earned a scholarship to study

English literature at the master’s level at the University of Chicago in 1961. There, she recalled reading Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique in 1963 and seeing a picture of

Steinem in Glamour magazine.39 Steinem learned a lot about Egyptian and Arab feminist movement activities from Saif through interviews, correspondence, personal conversation, and the work Laila did. In 1978, Saif wrote, produced, and directed the film Where is my Freedom, which debuted at the Bleeker Street Cinema in June 1978.

The film followed “highly successful professional women” including one of the first women to remove her veil in public in Egypt, who challenged patriarchal laws, social mores, and religious customs. Steinem praised the movie publicly, writing of the film that it was “both true to Egyptian women, and true for women everywhere.”40

Steinem also helped Laila find financial support for her work as filmmaker, playwright, and teacher in the form of letters of recommendations for grants and teaching positions—such as a Ford Foundation grant that Dr. Saif received in 1978 to create an English soundtrack and re-edit a film on the lives of Egyptian women. Steinem stated her approval and admiration for Saif’s work: “I think she is in herself a rare and precious asset for Egyptian women: she gives a voice to the experience of so many who have been voiceless.” She continued, “Because of her cross-cultural experience

39 Steinem interview with Laila Abou-Saif, nd. Steinem Papers, Box 220. 40 Film Summary “Where is my Freedom (Egypt)” ca 1978 Steinem correspondence in Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed.

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and several years of Western education, she can bring that voice to the attention of people in other countries, and can make an important bridge between women of East and West who, in spite of cultural differences, share many connections and lessons of trying to change the status of women living in varying kinds of patriarchies.”41

Steinem’s friendship with Saif continued through the years. Steinem helped her move to the United States in the early 1980s after the political situation in Egypt became tenuous following Sadat’s assassination on October 6, 1981 and the rise of the Muslim

Brotherhood, which Laila had forcefully and publically spoken up against. Laila received a temporary USICA International Visitor Program grant after many of her colleagues had been arrested, and when funds ran out, Steinem sent letters on her behalf to grant- funding organizations like the Stern Fund. Calling her “one of the leading figures active on behalf of women’s rights in the Middle East,” Steinem argued “I can’t over- emphasize Laila’s value from an international point of view. There are few women with her talent and courage, and there are even fewer whose bi-cultural East-West experience allows them to be the educator and cross-cultural force that Laila is.”42

Perhaps one of the reasons Steinem had such a high regard for Laila Abou Saif is because she saw herself in Saif. In fact, merging high-level politics and grassroots activism became a hallmark of Steinem’s career. Like other American feminists with international clout, Steinem found ways to use her extensive connections to engage

41 Gloria Steinem to Gayle Counts, Ford Foundation, August 14, 1978, Steinem Papers, box 184, folder 16. 42 Steinem to David Hunter, December 2, 1981. Steinem correspondence in Ms. Magazine Papers, unprocessed.

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with grassroots politics wherever she went. A good example of this is in Steinem’s continuing involvement with India.

After the two years she spent in India in the late 1950s, Steinem did not return to

India until 1976. However, she maintained connections and a friendship with Devaki

Jain, an Indian feminist economist and activist. They had first met while living in New

Delhi in 1958, before either of them had developed a feminist consciousness, and then rekindled their friendship when the Oxford alumna moved to the United States years later. As Jain recounted, their friendship started when Steinem “came to India as a scholar in 1958 when I was teaching, and so we had a lot of fun. We were both unmarried, young girls, and neither of us identified as feminists.”43 However, they found that when they renewed their friendship years later, “we had gone through the same kind of feminist changes on two continents many thousands of miles away,” Steinem recalled.44 “At the time,” Steinem recounted, “she was a Gandhian economist, I was a good liberal, and we were talking about the handicraft movement and other ways to keep traditional skills from disappearing into Western-style steel factories. We saw each other when she came here, and one day we were finishing each other’s sentences: we had both become/realized-we-were/been-hit-over-the-head-with-the-dawning-light-of feminism.”45 Her friendship with Jain furthered Steinem's connection to Indian activism.

43 Helen Thomas, “Interview: Devaki Jain” Cherwell online edition. May 26, 2014. Accessed from http://www.cherwell.org/comment/interviews/2014/05/26/interview-devaki-jain. 44 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India, 1976,” Steinem Papers, box 228C. 45 Letter from Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, Aug. 23, 1989, 12. Steinem Papers, box 1, folder 7.

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Through the years, Jain and Steinem became fast friends, sharing correspondence, books and other publications about each other’s’ movements46.

Steinem’s friendship with Jain connected her to a network of international activists and helped make her aware of debates in international relations. Jain was among the women who turned Steinem on to the circuit of International Relations, which provided opportunities for Steinem to interact in a professional capacity as a representative of

American feminism. In 1976, Jain arranged for the Indian Government and Indian

Council of Social Science Research (run by a Ghandian leftist from the independence movement) to invite Steinem back and pay for her trip.47 According to Steinem, they

“visited women’s groups, including SEWA [Self-Employed Women’s Association] run by the amazing Ela Bhatt.”48 They traveled together for that purpose to Ahmadabad, a central Indian textile-producing city where Bhatt was based. The visit energized

Steinem, who shared her knowledge of Bhatt’s work with the Ms. staff when she returned from her trip. Ella Bhatt, she said:

works with the textiles workers’ union there, which is a Gandhian union opposed to the Congress Party and to Indira Gandhi. The biggest textile workers’ union in the country, started by a woman who organized it for, you know, 30, 40 years until she dies. A big kind of social activist, I mean, it’s everything that unions were supposed to be here and aren’t anymore, right?....She was trained, incidentally, partly in an institute in Israel which sounds interesting to me, which is an institute for Third World labor organizers. And it sounds like a great place for feminists to go because it seems to me that Third World organizing techniques are what women as the Fifth World need, wherever we are... it’s an institute that we want to look into.49

46 Devaki Jain to Gloria Steinem, March 31, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers, Subject Files, unprocessed collection. 47 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India, 1976”, Steinem Papers, box 228C. 48 Steinem to Carolyn Heilbrun, Aug. 23, 1989, 12. Steinem Papers, box 1 folder 7. 49 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India, 1976”, Steinem Papers, box 228C.

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The visit with Bhatt clearly impressed Steinem deeply, and they had a chance to speak about the ways in which the two movements were connected. Bhatt said to

Steinem that she was “grateful to the western women’s movement” since the women’s movement in Western countries served as an example for the negative effects of industrialization and big, centralized governments.

Steinem also traveled back to many of her old Indian haunts, spending a week in

Delhi and going back to the Miranda House. “it was a whole kind of sentimental journey… like going back to a childhood place… And the changes were dramatic and the sameness was also dramatic.”50

Steinem’s visit to India in 1976 connected her to a whole other network of activists and individuals involved in the press and NGOs, which included representatives from the Indian Council for Child Welfare and the International Union of

Child Welfare, the International Institute for Population Studies, the Center for Women’s

Welfare and Development, and the Research Unit on Women’s Studies at the University of Bombay. It rekindled her connections with folks from the Ford Foundation, who had helped secure her footing when she first arrived in 1950s.51

She also had an opportunity to meet Indian Chief of State Indira Gandhi, and visit her home, which Steinem described as a “very simple kind of bungalow”.52 She met

Indira Gandhi’s Italian daughter-in-law, who “shuffled in, gave me an extended palm, and never said a word.”53 Steinem gave Indira Gandhi copies of Ms. publications and

50 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India, 1976,” Steinem Papers, box 228C. 51 Contact notes and business cards regarding India in Steinem Papers, box 8. folder 6. 52 Audiotape transcript, “Steinem Recent Trip to India, 1976,” Steinem Papers, box 228C. 53 Ibid.

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they talked about Our Bodies, Ourselves, which Gandhi had a copy of. Steinem used the conversation about OBO as an opportunity to talk about focusing on health issues as a tactic for cross-caste organizing. Steinem also tried to talk to her about women’s problems in India that she’d been made aware of and witnessed on her own, such as issues of reproductive health, technology, and the projects that were happening in her country. She found Indira Gandhi to be closed off and defensive, comparing her to

Richard Nixon, although “much more intelligent but paranoid in the same way.”54 On the other hand, she also understood Gandhi to be “an instinctive, personal feminist because she has been shat on all her life” and an “intelligent, shy, shat-upon, inward looking person who is paranoid in the Nixon style and who therefore is very uptight about any challenge to her authority.”55 Steinem started talking to Gandhi about the purpose of her visit, the projects she had witnessed and the work of women. She tried talking to her about how bad technology could be for women if it wasn’t controlled by women

(because technology-based skills were taught mainly to men and thus further devalued women’s work) but found little receptiveness from Gandhi, who, after she loosened up, shared with Steinem some stories about her childhood.

Steinem also tried to use press contacts in India to write articles about what was going on in India. Mostly, however, she traveled and learned about all of the different initiatives in which women were involved. When asked, she shared ideas and anecdotes from her own experiences with the women she met. For example, she visited classes held for female union workers to develop different and useful skills.

54 Ibid. 55 Ibid.

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“They would always ask me, you know, about this country and I would answer questions and so on, and I would ask them what they wanted their lives to be, or how they were different from their mothers or their daughters and so on.” Their responses: an education, fewer children, and a good job.56

Upon returning from her second trip to India, she discussed the experience in an editorial meeting with Ms. staff, trying to decide on whether to produce an article.

You may wonder why I went to India. Well, I went because I haven’t been there in 18 years and I’ve always wanted to go back and the only other opportunities I had were to write about the Maharishi, which didn’t seem like, you know, the way that I wanted to go back to India. But it was, you know, it was two years out of my life and it was a very influential kind of emotionally laden two years, which just got dropped out completely because I came back in 1958, much too early. Nobody was interested in India and I would tell them, I would grab them and try to tell them about India and they would all just drop off. So it’s been – I couldn’t use it in my work, I couldn’t do anything because it’s always been a kind of piece out of my life, so I’ve wanted to go back.57

She informed the staff about the state of modern Indian politics, the feminist initiatives she’d been a part of, and the caste and linguistic and regional divisions among people. For example, she explained in detail the workings of Ela Bhatt’s organization, SEWA, and the work of Vinoba Bhave, a Gandhian land reformer who inspired a group of female followers to start their own movement called Shri Shakti, which, according to Steinem, translates into women’s liberation. As Steinem explained to her staff, there were 50,000 women involved in the movement going from village to village with a cup and a comb as Steinem had done for two weeks on her first visit.

They walk through the villages and talk – get the women to come out, because women will only come out and talk to other women anyway, and talk to them about health issues, about food, about, no, your husband

56Ibid. 57 Ibid.

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shouldn’t beat you up because you don’t have a son, about, you know, whatever troubles them, organizing them and so on.58

She also shared stories about Indian women organizers, like a group of four sisters who pledged to walk from village to village for 12 years and were on their seventh year talking about women’s issues and mobile childcare centers that help migrant women in construction. This inspired the Ms. staff to want to write an article on the women and on Steinem’s meeting with Indira Gandhi. Steinem was much more interested in the grassroots activities and the projects than doing a profile on Gandhi.59

One project that struck a chord with Steinem was a hostel run by a millers’ union.

I went to a house, to a little hostel that’s run for the daughters of Untouchable families who work in the mills, and they’re there from 12 to 18, all dressed in white with shiny black braids and beautiful faces, fantastic faces, and keys around their necks to their – each one has a locker, and their lives are totally changed by being in this hostel. I mean, they have to promise that they – the families had to promise… not to marry them off before they leave, which is already a major change, since the marriages are usually contracted at 9 or 10 or 11 or something.60

She talked to her US-based staff about the problems faced by Indian women as they were recounted to her, including issues of child marriage, economic duress for the lower classes and the constraints placed on working women, as well as the issues of the middle and upper class women. One example she gave of an upper-class women’s issue was bride burning. In “the International Year of the Woman in 1975, there were at least 50 women who threw themselves, or who were forced by their relatives, screaming, to throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyres and burned to

58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid.

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death.”61 Steinem also articulated clearly the need for the feminist movement to learn from the Indian freedom movement. About India, she said:

it’s alive and it’s got a terrific tradition of individualism and individual freedom and peaceful methods and strong organizing movements and the whole Gandhian thing that is much more complex and sophisticated than we see it… feminists ought to look at Gandhian methods, I think, to see what they have to teach, and I also don’t’ think that anybody, including Indira Gandhi, is going to ever be able to subdue the terrific individuality and humor and smarts of that country.62

This conversation became public when it was published in August 1976 and prompted responses and more stories. One of these came from Mary P. Haney, an

American working for the U.S. State Department in India, who served as the “unofficial

U.S. Embassy’s in-house expert on Indian and American women’s issues” at the time. 63

She sent Steinem newspaper clippings relating to the issue of battered wives and wife burning, which provided further evidence of the accuracy of the statements Steinem had made to her colleagues. Steinem first met Haney when she went to India in 1976 and shared with her the desire to write an article comparing sexism in schools in Western countries with the case of India and to publish an abridged version of her findings on sexism in Indian schools in the Ms. Gazette. She also shared with her information about

Women in Development conferences, such as a conference taking place at Wellesley

61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Autobiographical history submitted by Mary P. Haney to Loyola Archives for Mary P. Haney Papers, May 24, 2004. Accessed from http://www.luc.edu/media/lucedu/wla/pdfs/Haney,_Mary.pdf.; Note from Mary Haney to Gloria Steinem with news clippings, August 9, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers, Subject Files, unprocessed collection.

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College on June 2-6, 1976. Finally, she gave, as did many of her friends, Steinem’s contact information to Indian friends who were coming to the United States to visit.64

An Indian pathologist living in New York since 1967 found out about Steinem's trip to India through a friend, and wrote a critical letter to her from her Indian perspective. She said she was “more than surprised to hear that you made a comment on your return that things looked good in India.” She continued, “Yes, I agree that trains are running on time and people are standing in line at the bus stops! But is that a fair price to pay for the loss of one’s freedom? Is there any price at all one is willing to pay for her or his loss of fundamental rights? Since you are a leader of the women’s liberation, which as you very well know is not isolated and can be achieved only simultaneously with men’s liberation, I’d hope and believe you would protest the present suspension of civil liberties of its people in India rather vehemently.” To that, Steinem responded that the issue was a “misunderstanding” and shat she shared “completely” her feelings about events in India. “That was one of the most tragic and poignant parts of my trip, for I saw so many old friends and valuable people suffering under the withdrawal of civil liberties, and I’ve tried to communicate their plight and the necessity of pressure on this regime. Perhaps the misunderstanding comes from my comments on the activities of women’s groups themselves. Those I found examples of courage and innovation that feminists in other countries could learn from and follow; especially since there is so much false impression that women who happen to live in industrialized

64 Mary P. Haney to Gloria Steinem, April 27, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers, Subjects Files, unprocessed collection.

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and well-to-do- patriarchies have more to teach than do women in agricultural patriarchies.”65

Steinem’s connections to India continued in her later years. Financially, Steinem supported the Institute of Social Studies Trust Endowment Fund run by Devaki Jain in

1986. She also received copies of correspondence from Ela Bhatt at SEWA to Judith

Bruce at the Population Council 1981 about conflicts within the labor movement and the

NLO disaffiliating itself with the organization. “if you can influence the trade union people in your part of the world, it would certainly help us.”66

Taken together, these two sets of interactions illustrate the skewed power dynamics at play within mainstream feminism. American feminists clearly privileged certain perspectives about women in the Global South and edited the messages of these women to fit their expectations. This took place on the level of personal engagements and political interactions between mainstream feminists in the US acting globally.

These experiences indicate that, unlike other prominent feminists such as Betty

Friedan, Steinem understood the ways in which she, a privileged western feminist, had to take her lead from Iranian and Indian women. She only participated in foreign movements at the invitation and behest of women’s activists in those countries, and she tried to maintain a role as an observer and supportive side kick rather than an expert in the field of women’s rights.

65 Letter from Hansa Shah to Gloria Steinem, nd. and from Gloria Steinem to Hansa Shah, ca. June 7, 1976. Ms. Magazine Papers, Subject Files, unprocessed collection. 66 Ela Bhatt to Judith Bruce, July 1, 1981; Devaki Jain to Gloria Steinem, August 4, 1986. Ms. Magazine Papers, Subject Files, unprocessed collection.

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She also understood, to a limited extent, that class divided women in these two nations, and she responded to them differently. In Iran, she kept her distance from the elite. In India, she did not keep the same level of distance. The difference is likely that, given Steinem’s personal experience with India, she felt in a better position to understand and contribute to Indian women’s struggles. Class permeability in India also meant that she interacted with individuals at all levels of society, from the prime minister

Indira Gandhi to the street vendor who was a part of SEWA. By contrast, in Iran, she felt pulled in different directions, largely defined by class lines. In 1972, she was invited to come to Iran by the Empress, and did not attend because of the grass-roots feminists who dissuaded her. By 1979, even though she did not participate, she joined in solidarity in New York with the thousands of women demonstrating against the

Ayatollah and kept in close contact with the committee of international feminists who traveled to meet the Ayatollah.

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CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION

In the years since 1980, Steinem has continued to maintain a presence in international feminist activism, even as the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and more conservative factions in the Republican party has resulted in a political climate that is increasingly challenging for social activists. From 1980 to the present, Steinem has also spent much of her time fundraising for her long list of causes and to ensure the publication of Ms Magazine. Since the 1980s, Steinem has sat on the board of several organizations, including Choice USA (a pro-choice organization) and the Women’s

Media Center (which she co-founded in 2004). She has also served as a member of the

Beyond Racism Initiative, a collaborative effort begun in 1995 by the Comparative

Human Relations Initiative, which brought together activists and experts from South

Africa, Brazil, and the United States to compare racial issues and urge cross-national cooperation in the three countries.

Steinem’s international travels during the 1980s – whose dual purpose was both organizing and fundraising -- demonstrate her continued commitment to international women’s organizing as many American feminists’ commitment to the cause waned. In

March 1980, Steinem traveled to Egypt, interviewing Jihan Sadat and meeting with

Egyptian feminists and women leaders, a story she recounted in the June 1980 issue of

Ms. The Egyptian feminists sat on the stage with her in a form of protection against the possible threats posed by Muslim brotherhood.1 Later that same year, she was scheduled to travel to Copenhagen and Oslo for the second UN International Women’s

1 Gloria Steinem, “Two Cheers for Egypt – Talks With Jihan Sadat and Other Daughters of the Nile”. Ms. June 1980, Steinem Papers 115:11.

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Decade Conference, but withdrew at the last minute, as described in chapter 5. The previous year, she went to Oslo with Ms. publisher Pat Carbine to give a speech at the

Federation of International Publications and Periodicals and to look for European investors for the magazine and had stopped in Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to get

L’Oreal to become an advertising sponsor. In 1982 and 1983 she headed to Canada, to give two speeches, on the second occasion, with Florynce Kennedy on behalf of abortion activist Henry Morgentaler’s defense. In 1985 and again in 1987, she travelled to Japan. In 1986, she travelled to Paris and Korea. During this period, she also kept meeting with international feminists who visited her in New York and maintained friendships with her international friends throughout these years, most notably Laila

Abou-Saif and Claude Servan-Schreiber.

During this time, Steinem’s international interests were also apparent in her writings and the domestic trips she conducted to promote her work. In 1983, to launch her collection of essays, Gloria Steinem: Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,

Steinem appeared on dozens of TV shows and took the opportunity presented by a nationwide book tour to meet with and speak to women’s activists in the cities she visited. She used these book discussions to discuss the most important international activities that had influenced her life, including her trip to India and her involvement in the World Youth Festivals and the impact these had on her career, but also about subjects that dealt with global women’s issues, such as female circumcision.2

2 These three subjects were discussed in the “Late Night America” program with host Dennis Wholey on August 22-23, 1984 on the Public Broadcast Systems network. Summary of TV clips in Steinem Papers 4:20.

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In 1986, Steinem was forced to slow down her hectic schedule when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy and radiation, keeping the news from anyone but her closest friends out of fear that she might scare away potential advertisers for Ms. Steinem began to take better care of her physical and emotional self.

She started visiting a therapist and dealing with the emotional baggage from her past.

This new focus resulted in an autobiographical self-help book, Revolution from Within: A

Book of Self-Esteem, published in 1992.

In 1987, the Ms. editors (including Steinem) sold the magazine to an Australian publishing company, ending Steinem’s grueling efforts to keep the magazine afloat.

Steinem then took on a post at Random House, as a contributing editor. During the

1990s, Steinem began focusing more on her writing career, and on helping a variety of causes close to her heart. She became a strong supporter of “third wave” feminists – the younger generation, and on young girls’ feminist education. Presently, she is working, at age 81, on a project with Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts to create an activist training school that will use the Sophia Smith archives (where her own papers are stored) to help develop a new generation of activists. The goal is for them to learn from the past to improve the future.

Steinem still travels a lot. In 2007, aged 74, Steinem again returned to India at the invitation of Women’s World, an international free-speech network of feminist writers. She delivered a lecture titled “Secret Censors, Public Solutions” in front of a group of 45 women writers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal.

More than any country other than her native United States, India remained the most important place for Steinem, a place in which she felt at home. Then, to celebrate her

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80th birthday, Steinem spent three months in Botswana. Over the past three years, she has continued to speak in a variety of functions around the United States, traveling at a pace that even much younger people would consider grueling.

The dissertation has examined the connections Steinem forged outside of the boundaries of the United States, arguing that they fundamentally defined the life trajectory of Gloria Steinem, the US women’s movement’s most prominent figure in the

1970s, and in so doing made U.S. feminism less insular than it might otherwise have been. Moreover, because Steinem was so pleasant and charismatic, friendly, optimistic and a good listener, she formed friendships wherever she went, and played the role of ambassador for U.S. feminism extremely well.

Following her graduation from Smith in 1956 and two years living abroad in India,

Steinem returned to the United States, participating as a perhaps unwilling, but certainly not unknowing, Cold Warrior activist, which she parlayed into a budding journalistic career in the early 1960s. In the mid-1960s, she became increasingly active in social and political movements that involved immigrant concerns, such as Cesar Chavez’s

United Farmworkers movement, and when the feminist movement erupted in full force in 1968, Steinem was quickly won over to the cause for women’s equality.3 The media quickly turned Steinem into a feminist icon, and in 1972, Steinem in turn responded by taking matters of feminist media representation into her own hands by co-founding Ms., the first mainstream feminist magazine in the country. Ms. became Steinem’s most consuming professional project, and it effectively served as a transnational nexus of

3 She was also active in the anti-Vietnam War movements, the Civil Rights movement, and in democratic presidential campaigns like George McGovern’s unsuccessful bid in 1968.

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information for women around the world by connecting individuals to one another, sharing information about women’s movement activities, and creating a sense of solidarity (often fraught with conflict) between activists in different parts of the world. At the same time, Steinem was involved in international feminist activities ranging from international conferences to grassroots protests to engaging in attempts to change the hearts and minds of those in the highest echelons of power.

In the end, it seems only natural to ask what resulted from Steinem’s decidedly impressive commitment to feminist social movements over the course of six decades.

Domestically, working with countless other feminist activists, Steinem succeeded in making important advances for women, with broad-reaching implications to the workplace, family structures, and individual lives. Steinem played a role in most women’s rights causes of the 1970s, drumming up public support for feminist causes in writing and through speeches; consulting and collaborating with feminist politicians and lawmakers like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm; fundraising for pro-women organizations; being involved in committees like the 1977 Houston IWY conference

(which presented a platform of US women’s demands to the president of the United

States); and serving as a public figure who was frequently consulted on questions of women’s rights nationally and internationally.

In the domestic arena, legal gains of the women’s movement included passing

Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972, which banned discrimination on the basis of gender in federally-funded schools and colleges and the right to unrestricted access to abortion in the first three months of a women’s pregnancy thanks to the 1973

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Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.4 Professional gains included increasing access to paid labor roles, even though women continued (and continue) to earn significantly less than men by overwhelmingly entering low-paid feminized professions such as teaching, nursing, and administrative assistance. Nonetheless, the 1970s saw unprecedented growth in the number of women in law and medicine, increasing by 1200% in law and

300% in medicine. The 1970s also saw a significant cultural shift in attitudes to toward women and gender roles. Men began taking more active care of children and sharing in household responsibilities, despite the fact that women’s activists did not succeed in passing social welfare legislation like parental and sick leave and child care programs such as federally-funded day care centers and afterschool programs.

In the international arena, Steinem found herself in the middle of a growing global feminist movement. In the mid-1970s, women’s rights became part of an international discourse on human rights framed within broader geo-political contexts of anti- colonialist movements in Africa, conflicts in the Middle East that precipitated global economic crises, and the continuation of the Cold War through US-Soviet proxy wars waged in the Global South. Large bureaucratic organs like the United Nations began addressing questions of women’s rights globally and demanding assessments on the status of women from member states, prompting international exchanges between women in different counties. Similarly, on a grass-roots level, feminist movements in many parts of the world were gaining traction in spite of being branded as a western invention and mechanism of colonial control. Within this context, Steinem became a

4 One of the most wide-reaching pieces of legislation for women, the Equal Rights Amendment, passed but failed to be ratified in 1983.

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spokeswoman of sorts for American feminism internationally, speaking on behalf of US feminism in a variety of settings. Further, using her extensive contacts and Ms. magazine’s resources, Steinem provided assistance to independent movements by highlighting international movement activities and by providing information to the many international feminists seeking it. Even though it is very difficult to demonstrate the degree to which Steinem’s efforts influenced international feminists movements, what stands out about her experience internationally is her commitment to create, however flawed, a global community of women who could find strength and support in one another by celebrating differences without denying the realities of their individual experiences.

Even though she was not always successful, Steinem, with her American brand of hopeless optimism, truly believed in the notion of a global sisterhood, in the possibility of international solidarity. What did American feminists who shared this view gain by imagining themselves as part of a world-wide feminist movement? On the one hand, by claiming “sisterhood” with European and other Western feminists, American activists were able to augment the significance of their own movement. They developed, publically and privately, what could be understood as “diplomatic” feminist relations that showcased an alliance with the perceived cultural sophistication of Europeans. By claiming alliances with the Global South, on the other hand, American feminists were able to appeal to the “universality” of their movement, and to justify a colonial-like insertion into local feminist discourses outside of their experience.

Steinem publically acknowledged her privilege as a white woman living in the most powerful nation on earth, and explained the intersections of class, race, and

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gender inequity. Steinem’s actions -- her advocacy of civil rights, support of labor activism and other progressive causes beyond women’s movement work -- won her the support of grassroots organizers. She was a good communicator and a great listener, and did not suffer from the arrogant need to be right exhibited by many white liberals.

She could be funny and light-hearted and was easy-going, kind, and generous to friends and strangers alike. Though she knew how to use it, she did not seek the spotlight, and frequently gave up the stage so other, less known voices, could be heard. All of these factors, exhibited over the course of four decades, contributed to Steinem’s appeal and made her a well-liked figure.

To what extent can we deem Steinem complicit in the problematic historical contexts with which her life intersected -- such as perpetuating cultural imperialism in the name of feminism and being involved in the secretive efforts of the CIA to infiltrate global social movements? While the latter question is unproductive (she used the CIA funding for her own goals), it is important to note two things in regards to the first question: first that there were positive elements to US feminists’ engagements with women’s activists in other parts of the world, and second, that the larger cultural and political debates in which activists like Steinem engaged served to bring a global perspective on feminism to the United States. For example, Steinem’s speech at the journalistic prelude to the first United Nations International Women’s Year conference in

Mexico City in 1975 gave Steinem a chance to articulate a nuanced perspective on the need for a global sisterhood which, unlike the views of many of other white liberal feminists, paid attention to the particularities of culture, class, race, religion, and other markers of difference. She had come to this realization by interacting extensively with

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women of color in the US and internationally. This is not to say that Steinem’s philosophy was unproblematic. In fact, Steinem’s attachment to liberal humanism, a perspective she learned from her grandmothers, was fundamentally at odds with the concept of intersectionality, that is, the way that different marginalizing identities combine to form distinct experiences of oppression.5 Steinem was aware of the intellectual and political tensions that resulted from these two guiding principles and she tried to blend the two by referring to humanist goals of equality as the ultimate goal for women’s activists. As the years progressed, she shed her attachment to humanism and stopped speaking for women globally, limiting herself to articulating her own experiences and feminist theory.

The narrative of Steinem’s life promotes a wider understanding of the US movement’s international reach while bringing to the forefront serious concerns about the U.S. as an imperialist power and feminism as an unwelcomed export. For example, as a magazine, Ms. represented mainly white, middle and upper class American feminism to the world, while at the same time it published important stories about international feminist activities written mostly by women from those countries. On the one hand, these international stories were significant for bringing under-represented news to American readers; on the other hand, Ms.’ engagements with the outside world reflected the worldview of their American audience, as the editors privileged the views of like-minded individuals and censored perspectives with which they did not agree, not always recognizing that their position was one of privilege.

5 The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, though the concept existed long before. See Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989), 139-167.

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Nonetheless, in many ways, Steinem was a more inclusive and respectful feminist than many of her counterparts, who sometimes made a mockery of American feminism, as the example of Betty Friedan’s embarrassing and disrespectful behavior at a state-sponsored visit with the Iranian princess Ashraf Pahlavi in 1973 revealed.

Friedan’s visit represented an extreme example of how American feminists perpetuated imperialism by failing to recognize the broader socio-political context of the time and

American feminists’ complicity within this system. Other feminists in the Global North perpetuated this lack of historical understanding as well, such as the international feminist coalition presided over by Simone de Beauvoir in 1979 after the American- backed Shah was overthrown by Iranian activists seeking an end to Western influence in the country and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Travelling to Iran, the Western coalition represented the very international influence that had incensed so many

Iranians to begin with. Further, it delegitimized the Iranian feminist movement by branding Iranian activists as Westernized traitors rather than an independent movement concerned with women’s rights from a local perspective.6

Steinem and Ms. were also complicit in perpetuating a stereotype of the veil as a symbol of oppression by publishing articles by Iranian feminists on the subject while ignoring dissenting stories. The question of the veil was at the heart of Iranian political discourses in both the Pahlavi and Khomeini regimes. Banned by the Pahlavi regime in pre-revolutionary Iran as part of the Shah’s goal to bring political, economic, and cultural modernity to Iran, the veil became a symbol of resistance to what the Ayatollah

Khomeini called the “White Revolution.” Western women clung to representations of the

6 Naghibi, chapters 1 and 3.

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veil as symbolic of oppression and, as Nima Naghibi explains, “claimed the unveiling, hence liberation, of Muslim women as their prerogative.”7 Steinem demonstrated a pragmatic approach to the question by arguing that the veil allowed women from Muslim regions in which veiling was practiced a certain latitude in fighting for women’s rights like education.8

As scholars like Chandra Mohandy and Inderpal Grewal have shown, this notion of global feminism is one that, by and large, has whitewashed cultural differences and positioned women in the Global North as superior to those in the Global South.9

Steinem was aware of this criticism, although she did not agree with it. To Steinem, feminism was neither an export nor a question of imperial power dynamics. Rather, it was a question of movement-building, and solidarity that was as necessary to the movement in the United States as to feminist movements anywhere else in the world.

The dissertation has explored a two-way relationship: the impact that an international life had on Steinem and Steinem’s impact on internationalism. The first point is relatively easy to demonstrate, the second point much less so. While Steinem acknowledged her privilege, she clearly benefited professionally from her status as a white woman from the United States. Because she was sponsored by an elite institution, she was able to satisfy her wanderlust and travel to Europe and India,

7 Naghibi, 37. 8 Steinem engaged in the debate behind the scenes, by helping to organize the committee of journalists, and by supporting Iranian feminists through a demonstration in New York City that gave publicity to the movement internationally. In the end, the international feminist support did more harm than good, and the Ayatollah succeeded in implementing the Veiling Act in 1983, mandating women to be veiled in public or suffer 74 lashes with a whip. 9 Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Feminist Review, No. 30 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 61-88.; Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005).

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following in the footsteps of 19th century secular feminists and missionaries who, as

Nima Naghibi explains, “used the discourses of sisterhood, and of progress and evolution, to enable their mobility outside the bounds of their proscribed lives and to justify a more exciting life of travel and adventures for themselves.”10 In India, Steinem certainly benefitted from her outsider status by gaining access to a powerful community of expatriates, and by being able to gain significant experience as a journalist because of her privileged status as a westernized “other.”

Steinem also benefited professionally (though it did backfire for her in the mid-

1970s) from her involvement in the CIA front group, the Independent Research Service.

It aided the CIA in destabilizing geo-political regions in the Global South. During the time Steinem was involved in the Independent Research Service (a National Student

Association affiliated organization), the CIA used student activists to gather intelligence that helped Saddam Hussain seize power in Iraq in 1963; subverted the Cuban revolution by inviting Cuban exiles to speak against communism at the 1961 Congress; and was involved in arresting Nelson Mandela in 1962 by organizing student opposition to Mandela’s African National Congress.11

Though it is impossible to assess whether Steinem was a full-fledged CIA agent or just aware of CIA’s funding but an independent player, critics of Steinem would point out that she was still a Cold Warrior, thus complicit in the organization’s problematic goals. In the 1970s, radical feminist activists like Kathie Sarachild argued that given

10 Naghibi, 13. 11 Karen Paget, Patriotic Betrayal. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Paget argues that the CIA manipulated student movements to fight Communism. She states that Harry Lunn of the CIA recruited Steinem and was one of few women involved in the NSA-CIA.

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Steinem’s intellectual acumen, her high-level position, and her connections to individuals in the highest ranks of the organization, it is fair to assume that she was a

CIA agent. I, on the other hand, am unwilling to reach that conclusion in this dissertation, given her intellectual curiosity about communism, her fiercely independent character, and her tolerance and commitment to leftist social movements throughout her long career. However, It is important to note that this critique of Steinem’s life continues to surface in the press, which has recently reported on Tom Hayden’s critical views about Steinem. Hayden, one of the most important student activists of the 1960s, leader of Students for a Democratic Society and author of the Port Huron statement, explains that Steinem interviewed him to be a part of the Communist Youth Festivals and he has recently critiqued her role in the NSA.12

At the end of a project such as this, one is left with more questions than when one began, prompting a need for more research and new hypotheses in order to better understand Steinem’s impact on internationalism. For example, what further insights could we glean by expanding the cast of characters to examine a larger variety of approaches to international feminist activism in the 1970s? How would the transnational histories of other people in Steinem’s circle overlap with or diverge from Steinem’s experiences?

Robin Morgan (born 1941) and Kate Millett (born 1934) would be two good individuals to use to expand this set of perspectives. Like Steinem, both women traveled around the globe as professional feminists, and both identified themselves as writers

12 Hayden, Tom. “The CIA’s Student-Activism Phase.” The Nation. November 26, 2014. Accessed online. http://www.thenation.com/article/191569/cias-student-activism-phase#

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and intellectuals. They were both involved in Ms. as editors and were movement thinkers who made significant contributions to the feminist movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s by publishing canonical works. Millett’s Sexual Politics was an early attempt to theorize gender discrimination. Morgan’s Sisterhood is Powerful was the first anthology of the women’s movement, which showcased the strength of the movement.13

Both feminists initially identified as radical, and Millett retained that identity, removing herself from organized politics by the decade’s end, while Morgan shifted to the center, becoming a journalist and Ms. editor.

Both also involved themselves in international politics in interesting and problematic ways that shed light on Steinem’s history and exemplify the classless, problematic approach to the tenets of “global sisterhood.” Morgan published a follow-up to the wildly successful Sisterhood is Powerful with a second anthology, Sisterhood is

Global. This anthology proved to be a futile attempt to anthologize women’s movement activities on a global scale, and it was a terrible flop, given the investment of time, energy, and money. The book was supposed to have served as an encyclopedia of sorts, providing information on the current status of women in various countries through statistics and an article written by women from that country. The book was published in

13 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969); Robin Morgan, ed. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movements. (New York, Random House, 1970). Other highly-circulated early publications on the movement included New York Radical Women, Notes from the First Year. (New York: The New York Radical Women, 1970), which was followed one year later by New York Radical Women, Notes from the Second Year. (New York: The New York Radical Women, 1971). Early anthologies, which gained less traction included Deborah Babcox’s and Madeline Belkin’s anthology, Liberation Now! Deborah Babcox, and Madeline Belkin, eds., Liberation Now! Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement. (New York: Dell Pub. Co, 1971) and Leslie Barbara Tanner, ed. Voices from Women's Liberation. (New York: New American Library, 1970). Black feminist activists published their own anthologies, since they were marginalized in mainstream publications. See, Smith, Barbara, ed. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. (New York: Kitchen Table-Women of Color Press, 1983)

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English for an English-speaking audience and was a production nightmare. Hoping she could get a variety of perspectives, Morgan was unable to procure a broad range of views, as many of the entries from the Global South were written by women in positions of privilege who articulated only one perspective that tended to align with the white liberal feminist perspectives of Ms.’s editors.

Millett, on the other hand, intersected with global feminist engagements by travelling to Iran in 1979, supposedly at the urging of an Iranian activist, where she was arrested and deported from the country for attempting to foment a rebellion. Iranian feminists shied away from her and her radical feminist tactics because they felt Millett’s tactics delegitimized their movement and unnecessarily put Iranian women in harm’s way.14 In the book Millett writes about the experience (which can be seen as an attempt to earn money by writing about her trip), Millett demonstrates an intellectual commitment to solidarity with Iranian women; however, her actions suggest a different story.

This study would also benefit from having a variety of non-white perspectives, and especially of individuals who were sensitive to the intersections between class, race, gender, and nationality but who differed from Steinem in the kind of international cultural connections they forged. For instance, much more analysis could be added on

Florynce (Flo) Kennedy, Steinem’s African American speaking partner and another of

Ms. editors. Kennedy-- who dubbed Steinem “Glo” (“Flo and Glo” had a nice ring to it, she explained)—travelled extensively, both with Steinem and on her own, to different parts of the world giving talks and meeting with women. In some ways, Kennedy’s

14 Naghibi, 90-101.

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approach to activism was similar to Steinem’s. Like Steinem, Kennedy visited other countries to engage with feminist activists, though the activists with whom she engaged were different. For example, on one trip, Kennedy went to New Zealand and met with aboriginal women. However, although Kennedy and Steinem shared an identity as feminists and were close collaborators and friends, they also disagreed strongly on some issues. The most notable of these is the question of pornography and sex work; a question which caused a deep rift in the women’s movement in the 1980s.

Steinem took a hard line on the issue of pornography when the debate first emerged in the mid-1970s, drawing a clear distinction between erotica and pornography, and arguing that sex work could never serve feminist aims. She joined activists like Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, and colleagues on the Ms. staff such as Robin Morgan (not to mention conservatives across America!) in staunchly opposing pornography and in exposing violence and abuse suffered by women in the industry. Many viewed this as an example of class-based privilege. On the other hand,

Kennedy identified as a “pro-sex feminist,” who saw the anti-pornography movement as revolving around class-based, judgmental arguments. Pro-sex feminists did not exclude the violence against women but fought to make sex work a safer industry for women. In the late 1970s, Kennedy traveled to the Netherlands to participate in a pro-sex women’s conference. This episode and the different arguments and sets of experiences it represents merit much further investigation since they deal more significantly with how white liberal feminists floundered on questions of sexuality vis-à-vis women of in the

United States and in the Global South.

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Incorporating Kennedy’s perspective on questions of sexuality, and her participation in an international dialogue on pro-sex feminism that Steinem opposed, would serve two aims. First, the question of pornography, as seen from the perspective of Flo Kennedy and other pro-sex activists, brings into relief a criticism that many women in the Global South launched against American opponents of sex-work: that women like Steinem who opposed sex-work in its entirety were launching class-based critiques that often reflected problematic attempts to “rescue” the “under-privileged” sex- workers, thereby reinforcing the white savior complex of the privileged women, rather than acting in solidarity with the sex-workers.15 Second, focusing on this debate would enable the incorporation of more perspectives from non-US women into the narrative, and highlight another vein of international activism that was taking place concurrently with Steinem’s engagements in the international arena.

Steinem’s perspective on pornography as violence might also account for a certain dimension of her international views on her opposition to female genital mutilation (FGM).16 Like most American feminists, she condemned the practice wholesale, arguing that FGM was a symbol of repressing women’s sexuality and reinforcing patriarchal structures by literally removing the possibility of women’s sexual enjoyment. In many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, however, FGM was practiced as a rite of passage into womanhood, and a ritual that helped to maintain a sense of community.

Steinem dismissed these views and polarized the debate further by publishing an article

15 For an in-depth discussion, see Laura Augustin, Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry (London: Zed Books, 2007). 16 At the time, activists used a variety of terms to describe the procedure; Steinem referred to it as female genital mutilation.

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in Ms. magazine (with Robin Morgan) that deemed FGM a world-wide phenomenon, reaching to find examples of the practice in places where the procedure was not routine, like North America. By attempting to universalize the practice, she tried to come across as not complicit in playing into the white savior complex of rescuing women in the

Global South. Not only did she fail in this regard, she also tapped into a deeper historical vein of policing the sexuality and bodies of non-white women.

Seeing how prominent American intellectuals of second-wave feminism like

Morgan, Millett, and Kennedy interacted with and were influenced by international feminism will lead to a more varied response to understanding American feminism in a transnational arena. Transnational feminists have long used American feminists as flashpoint examples to demonstrate a brand of ignorance, arrogance, and cultural imperialism perpetuated against women in the Global South by women in the Global

North. While those critiques are trenchant and valid, the nuances of those American engagements would demonstrate a broader variety of experiences with the possibility of moving beyond the dualism of the Global North/Global South debate.

There are of course many more ways to expand the project and which would mitigate the effects of making Gloria Steinem too central a figure. She is, some would argue, too exceptional: her life experience differs in too many ways from that of average women. In the final analysis, however, Steinem’s experience has still been a useful one to trace. Steinem’s ability to inhabit a variety of spaces with the respect of those communities, her bottom-up and top-down commitment to change, and her deep involvement in many of the decade’s most defining moments make her an invaluable lens to shine on these events. Studying Steinem’s life, in the ways that this dissertation

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has tried to do, does illuminate both the reach and limits of US feminists’ attempts at international activism in the 1970s-- to reveal the vibrant and problematic interactions that occurred between women in different parts of the world.

Steinem understood the tensions between her universal humanist goals and the intersectional realities but strove to find a way to operate so that was not imposing her worldview on others. She can be described, above all things, as a globally minded pragmatist. Steinem had many close friendships and working relationships with activists from different national backgrounds and she still is beloved by those communities of activists because she did not exhibit the same patronizingly racist and classist tendencies of other white feminists who sought to forge a “global sisterhood” with women. This fact notwithstanding, many scholars and activists looking back upon

Steinem’s life and evaluating her actions, along with those of many in her circle, are skeptical of the motivation that lay behind her efforts to seek unity with other movements by uniting under the banner of a “global sisterhood.”

Given her extensive and varied experience in feminist activism, Steinem provides evidence for the different ways in which women’s movements in the United States interacted with women’s movements in other countries—in particular India, Iran, and

Mexico, and with individuals all over the globe. Because of her experiences traveling and engaging with the outside world, she was able to see how American feminists were perceived around the world and to understand the U.S. movement’s flaws and limitations. She is in many ways an enigmatic figure – contradictory and complex, whose opinions and commitments changed with time, but who still, in her mid-eighties, remains committed to women’s activism on a global scale.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Jessica Lancia graduated in August 2015 with a PhD in history from the

University of Florida. She attained a Master of Arts in history with honors from the

College of Charleston and the Citadel Military College of South Carolina in 2007. She attended Duke University and Adelphi University, and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a bachelor’s in history from Adelphi University in 2005.

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