With a journalistic and writing exercise focused on women’s issues, at 87, Gloria Steinem won the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. The American author and activist was one of the signatories of the letter against intolerance and censorship, published in July 2020 in the magazine “Harper’s”.
Steinem was born on March 25, 1934 in Toledo (Ohio). Due to his family’s transfers to the United States, he did not attend school regularly until he was 11 years old. Very young, after the separation of his parents, he had to take care of his mother, who suffered from a serious mental illness. She herself remembers that this experience, together with the idea that in the 1950s a woman should care for her husband, led her to reject marriage, although she later married at 66 years of age.
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She studied Government at Smith College, an unusual career for women. She worked as the director of the Independent Research Service, an organization funded by the CIA, but soon she turned to journalism as a “freelance”, writing for Esquire magazine on issues affecting women. In the sixties she collaborated with the Huntington Hartford’s Show magazine and infiltrated the Playboy Club in New York as a “bunny girl” to show the conditions in which women lived there. He was a member of the founding team of New York Magazine , in 1968 and, after covering an act on abortion, he promoted the concept of ‘freedom of reproduction’, that is, the freedom to have children or not to have them.
Together with other feminists, such as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, she created the “National Women’s Political Caucus” and was the founder in the 1970s, together with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, of the first feminist magazine, Ms ( Lady ). To that time belongs the black and white photo of Dan Wyn in which Steinem and Pitman appear, black and white women, with their fists raised, published in Esquire in 1971.
In 1972, Steinem was the first woman to give a speech at the National Press Club, criticizing the composition of the newsrooms. Her feminist messages led her to write for Cosmopolitan, in 1978 , the satire If men could menstruate . In addition, in 1983, he published Scandalous Acts and Daily Rebellions , a collection of essays in which he does not ignore topics such as female mutilation. Added to the list is the 1986 release of Marilyn: Norma Jean , with whom she wanted to dismantle the myth of cinema’s “blonde ambition”.
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Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsSteiman, who suffered from breast cancer in the 1980s, continued to write about issues affecting women. Thus, in 1992, he published Revolution from within: a book on self-esteem and in 2015 he released his biography: My life on the road. In parallel, he has not stopped attending demonstrations and giving lectures. He also supported Hillary Clinton when she ran for election and participated in some films and series, such as The First Wives Club and The Good Wife .
Based on her autobiography, in 2020, the film “The Glorias” was released, where four actresses give life to the journalist and feminist activist in their different stages of life. In that book, the author explains the secret of her energy: “When people ask me why I still have hope and my energy after all these years, I always say the same thing: because I travel” (…). Taking a path (…) takes you out of your head and into your heart ”. In 2018, Gloria Steinem came to Broadway when a play was dedicated to her under her approval. In it, on the one hand, her life and career are reviewed, and, on the other, a debate is opened between the public and a moderator, a role that she once embodied herself.
Although against marriage, she married on September 3, 2000, at age 66, to activist David Bale. The wedding was held at the home of her friend Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to be the chief chief of the Cherokee Nation. The marriage only lasted three years, because of Bale’s death.
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Steinem was one of the signatories of the letter against intolerance and censorship, published in July 2020 in Harper’s magazine. About 150 intellectuals and artists expressed their concern about the “intolerance towards opposing perspectives, the fashion of public humiliation and ostracism”, which, in the opinion of the signatories, has gained strength in the United States in recent years.
At 87, Steinem won the 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, for which 36 candidates from 16 nationalities chose.