Gloria Steinem

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Gloria Steinem 2011

Gloria Marie Steinem (born March 25, 1934 in Toledo (Ohio) ) is an American feminist , journalist and suffragette . She is the founder and editor of the American feminist magazine Ms.

Life

Early years

Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo. Her mother, Ruth Nuneviller, had German ancestors and worked as a journalist. Her father, Leo Steinem, was the son of German-Jewish and Polish-Jewish emigrants. He worked as a traveling antique dealer and was accompanied by his family. The parents separated in 1945. The father went to California to find work. Meanwhile, Gloria stayed in Toledo with her mother and sister Susanne. As a child, she contributed to the family's livelihood and looked after her mother, who had given up her career for the family and suffered from depression .

Steinem's paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was a suffragette and was the first woman in Ohio to be elected to an education committee. Gloria Steinem did not find out about her grandmother's achievements from her family, but from a monograph that a feminist historian had written about Pauline Perlmutter Steinem. Steinem later wrote that feminism had rediscovered her grandmother for her.

Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo. At 17, she moved to live with her sister in Washington, DC, and graduated from Western High School. While at school, she joined four friends in a group baptized Chi Alpha Tau ; the girls promised each other good school performance and engagement in other high school work groups / clubs. The sisterhood won the interest of other girls. Steinem also attended ballet classes, among other things. She had excellent school reports and applied to various prestigious colleges. Because of her very good results in English ( SAT 675 out of a possible 800 points) and her sister's admission, she attended Smith College , one of the most famous women's colleges in the USA. Steinem feared that he would not be recognized because of the female students from some extremely rich families. The opposite was the case; Steinem was highly regarded as a talented and committed student. She chose the Zeta Beta Psi fraternity .

Steinem once jokingly remarked that she would like to work undercover as a Playboy bunny to infiltrate the Hefner empire. The people around her trusted her and she implemented the resolution. In 1963 she worked as a Playboy bunny in the New York Playboy Club. A Bunny's Tale , published about the experience there, was groundbreaking and instantly made her famous. In the 1985 made television film about it, Steinem was played by Kirstie Alley .

Political activities

Gloria Steinem was on the cover of Ms. Magazine for her 75th birthday in the fall of 2009

After a series of interviews with celebrities, Steinem was given the political mandate to support George McGovern's presidential candidacy . In 1962, she published a year before Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique (dt. The Feminine Mystique and the mystification of women ) published an article in the magazine Esquire , in which she describes the pressure that are under the women to choose between career and marriage. In 1968 she became editor of New York magazine . She was involved in the feminist movement, and the media tried to make her a kind of feminist leader.

Steinem brought other eminent feminists to the front ranks and roamed the country with lawyer Florynce Kennedy. In 1971 she co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and the Women's Action Alliance . In 1972 she launched the feminist magazine Ms. and wrote for it until it was sold in 1978. In 1991, Steinem founded the magazine Choice USA , which in 2001 became part of the Feminist Majority Foundation . Steinem remains, however, as one of the six founding editors in the imprint and works on the board of directors.

Contrary to popular belief, Steinem did not create the feminist slogan: "A woman needs a man as badly as a fish needs a bicycle."

Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women and attended the 1977 National Conference of Women in Houston . When Ms. magazine was revived in 1991, she became an advisory editor. In 1993 she was inducted into the American National Women's Hall of Fame .

In a 1998 newspaper interview on the impeachment proceedings of Bill Clinton , Steinem was asked whether Clinton should be removed from office for perjury and was quoted as saying, “Clinton should be convicted of perjury on Lewinsky in the Paula Jones hearing; maybe also because of the stupidity of answering at all. "

Further life

Steinem in November 2008

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gloria Steinem had to deal with a number of personal blows of fate, most notably the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994 .

In two television reports in the American magazine Frontline and in the magazine Ms. Steinem spoke out against the abuse of children by day-care staff (see, for example, the McMartin case).

On September 3, 2000, at the age of 66, she married David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale . The wedding took place with her friend Wilma Mankiller , the first female tribal chief of the Cherokee Indians . The marriage ended after three years when David Bale died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003 at the age of 62.

In 2005 Gloria Steinem appeared in the documentary I had an abortion (Eng. "I had an abortion") by Jennifer Baumgardner and Gillian Aldrich. There she describes the abortion she had as a young woman in London , where she lived a short time before studying in India.

Steinem was also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (Social Democrats) and a member of the advisory board of Women's Voices. Women Vote .

The Canadian songwriter David Usher processed recordings from speeches by Gloria Steinem in his song "Love Will Save The Day". The beginning of the song is her saying: "It really is a revolution" ("It really is a revolution"). The song ends with the quote: “We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen or those earned; we are really talking about humanism. "(" We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those one has chosen or earned; we are serious about humanity. ") This quote is also found in the credits of the film V for Vendetta use.

Awards (selection)

Fonts (selection)

  • What does emancipated mean? My search for a new feminism. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-426-65094-0 (original Revolution from within , 1992).
  • Unheard of. Reports from 'Ms.' , Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-499-15368-8 (orig. Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions , 1983).
  • My Life on the Road. Translated by Eva Bonné , btb, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-442-75703-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ancestry of Gloria Steinem . Compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner. Retrieved February 3, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b Gloria Steinem, b. 1943 . In: Jewish Women's Archive , accessed July 17, 2014.
  3. ↑ Gloria Steinem . In: Jewish Women's Archive . Retrieved February 4, 2013.
  4. ↑ Gloria Steinem: A Biography, Patricia Cronin Marcello, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 28
  5. ↑ a b Gloria Steinem: A Biography, Patricia Cronin Marcello, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 33 ff
  6. ↑ Gloria Steinem: A Biography, Patricia Cronin Marcello, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, p. 28
  7. ^ Gloria Steinem: A Biography, Patricia Cronin Marcello, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 79ff
  8. ↑ Gloria Steinem's 'a bunny's tale' - 50 years later Steinem's groundbreaking article exposing the 1960s world of Playboy Bunny clubs is as fresh and relevant as ever, Nicolaus Mills, guardian.co.uk, May 26, 2013.
  9. ↑ Steinem Wants Clinton Censured, Not Impeached . Reuters: September 28, 1998. Retrieved June 8, 2007.
  10. ↑ [1]
  11. ↑ [2]
  12. ↑ [3]
  13. ^ Psychiatrist Has License Suspended . Article dated November 8, 1999 by Martha Irvine ( Associated Press )
  14. ↑ Gloria Steinem: 2006
  15. ^ President Obama Names Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients | The White House: Recipient of the Freedom Medal 2013 . Website The White House. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Steinem, Gloria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steinem, Gloria Marie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American feminist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Toledo (Ohio) , Ohio