Gloria Steinem on feminism, Hillary Clinton, Native American women and her life on the road

NPR News

Gloria Steinem, trailblazing journalist and activist, dies at 92

Juliana Kim

At a time when women were largely limited to domestic roles, Steinem challenged gender stereotypes and championed feminist ideals like equality, sisterhood and reproductive freedom.

Iconic feminist Gloria Steinem grew up on the road. Throughout her childhood, her family would pile into a trailer and head out across the country; her father bought and sold antiques to pay their way.

As an adult, she stayed on the road, traveling across the country, organizing for political and social causes. This is the story of Steinem’s new book, "My Life on The Road."

As a freelance writer, she, like her father, never had a regular job for much of her adult life. Then, when the women’s movement began, she said she couldn’t publish what she wanted to about what was happening. So, she went out on the road, traveling around the country to speak about it.

“That slowly began movement travel, organizing travel, which is so exciting and wonderful because you, first of all, you get to listen … and see how diverse and amazing people are and how magic it is to be in the same space together so that you can empathize with each other,” Steinem said.

That was how most of her time was spent until she was in her 50s, she said, and she found, she was exhausted.

“I think was still living in an either or world,” she said. “The idea that either you travel or you settle down.”

Now, at 82, she said she has discovered that we all need both.

“Even birds have nests,” she said. “I needed a home of my own as well as the road.”

In an interview with KJZZ, Steinem talked about her experience working with Native American women across the country, her work as a prominent feminist for the last five decades, her support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and what she hopes for the next generation of women.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: So I wanted to start by talking about your book. And I wanted to talk about this theme that you talk about a lot in it about how the road is a really masculine place traditionally. Why do you think that is?

GLORIA STEINEM: We think of it as dangerous, and even if not dangerous, we think of women as guarding the hearth and taking care of the home, and men adventuring. It's odd because in fact it turns out if you look at the DNA tests, women are the travelers and men are the stay-at-homes. Although that's more because women marry far away and men stay home, but still nonetheless it's true. But as I was looking at that and thinking about it, I realized that statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for an American woman is in her own home. That's where she is most likely to be beaten or murdered. So statistically speaking, the road is less dangerous than staying at home.

LAUREN GILGER: And one other thing that really popped out at me from your book was, you talk a lot about Native lands. And since we're in Arizona, there's such a huge influence here from Native cultures. I wanted to talk to you about that. So tell us a little bit about your experiences on Native lands and working with Native women. What kind of strikes you about them, and what do you think is important about that?

GLORIA STEINEM: Well, what I began to understand — and I don't pretend to know the 500 different cultures that were and in many cases still are on this continent — was the high state of civilization that was here and the high state of balance and democracy.

The principle of social organization was generally a circle, not a pyramid. Women controlled their own fertility with herbs and abortifacients, understood that very, very well. And that meant that they were in balance from the beginning, because the desire of various male-dominant systems to control reproduction is how we get into this male-dominant stuff in the first place.

But my friends in Indian Country make jokes about it. They say, "What did Columbus consider primitive? Equal women." But I mean Columbus incidentally was a serious bad guy, and he took women captive to be sex slaves for his crew and seemed quite mystified as to why they objected. I mean he was coming from a very patriarchal culture, and that culture obviously by warfare and by disease killed 90% — still the biggest Holocaust in history — 90% of the inhabitants of this subcontinent.

So when I began to meet people like Wilma Mankiller, the chief of the Cherokee Nation, and Rebecca Adamson, and so many other Native American women, it was both incredibly angering and incredibly inspiring at the same time. Because these egalitarian, circular, very developed in terms of science and all kinds of things, creating the biggest earthworks, system of earthworks in the world. Pyramids not of stone, but of mud, but bigger than those in Egypt. Very sophisticated forms of government, the Iroquois Confederacy, from which our U.S. Constitution is modeled after.

So on the one hand, I was inspired because I thought so much that we search for now once was here. And on the other hand, I was just deeply outraged, and I ... realized that it's silly to say this because, of course, the people to whom it happened are the ones who know it way better than I. But I used to say to Wilma, "How can you bear it? How can you bear knowing that less advanced civilizations wiped out or almost wiped out these very advanced civilizations?" And she would always just look at me and nod and say, "We're still here."

LAUREN GILGER: So I don't want to ask the most overarching question, but you talk about the seduction of the road and how you've sort of finally at this point in your life made a home for yourself in New York. What was that instinct in you to travel, and then how did you finally realize that you needed a place that's home?

GLORIA STEINEM: Travel I suppose seemed natural to me because of my childhood, because my family had a little summer resort in southern Michigan. And when it ever got cold, which was around Halloween, then my father would take me out of school and my sister, we'd get in a house trailer and go from trailer park to trailer park to Florida or California, working our way since he never had enough money to make it to the other coast when we started out. But I assumed that this was abnormal, too, because I saw the movies and I saw kids living in houses and I wanted —

LAUREN GILGER: White picket fences?

GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, right. I wanted to live in a house and have a pony like other kids. And then when I got out of college, I went to India for two years. Then I came back, and I was a freelance writer. So like my father, I wasn't ever having a regular job.

And when the women's movement came along, and I couldn't publish what I hoped to publish about this burgeoning excitement, I ended up going out to speak about it because I had published some things in writing for New York Magazine, I was getting invitations.

So against all of my instincts, because I'd spent well into my 30s devoted to never speaking in public, I went out with another woman friend because I couldn't do it by myself. And that slowly began traveling — movement travel, organizing travel. Which is so exciting and wonderful because first of all, you get to listen. I mean, you don't learn while you're talking, you get to listen and see how diverse and amazing people are and how magic it is to be in the same space together, in the same room together so that you can empathize with each other and everything turns into an organizing meeting.

So I did that big time, flat out, most of the time until I was in my 50s. And I did really get exhausted, because I think I was still living in an either/or world, the idea that either you travel or you settle down. And I had not yet realized what I then discovered, which is, of course, we both need both. Even birds have nests. So I needed a home of my own as well as the road.

LAUREN GILGER: You come in full circle there. All right. So we've kind of reached a landmark this year. I know you just said you came from a Hillary Clinton event. So nominating Hillary Clinton this year was a landmark. And I think that that's made this election, though, particularly gendered and the rhetoric around it particularly gendered. And so I wonder, in your view, is that a good thing for women? Is that a bad thing? Is it neither?

GLORIA STEINEM: Well, it depends on the content. If it were Sarah Palin, we would not be celebrating. So this is not about biology. It's about Hillary Clinton who, like Shirley Chisholm, who actually was the first woman to run for the presidency, though only in 14 states — but kind of single-handedly took the white-male-only sign off the White House door — stood for the majority issues of women, people of color, and most of the country.

So first, it's the content. That's the single most important thing. And then, if you also have somebody who knows what it's like to walk around as a female human being for a lifetime or as an African American human being ... it's very helpful because there's a visceral kind of experience that needs to be brought into decision making. I mean, we just need our decision makers to look like the country.

So ... biology is not the most important thing by any means, but if she's representing the majority in a great way and with more experience than anybody else — which she is — it means she brings with her an enormous amount of wisdom and knowledge.

For instance, here's an example. We now can prove that the single biggest determinant of whether a country is violent inside itself or will use military violence against another country is not poverty, not access to natural resources, not religion or even degree of democracy. It's violence against females.

Not because females are more important than males, but because the first step in hierarchy is controlling reproduction and therefore controlling women, so you get these very unequal roles. And that, if we grow up that way, it kind of convinces us that one group of people is born to dominate another or make decisions for the other, and that normalizes race and caste and class and other hierarchical unfortunate categories.

So, this should be an element in our foreign policy, because violence against females is the biggest indicator of all other violence. Only she has made it an element in our foreign policy. If it had been a consideration, say, when we supported the Mujahideen who turned into the Taliban in Afghanistan, we would never have supported them. The whole reason they overturned a more secular regime was because, as the three reasons they gave were, they were allowing girls to go to school, women had to give their permission to be married and women could go to political meetings. Those were the three reasons that they were at war with their own regime, and we supported them and armed them. We were totally on the wrong side. So if we just look at this as an indicator of attitudes and violence, we will have a way, way more effective foreign policy.

LAUREN GILGER: Did you think it would take us this long to have a woman in this position?

GLORIA STEINEM: Yes, I did. I wasn't sure I would live to see it at all.

LAUREN GILGER: So a couple final questions for you. So I'm about to turn 30. And I think a lot of women my age have a really hard time sort of understanding what it used to be like. I hear the stories from my mom, but I don't think I really understand it in that way before women like you kind of came along and forged this path and changed things. What was it like then?

GLORIA STEINEM: It's helpful to know history, and I wish I had known history. It saves a lot of time. But the most important thing is to get mad at injustice right now. Gratitude never radicalized anybody. I did not walk around saying thank you for the vote. And I don't expect you to walk around saying thank you for equal pay legislation, at least we're moving, sort of moving toward equal pay, but we're a long way away. Or for instance, the major way that women got into high political office when I was growing up and in college and even beyond was to marry a guy who had the office they wanted, he died through no fault of theirs, and then — seriously — that was the major way that women got into political office.

So we've come a long distance from that. We have phrases like sexual harassment, which didn't have a name before, or domestic violence, which didn't have a name, was just called life. ... All of these things have changed. But I'm not expecting you to be grateful. I want you to get angry at what's happening to you, and I want to support you in doing something about it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. So along those lines then, so I have a lot of friends who will say, "We don't need to call ourselves feminists. It's not necessary anymore. It's divisive. These problems are mostly solved." Obviously, you don't think that's the case. Where do you think we need to go as women?

GLORIA STEINEM: It's not for me to say, it's for each woman to say what's going on in her life. But are we as safe in the street as men? Do men raise children as much as women do? Are women even getting equal pay? Are women the same age and experience in media? It's just insane to say that we're equal. It's just so clear that we're not. But it's hard sometimes to realize because if we grow up with it, we think it's inevitable or normal.

LAUREN GILGER: And you don't think that's the case. You think that it's obviously changeable.

GLORIA STEINEM: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yes. And where we started talking about Indian Country and original American cultures here and also on other continents, the Khoi and the San in Africa, the Dalits in India, and so on. Most of human history seems to have been cultures that were organized in a circle, that human beings were linked, we were not ranked.

And for instance, ancient, old, still-in-use languages don't even have "he" and "she." They don't divide people by gender. People are people. What a concept! So it's not about going back, but it is about understanding that most of human history wasn't like this. And therefore, it's quite possible that we can go forward in a new way.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, Gloria Steinem, thank you so much for speaking with us.