By now, if your feed is anything like mine (and it may not be), you’ve seen hundreds of Gloria Steinem stories. This is mine.
I first met her in 2003, at the University of Kansas. I had just led a voter registration drive on campus, and it got a lot of attention. So the school’s Provost invited me to a private dinner before Gloria gave a much larger speech.
As it turns out, it was my 21st birthday. I didn’t know it then, but it would be the start of a 20 year span where I would be influenced by Gloria Steinem.
That night, my mom and my aunts were all in town. There wasn’t room for them in the dinner. So, naturally, I asked Gloria if she would go even further and meet us for a toast later that evening, after her speech. Sure, she told me, as long as she could bring her friends.
Over the years, I have learned that acts of kindness like this were pretty standard for Gloria. She was a feminist icon and yet she always made time. She was once asked if she would pass the torch. She responded with something to the effect that she didn’t need to pass it, because she used her torch to light up hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of women’s torches.
I was just one of them.
An Unforgettable Night
My crew met Gloria’s crew at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, a fairly chi-chi bar by the standards of a college town. We had wine. I got to sit next to her and peppered her with questions. I had so many.
By then, she was in her late 60s. She’d spent more than 40 years of her life in the trenches of political and gender fights. She had traveled the world, witnessed injustice, written about it, spoke about it.
I wanted to know everything.
Her friends in Kansas turned out to be incredible writers, academics, women I would stay in touch with and follow. (And women who were involved in securing Kansas’ spot as the first state in a post Roe era to legalize abortion.)
It was so special to have a personal audience with this woman, but what I remember most from that evening was not a private moment, but something that happened during her speech. In the audience, there was a mom with a baby, and as babies tend to do, the baby started to cry. The mother got up to leave when Gloria stopped her.
Babies Cry, she said. Stay.
Gloria wanted this mother, who obviously tried so hard to be there, to get to stay. And she did.
I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about Gloria Steinem, mostly by people who have never experienced meeting her. Some believe that she, herself not a mother, and the movement she led was against motherhood, or traditional values. That’s the opposite of my experience. She was a woman who supported women. Who supported mothers. And wanted mothers to have the support they deserved, whether they found that in a traditional setting or needed to build it themselves.
Taking Flight
A few months later I got an invitation to join a leadership retreat Gloria was hosting in Washington, D.C. I was honored. For a girl from Galesburg, Illinois by way of Kansas, this invitation was a big deal.
I remember two things about the retreat: It was the most pleasant experience I’d had in Washington D.C. (and it’s stayed that way, long after the retreat), and the women I met were incredible. Gloria’s women came from every state across America. All with energy and drive to work on leveling the imbalance of power, a drive for women to be able to reach any level they wanted. All of us wanted to learn.
After that, I received a job offer of sorts. The request was to organize buses from Kansas and Missouri to a March on Washington. I agreed.
Friends who had helped with the voter registration drive, who were there with me to meet Gloria, stepped up to help again. We organized the largest contingent of buses. We sold more tickets than other regions, they redirected buses to our region, having not sold the tickets from other regions.
We drove hours from Kansas to Missouri, from Missouri to DC. We slept on the floor of the YMCA. I had to fight to get access to the showers for our large contingent.
The next day, we showed up at the mall and marched. We stayed for many of the speeches, but in order to get people back to Missouri and Kansas by the time we promised we needed to start driving earlier than the conclusion. Some were disappointed, angry, I think a few dropped off.
Trying to get seven buses of activists on the same page was definitely like herding cats.
I remember sitting there that night and reflecting, there has to be a more effective way to bring about change. But also grateful that my meeting with Gloria had put me here.
Little did I know five years later I would find myself, having won another campaign, in the White House working for Barack Obama.
A White House Reunion
I can trace the start of my career as a political activist to meeting Gloria. Years later, it included an incredible full-circle moment.
President Obama gave Gloria Steinem the Medal of Freedom. In my role, I rarely made my way over to these ceremonies. My job was to set the stage, not watch the product. I made an exception for this one, though. I wanted to see Gloria again, thank her for lighting my torch, so to speak.
It was 10 years later, 2013. I had just had my first son. She genuinely seemed to remember me. I talked to her and a friend who was with her. She was warm, incredibly grateful for the honor of the President, and, she made sure to point out, still on her journey for change. She never rested.
The medal wasn’t a finish line. It was like she knew we had so much further to go.
She continued hosting events, speaking at events, engaging people for years to come. I had one more opportunity to see her, in 2023, at an event in New York City. It was the last chance I had to spend time with her.
She had come so far: when Gloria started her activism, newspapers still ran separate “Help Wanted – Male” and “Help Wanted – Female” columns, so women couldn’t even apply for half the jobs in the paper. In 1972, the year she co-founded Ms. magazine, a woman running a major American corporation was rare enough to make the news. This year a record 55 women run Fortune 500 companies. Only 11 percent but 55 more than when Gloria got her start.
In 1969 there were 10 women in Congress. In 2023 when we met the last time there were 149 women in Congress.
Work To Do
One takeaway from 20 years of connection with Gloria Steinem is that the work is never done. She realized that in lighting so many others’ torches.
Some of that unfinished work is easy to name: we still haven’t passed the long awaited and very popular Equal Rights Amendment to enshrine women in the Constitution. We still don’t value a mother’s contribution nearly enough. And so many women still tell stories of being brushed aside, or worse.
I think about the changes that happened during Gloria Steinem’s lifetime, and I wonder what could happen in the lifetimes of everyone whose torch she lit. She built an army for a reason. So to me the question isn’t how we honor her memory, it’s how we continue the work of her life. I for one hope we could begin with putting the ERA in the Constitution where it belongs.