In 1963, a young journalist entered the Playboy Club in New York disguised as a “bunny.” She wore the tight-fitting costume, ears, tail and high heels, and worked there for several weeks to understand what was really happening to women behind the glossy male fantasy.
What she discovered was far less glamorous: harsh working conditions, problematic pay, scrutiny of women’s bodies and appearance and, above all, a system in which women were required to turn themselves into a product — and smile while doing it.
Gloria Steinem
(Photo: AP)
Steinem, who died several days ago at age 92 at her home in New York, was for more than half a century one of the figures most closely identified with American feminism. Not because she invented it and not because she acted alone. Quite the opposite. One of the most important parts of her legacy is the understanding that social change is never the story of one woman.
She learned that early. Steinem grew up with a mother who suffered from severe mental health problems and was forced at a young age to take on responsibilities that should never have been placed on a child. After college, she traveled to India, where she was exposed to community activism and grassroots organizing in the tradition of Gandhi. Long before she became an icon, she understood that change begins when people sit together and tell each other what is really happening to them.
In 1969 came the 'click'
In 1969, Steinem attended an evening at which women publicly shared their stories of having abortions, at a time when abortion was still illegal in New York. She herself had undergone a clandestine abortion at age 22, but it was only when she listened to other women tell their stories that she realized that an experience perceived as personal, embarrassing and even a private failure was actually part of a system of laws, power and social expectations.
The “click moment” became one of the most important ideas in feminism. It is the moment when a woman realizes that what she has thought for years was solely her own problem may actually be part of something much larger. That lower pay, harassment, fear in the street, violence at home, exclusion from the boardroom or a decision someone else makes about her body are not a random collection of private experiences.
It has a structure. It has a context. And it has a name.
In 1971, Steinem was among the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus. The idea was simple and radical: Women should not just demonstrate outside the room where decisions are made. They should sit inside it.
Around the same time, she was also among the founders of Ms. magazine. Even the name was a statement: A woman should not be defined by whether she is married. Through the magazine’s pages, domestic violence, sexual harassment, rape, abortion and political representation were transformed from subjects kept behind closed doors into public and political issues.
And perhaps this is Steinem’s greatest legacy: taking what happens behind closed doors and bringing it into the public square.
Much has changed since then. Not enough has changed.
Walking backward
In some ways, we are even walking backward. More than 50 years after Steinem and other women fought for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protection for abortion rights, and many states have since imposed strict restrictions and bans. A struggle that seemed to an entire generation to have already been settled has once again become a fight over a basic right. Perhaps this is one of the most painful reminders of Steinem’s death: Women’s rights do not advance in a straight line. What was achieved through struggle can also be taken away.
In December 2023, when we led an international letter by women’s rights leaders calling on the global feminist movement to speak clearly in response to evidence of rape and sexual violence on October 7 — to condemn rape as a weapon of war, demand an investigation and accountability and call for the release of the hostages — Gloria Steinem was the first to sign.
It is a moment I will never forget.
Ayelet Razin Bet-OrPrecisely when parts of the feminist movement around the world struggled to say the obvious, she did not hesitate. A woman who devoted her life to the argument that the personal is political understood then, too, that the pain of Israeli women could not be rendered invisible simply because the political context was complicated.
Her signature meant much more to me than a famous name at the top of a list. It was a reminder of what feminism is supposed to be: universal, courageous and uncompromising in the face of violence against women, wherever they are.
For me, this was the “click” moment Gloria Steinem left me with: understanding that even after 50 years of struggle, sometimes we still have to insist on the most basic thing — to see a woman, believe her and stand by her.
Her final book, An Unexpected Life, is scheduled to be published September 22.
- The writer is an attorney, an expert in advancing gender equality and combating gender-based violence and former director-general of the Authority for the Advancement of the Status of Women.