Gloria Steinem is unmistakable.
Across the room, surrounded by a clutch of admirers, she is utterly ageless — sleek and svelte in black form-fitting pants and top, a gold braided belt with sparkly fleurettes draped along her slender hips.
At 78, she looks, well, fabulous.
“I suppose it’s not very feminist of us to comment on how great she looks,” says the woman next to me, apparently feeling compelled to inject the appropriate corrective.
But at a certain age, isn’t a woman happy to accept a compliment? And haven’t we come a long way, baby?
Judging by the current debate in some Republican circles, one has occasion to pause and wonder.
The purpose of the Thursday evening gathering in a private home was to celebrate “Makers: The Women Who Make America,” a multiplatform video production from PBS, AOL and Makers.com, which launched in February 2012.
The documentary chronicles the history of the women’s movement and features women who have, indeed, made things happen so subsequent generations could do what women were not allowed to do not so long ago — to become doctors, lawyers, legislators, secretaries of state and, perhaps, even president.
Among those assembled were seven of the “Makers” who appear in the film: in addition to Steinem, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; actress Marlo “That Girl” Thomas; Rebecca Adamson, founder of First Peoples Worldwide; Karen Nussbaum, executive director of Working America and founder of 9to5; Malika Saada Saar, executive director, Human Rights Project for Girls; and Muriel Siebert, the first woman to earn a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and namesake of the investment firm Siebert & Co.
That’s quite a lot of feminine — and feminist — power in one room. Quoting John F. Kennedy, Steinem said there hasn’t been so much talent in one place since Thomas Jefferson was alone in a room. “Except now,” she cracked, “we know Sally Hemings was probably doing the writing.”
The centerpiece of the evening was a preview of excerpts from the documentary, which is scheduled for release in February 2013, the 50th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.”
In one interview, Ginsburg recalls being one of nine women in a class of 500 men at Harvard Law School. Ginsburg remembered being herded into a room with the other women where a professor asked why they were taking up seats that could be filled with men. She later transferred to Columbia University, where she finished first in her class.
Other women tell similar barrier-breaking tales. All remind us that women really have come a long way, often, one hastens to mention, with the help of enlightened men. Ginsburg paid homage to her husband, who gave up his own successful law practice to follow her to Washington so she could accept her place on the Supreme Court. He never felt slighted, she said, noting that he was also an excellent cook.
The film, which deserves to be a family event and is certain to spark animated conversations, provides recognition along with reminders that women’s rights didn’t just happen. They were earned by generations of women who refused to accept that they were limited by their gender. Being demure wasn’t part of the strategy. Sometimes, one of the interviewees said, you have to kick down the door.
The value of the film can’t be overstated. We have lived in a feminist world for decades, yet younger generations have no sense of the struggle. And though we are correctly horrified at the disenfranchisement of women in other parts of the world, it is useful to recall that American women’s freedoms are relatively fresh.
Steinem, her fire somewhat tempered by time and grace, noted that loss of memory is the source of oppression. For centuries, women’s stories weren’t told. Women had no place at the campfire, as she put it.
Had there been a “Makers” initiative earlier in our history, said Steinem, we might have known that Mozart had a sister, whom Mozart called “the talented one.” We might have known that before there was Martin Luther King, there was Ella Baker, the African-American civil and human rights activist from the 1930s. That the guide and translator for Lewis and Clark was a woman who made the same trip the men did while pregnant, nursing and carrying a toddler.
The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist, Steinem insists, nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights. Here’s to memory.
Kathleen Parker is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
Glad to see that something is being done to educate young women to the history of our rights. As a non-traditional student, I’ve been in several classes in which the plight of women of other cultures were discussed. The discussion most often turned to how glad the young women are that women in American have always had these rights. Sadly, when I explained to the class that we have had the rights to make our own decisions about our education and our bodies for a relatively short time, I was met with total disbelief and was actually asked questions such as which rock I had been living under.
Even more sadly, when the subject is broached today, young women react with apathy at the possibility of women being returned to second class citizen status through political action. Most common is the statement, “I’m not worried; it’ll never happen.” Hopefully, this group of Makers will be able to educate young women to the fact that not only did it happen, but if it isn’t taken seriously and protected, it will happen again. I’d hate to think that everything that I lost because I stood up for my rights as a human being would be for nothing because the younger generation does not believe that history repeats itself.
Much progress has been made. The current generation has no idea.
I was born in the 1940s. In high school, though I was near the top of my class and hoped to enter medicine, I was told females can’t become doctors. Girls could take biology but for some obscure reason weren’t allowed to take physics or statistics. Girls played basketball on half the regulation court (thus with only one basket)–we followed “girls’ rules.” If the boys needed the gym or field, we were evicted.
All seniors took a standardized test to do with vocational interests. One girl learned the hard way that if a female checked off too many “male” interests, a special scale identified her as unfeminine. She was mortified. Another girl hoped to become a veterinarian. When her parents got wind of this, they staged an intervention–her entire extended family confronted her about this terrible job for a female–she’d have to reach into the backside of a cow to deliver a calf! She recanted and was forgiven.
Want ads were divided into “Men” and “Women.” It was legal–and expected–for women to be paid far less than men for the same exact work.
In college, when I told my (male) advisor I hoped to become a college administrator, he told me to become a Kindergarten teacher (I had not taken teaching prep courses, had no siblings, and had never babysat–zero interest in little kids at that time). When I asked my favorite professor’s advice, he urged me to get married (I was between boyfriends at the time).
A college friend of mine (unmarried) who visited a doctor to discuss contraception was physically shoved out of the office. When she finally did get a prescription, a pharmacist refused to fill it, and refused to return it to her! A friend who had been raped nearly died from a botched back-alley abortion. Another was raped by a “doctor” as a prerequisite for an abortion. A third was raped by her father as punishment for being a fallen woman–she was now fair game, by his standards.
When I tried to discuss a need for more rights for women, with a college classmate, he grew pale and said: “But… but… that would mean the end of the double standard!”