Gloria Steinem HARDtalk

woman and four children. My guest today is one of the most

influential women in the history of the modern feminist movement.

Gloria Steinem grew up in America, where women were expected to put

husbands and children first. But that was never her intention. She

forged a successful career as a writer. She co-founded Ms magazine

and became one of the most -- one of the world's best-known

campaigners for gender equality. How much of what she hoped for and

Gloria Steinem, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you. Does a feminist cause

feel as urgent to you today as it did when you roast international

prominence in the late 60s and early 70s? More. When we began, we

were talking more about personal injustices, about pay, about

domestic violence, about things that were within our camp. Now we

have come to understand through length of work and also through

International Studies that the single most important factor her in

whether a country is violent within itself all willing to use military

violence against other countries is violence against females. Because

that normalises... It is not that female life is worth more than male

life, it is not, but that subject object conquered/conqueror paradigm

in varying degrees normalises it everywhere else. That now has been

proved in debt. In a way, we have gone deeper in seeing how much more

important it is. Are you saying the priorities of the women's movement,

if I can loosely call it that, have fundamentally changed, away from

the nuts and bolts of equal pay, equal work and control of futility?

To something that is perhaps less tangible? No. What I am saying is

that the root of democracy outside the home is democracy inside the

home. It is therefore even more important. The root of violence

elsewhere is the normalisation of violence in an intimate way in the

home. When you put it like that, it makes me wonder whether most women

these days, in Western, developed societies, would feel the same way.

When you talk about the importance of democracy in the home, wood and

most woman in the developed world today feel they have democracy? --

would not most women. Absolutely not! Do men raise children as much

as women? Are but do they feel oppressed like they did in the 60s

and 70s? More so. When we started, we did not even have a word for

domestic violence. It was just called life. People would

constantly say, why didn't she leave? Now we understand domestic

violence is original violence. In my country, if you count up all the

people who were killed in 9/11, plus Americans in Iraq and

Afghanistan, and you count all the women who were murdered by their

husbands and boyfriends in the same amount of time, more women were

murdered by their husbands and boyfriends than were killed in

those three events. Now, we understand it is not natural or

normal. It is not inevitable. It is fundamental and must change. Some

people watching this, who perhaps are of a generation that came of

age in the last 10-20 years, will not know so much about the role you

played, particularly in the late 60s and 70s and 80s and moving on

to now, in the international women's movement. I want to take

you right back to your own upbringing and the degree to which

that tough upbringing with a mother who became mentally very ill,

parents who split, you given huge responsibilities very down, how

much has that influenced your thinking? We are all like Russian

dolls. We still have our earlier selves within us. Because I saw a

mother who was... Before I was born, who had to give up... She was an

extremely talented piney a journalist who had to give up her

work that she deeply loved, which I only learned later on. That was the

source of her depression. Her -- I am sure that in some ways I am

living out the UN lived life of my mother. I think a lot of us were.

On the other hand, I was a loved child. It isn't as if I suffered as

many children do from being unloved or even having violence directed at

them. In retrospect, I realise something was very important.

Because we were wandering around until I was about 10-11 and I was

not going to school regularly, I escaped her brainwashing. I escaped,

especially in the years, an idea of what boys and girls did. -- escaped

a brainwashing. Unless it is crashed out of us, we have a sense

of fairness. You hear children in every language saying, it is not

fair. You are not the boss of me. It did not quite get crushed out of

me. I do not want to play a psychologist but one other element

in your upbringing seems to be that you seemed to have developed a

determination not to be trapped by your personal circumstances. To

ensure in the way you live your life that you would be free to

pursue what he regarded as really important, regardless of feminine

ties to everything else. Is that true? It is. I grew up in the 50s,

when marriage socially and legally was extremely unequal. Extremely

unequal. You have to go to court to get your own name back. I believe -

- believed this. I thought the only choice I had in changing my life

was the choice of the man I married because then I would live his life.

If you really believe that, it makes it very daunting to get

married because it is your last choice in life. It is like death.

You decided not to. I did not exactly decide not to. I kept

saying, there was no women's movement when I was growing up, so

I said I would do that, I am definitely doing that, but not

right now. Not by now became... had going. Became the permanent

until later in life. Right. other thing, a portion. You have

been very open about the fact, within your youth when you were

about 22... I have been grateful to London for the rest of my life.

Many people, not least in your own country, find the word positive,

that you used about your abortion, a difficult thing. The majority

agree completely. Something like 60%. That it's a decision to be

made by women and not the government. For me, it was the

first time that I took control of my own life and said, I am not just

going to be passive and wait for things to happen to me. The

physician here who I found in the Yellow Pages, after a long

suffering search, he was such a wonderful man. He said, all right,

I will help you. But you must promise me two things. One, it will

never tell anyone you name and he will do what you want with your

life. I remember him with gratitude to this day. Was there a conscious

decision then war may be late at that actually, given what you

wanted to do, you would not have children at all? It would be

impossible? No. To have children and do what you wanted to do?

Things are gradual. You don't just wake up in the morning and say... I

assumed... I kept saying I would have children but not now. And it

kept receding into the distance. The great thing was that then the

women's movement came along and I finally realised that not everyone

has to do the same thing. Is that not a major revelation? Sticking

with abortion. It remains front and centre in your campaign in life.

Only because of the opposition. I did not choose it to the front and

centre, the opposition chose it for me. That leads me to the state of

the debate in the US. One institute which looks at reproductive rights

in the US has calculated that more than 50% of women in reproductive -

- of reproductive age today leaving states that are now hostile to the

nation of legal abortion in the US. We have just seen mass rallies in

Washington DC in the last few weeks. Tens of thousands of people, many

of them young women, brandishing banners saying, an end to road

versus Wade. Do you believe there is a very real threat that that

Supreme Court ruling could end? have already lost it in a lot of

states. Women in many states have to travel elsewhere in order to

find a safer legal abortion. Our state legislatures are controlled

often, not always, but controlled by the interest they regulate. So

there -- they are more right-wing than the federal government. And so

we have kept the Federal decision. But 85% of our counties don't offer

abortion. So women often have to travel. But here is the basic fact.

This whole political structure that we are describing call -- called

patriarchy and racism and class, all the stuff that makes it even

more inflexible, is about controlling reproduction. It is the

fundamental reason. If women did not have a womb, we would be fine.

It is the fundamental reason for this political struggle. I just

want you to explain what is going on. When there are so many people,

young and highly educated women,... They are not that many. It's a

minority. Here is the difference. But there are not many women who

oppose abortion. Are you saying they are suffering from a false

learned that... Or not to have an abortion. Then there opinion often

changes and in any case it's a minority. Let me ask you about

sexuality. Clearly related to reproductive rights. But this is

something that I have noticed has become increasingly dominant for

many feminists, particularly in the United States and the UK as well,

the notion that there is hyper sexualised Asian going on in our

corrosive corrosive for young girls. --

centralisation. Even pre-pubescent girls. That the way in which

females are characterised is a new form of very dangerous sexism.

is not exactly a new form. In the 1800s, you could get married at 12

in New York. We have all had problems at some point in history

of patriarchy. But in your own personal life, even as a

campaigning journalist, you spend a lot of time campaigning against the

sort of sexuality peddled by people like Hugh Hefner. You once dressed

I exposed the working conditions at the Playboy Club which was so

horrendous that they convinced young women that they had to have

an internal gynaecological exam to serve that food. How crazy is that?

At least they stopped doing that. want to be clear about the argument.

You say that you want to be supportive of women exploring their

sexuality... Yes. We are talking about their free will. If you can

only get a job in three-inch heels, falling out of your costume falling

food, then that is not the... Men do not have to fall out of their

costumes to serve food. We are talking about free will and freely

expressed a sexuality. What about those women who say that they are

expressing their free will when they become glamour models, when

they become, in one way or another, but they are exploiting the sex

business for their own ends and that is a form of rent and how

Ahmed for them? -- and Hamed. support free choice for all women

but that is not a free choice when the Miss America contest in the US

is still the single greatest source of scholarship money for women in

the US. That is crazy. If a beauty contest was the single greatest

source of scholarship money for men, men would be parading around in

bathing suits as well because education is expensive. The problem

is not the individual who is trying to do the best she can, or it is

not usually the individual within the system, it is trying to change

the system. Let us speak about politics a little more. You were a

big supporter of Hillary Clinton. He wanted to see her become the

first female president. I knew she wouldn't bat I supported her.

could you know that she wouldn't? She got very close? I did not know,

no-one knows the outcome of an election but I never believed that

she could become President or that any woman could become President at

that point because we are raised by women. Men and women are mostly

raised by women and it means that in a deep way, we associate female

authority with childhood. Although we, as women, have our own examples

to the contrary, there are many men and you have seen some of our big,

grown-up series newsmen on television saying things such as, I

a cross my legs every time I see Hillary Clinton and she reminds me

of my first wife, saying things that they surely regret. They had

not seen an authoritative woman since they were eight years old.

They were very upset and confused by seeing an authoritative woman.

Forgive me but we just saw Hillary woman -- Hillary Clinton cross the

world as the US Secretary of State. I used Cilcain but she has no

chance of becoming President? think that she could. She has just

gained more experience. It has changed. Here is why. First, she

lost and people of women when they lose. Also because she, herself,

has been able to provide the example in such a global and

interesting way of an female human at her job that she herself has

changed our idea of what women can do even though we are still raised

by women more than men. fascinated by the degree to which

you believe that political d'etat might be able to change the

situation. We spoke about trying to control pornography. Speaking of

are legislated quotas for women in politics. In elected Chambers,

Parliament. What we have seen in countries as far afield as Algeria

or, Belgium, and in Rwanda for example. More than 50% of the

parliamentary is women. A lot of men died. In Rwanda that is the

case but in case but inuntries as well. They have got up to 40% female

representation in Parliament because they had demanded it

through quotas. In the US in the House of Representatives there

around 60% women. Is it time for the US to go for quotas? It is not

a bad idea. It is not a panic Keir. If you have a quota, then the

people who were in power who were usually men, say that if you want a

woman, I will give your woman. It is an Abedin Foreman. It is a

cousin or a daughter or something. -- obedient woman. It is not about

biology but about consciousness. How much has changed in the US?

had many feminist men. Every big movement, deep movement, takes a

century to make a mark. The suffragettes and the abolition us

away in my country was largely around the world and not in every

country but almost every country took one century to begin to see

women as citizens and human beings and the voters. This movement is

also going to take one century. We are 40 years into it. It has come a

huge distance and I am very moved by how, by what distance we have

come. We have at least an equal distance to go. When you look at

how far it there is to go, your eyes may need to live from Western

countries and focus much more on the developing world. Some of the

profound existential issues freedom from violence and the most

basic legal rights that women in many countries in the developing

world simply do not enjoy. It has always been, the women's movement

in the suffragist era and now, has always been a global movement and

still is. It especially was for me because when I first got out of

college, I lived in India for two years and had all these friends

there. I learned much of what I know there -- from Indian women who

had a massive women's movement. As one of the women that said Timmy, a

great woman, how Gandhi's tactics were well suited to women around

the world. She said that they taught him everything that he knew.

The tactics that Gandhi adapted. He greatly admired and adopted the

tactics of the women in India. We had been active around the world

and we have much more loyalty to each other's movements and the to

Tyrone government. I want to end by coming back to reflections on your

own personal philosophy. Do you regard yourself as a revolutionary?

That is too tame, I think. To tame! You have told me that I'm

underestimating the degree to which the US is still a patriarchy.

the systems that we see in the US and in the Western world still need

to be ripped down and rebuilt from the bottom? No, no, here is what I

think that the women's movement in general is more likely - I don't

want to speak to everybody - more likely to understand than most

hierarchical organisations. It is what Marx and Engels got wrong,

which is at the end does not justified the means - the means are

the end. We want to transform, I would not use a word like ripped or

defeated or killed or murdered or anything like that, because if you

do that then you replicate the problem. It is transformed. It is

evolutionary. It is transformation. It has more of a debt to get to

structures in which we are linked, not rank. We are linked with nature.

We are linked with each other. We are not ranked in this insane,

wasteful, hierarchical way. I want to say that their organisations of

great preciousness to me that are in my country, in your country, in

Kenya, equality now is much of the reason that we are here. They have

a global board and an International Board. They're working on all the

issues which you have spoken about. We are organised co-operatively

between and among women and men in many different countries. I just

wonder whether you believe that to our eyes successfully taking women

and men with you today in the movement as you work... Much more!

Are you kidding? Book of public opinion polls. In every country, we

had many fewer people and were regarded as crazy people, crazy

women especially, and I'm now on majority movement. It has grown

immensely. In that time that I have been around and it will grow after