{"id":69580,"date":"2012-12-03T15:41:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T20:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=69580"},"modified":"2012-12-12T08:40:23","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T13:40:23","slug":"gloria-steinem-offers-students-living-lessons-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/12\/gloria-steinem-offers-students-living-lessons-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Gloria Steinem Offers Students Living Lessons in History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gloria<\/a>
Gloria Steinem speaks with a group of students at the Women’s Center on Nov. 30. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. Magazine<\/em> and one of the most prominent leaders of the women\u2019s movement, answered questions and provided living history lessons to a group of students actively involved with the Women\u2019s Center, as part of the Center\u2019s 40th anniversary program on Friday.<\/p>\n

Sitting among a circle of about 20 students in the Center\u2019s program room, Steinem spent more than an hour discussing issues ranging from politics and the Vietnam War to economic parity and sexuality, before delivering remarks to a capacity audience in the Student Union Theatre.<\/p>\n

\"Steinem,<\/a>
Steinem, left, discusses issues ranging from politics and the Vietnam War to economic parity and sexuality with a group of students. Seated next to her is Kathy Fischer, associate director of the Women’s Center. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Answering a question about the development of activism for women\u2019s rights, Steinem said the women\u2019s movement resulted from the treatment of women who were part of the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s. She said male participants in the protests treated women \u201cjust the way corporations did,\u201d often limiting their role to making copies of protest fliers and serving coffee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat really was the birth of the understanding that there needed to be an autonomous women\u2019s movement,\u201d Steinem said, noting that Betty Friedan\u2019s landmark book The Feminine Mystique<\/em> (1963) had addressed college-educated women sitting in the suburbs realizing there must be something more to life. \u201cMore came out of the civil rights and anti-war movements.\u201d<\/p>\n

One student asked about her experience protesting against the Vietnam conflict, something that today\u2019s young people read about in history books, and noted that the same kind of protests do not occur now.<\/p>\n

Steinem said today\u2019s anti-war efforts are actually more effective, because one of the main issues in the Vietnam protests was the drafting of Americans to serve in the military as part of the war effort.<\/p>\n

\"Gloria<\/a>
Gloria Steinem holds up a recently published book that examines the treatment of women in society in relation to the incidence of conflict and war, during a public lecture in the Student Union Theatre on Nov. 30. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was not as good as it is now, [when] we turned against two wars in half the time, in terms of the national feelings against Iraq and Afghanistan,\u201d she said. \u201cI do think we may romanticize that time in the past. It was actually all about the draft \u2026 When the draft disappeared a lot of the anti-war feeling went. It was exhilarating and it was brave, but I would say it was more limited than similar kinds of movements we see now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a discussion about economic disparity between men and women, Steinem said equal pay for women could be \u201cthe biggest, most effective economic stimulus this country could possibly have,\u201d pumping $200 billion into the national economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose women are going to spend the money,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to send it to Switzerland or invest it in China. They\u2019re going to spend it, and it\u2019s going to create jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the example of parking lot attendants \u2013 who are men \u2013 making more money than childcare givers \u2013 who are women, Steinem said that after equal pay, there needs to be a value placed on \u201call productive human work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now a third of the work that is caregiving, whether it\u2019s raising children, taking care of relatives or invalids, [takes place in the home]\u201d she said. \u201cThe country could not go on without it. It has no economic value. You could attribute that replacement level and economic value \u2026 and make that tax deductible. Whether it\u2019s men or women, it\u2019s in the national interest because usually care given in the home is better and less expensive than institutionalized care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Steinem's<\/a>
Steinem’s talk was part of the Women’s Center’s 40th anniversary celebration. (Ariel Dowski ’14 (CLAS)\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turning to politics, Steinem noted that often when she speaks on a university campus, she will be asked why some groups are against lesbians and birth control.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose groups really believe that human sexuality is only moral and OK if it\u2019s directed toward having children and inside patriarchal marriage, so the children are properly owned,\u201d she said. \u201cThey object to any de-linkage of sexual expression from reproduction. That is contrary to human nature. Sexuality has always been a way we expressed caring, love, closeness, and pleasure, not only a way we have children. Women have always known how to control their own fertility and whether and when to have children.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that social movements continue to be spoken of as isolated entities, \u201cstill spoken of as in silos, as if they are separate, without enough explanation of the connections.\u201d She said this was apparent during the 2008 Presidential election, when Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were competing in the Democratic primary and the news media portrayed the candidates as representing separate constituencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had to be you were putting sex over race, or race over sex,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was profoundly destructive.\u201d<\/p>\n

[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wMQNNDYCmN4′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steinem, one of the most influential activists in modern American history, discussed issues ranging from politics and the Vietnam War to economic parity and sexuality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":69588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,70],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-69580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 11:55:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69978,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69580\/revisions\/69978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/69588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69580"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=69580"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}