Gloria Steinem's Unreleased Interview: Life Lessons for the Next Generation

We're honored to sit down with Gloria Steinem today, a personal hero of mine, but also a journalist, activist, and the editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine who's helped generations of women have their own careers.

Today we wanna talk to her about leadership, about building mission-driven teams, and about staying true to your values.

Gloria Steinem, welcome to The Burnouts.

Obviously, so me and Phoebe are in our early 20s and we're just starting our careers and we're Figuring things out. And so we wanted to ask you, what did that period look like for you and what were the biggest things you learned?

The biggest difference for me in my generation and you and yours is that I was definitely supposed to get married and have children. That was the whole idea, especially after World War II when there was an effort to rebuild the population. There, this emphasis on career It was really not present.

And how did you uncover your spark and sense of direction when other people were telling you that was the type of life that you should have?

Well, I kept thinking, okay, I'm definitely going to do that. I'm definitely going to get married and have children.

You did think you were going to do that.

Which of course I didn't. But anyway, that's what I thought. Just not right now. So I was engaged to a very wonderful, exciting man who lived here in New York and had a great life and so on. So I figured I had to go very far away if I wasn't going to be tempted into that. It was so much more interesting than my life. So I fled to India. I had a small scholarship. It was newly independent, so it was a very romantic, inspiring, Gandhi-esque kind of image.

And did you leave the man? You left him and he said—

I did. I did. You did?

Well, how did he react?

I left his mother's engagement ring, which he had given to me, under the pillow and left a note. I really—

Oh, you left a note? Oh my God.

Did he ever contact you or reach out after?

Oh yeah. No, no, no. Right. No, no. We did see each other and continue to be friends. And after I came back to this country and was traveling around the country and speaking, we had a relationship he called same time, next decade.

Aw, I love that.

So when you get to India, 'cause obviously you grew up here, what was it like, the gender roles when you arrived there in kind of this post-Gandhiesque era? Are there still super stringent gender roles like there were here in the US, or was it different?

Well, there was everything. I mean, there were very traditional parts of the country and cultures and families, and also incredibly advanced Indira Gandhi, you know, parts. And I remember one of my first projects was to write Some kind of introduction to Gandhi for my college classmates because there wasn't enough understanding of how important he was at the time. And I went to see a woman, a wonderful wise woman named Kamala Devi Chautopadhyay. And we're sitting on her porch and I'm asking her these questions about Gandhi. And she said, well, my dear, we taught him everything he knew.

Oh, wow.

And it was women who had organized the march to the sea to get salt without taxes and so on. It was women who had started the handicraft movement, which became the big export of India.

And how did you take those learnings when you went back to the United States? What happened next?

Because of the civil rights movement, which meant also a women's movement, there was more activity here than there had been when I left in the 1950s and more hope. It just, the question was how to fit into it. I mean, ultimately we, Florence Kennedy, me, and lots of, you know, a whole group of a dozen women started Ms. Magazine because there were no women's magazines that were not controlled by the advertisers. I mean, you had to write about the advertisers' products. Check out Ann.

Laundry detergent, yeah.

You know, you were, supposed to not even show a woman driving a car because it devalued the car. Okay, I didn't make this up.

Oh my God, that's crazy. So how did you guys end up funding the magazine?

Well, we didn't pay ourselves very good salaries. We raised some money. We became a foundation ultimately so that we could raise money in that way. So starting Ms. Magazine was very Crucial, including to our own lives, because then we had an office that we controlled and could bring our kids to.

And I wanna talk about that iconic famous spread you guys did of all the famous women at the time who'd had abortions to kind of normalize it and bring the narrative to light. 'Cause it's not something, you know, even today we talk about in society. So many women we know have had abortions. It's a normal healthcare procedure we don't talk about. I'm so curious, like when doing that spread, like How many people did you have to reach out to? Were people, when you asked people for their abortion stories, was everyone super supportive? Did you face a lot of rejection early on when trying to get those stories? What did that look like?

First of all, we were following the example of Simone de Beauvoir in France who had done this. So we were not the first. Secondly, there had been abortion speakouts where, you know, women, not necessarily movement women at all, came forward to say, I have had an abortion and I demand its legalization, that it be safe. And so those speakouts were happening certainly in New York and I think in most other cities too. And in a way that became, I mean, that was the first big spread in the magazine and that just to be able to make decisions over our own bodies became very obvious and central. And crucial for our health.

How do you see kind of the rollback of abortion rights today? And like, what do we do as young women who are feeling almost hopeless? Like, hey, this really, you know, I feel like we've been set back so far.

Well, first of all, we make sure that a woman who needs and wants an abortion can get one. So we help her travel from a state where she may not be able to, to a state where she can. And that is a lot of sacrifice and should not happen. She should be able to go to the doctor next door. But it's still way more possible than it used to be. I mean, there was a clinic, an abortion clinic, or a clinic that supplied abortions on my corner here. And I used to see women driving up in old battered cars from distant states and going in and coming out and getting a bottle of wine to celebrate. That's what I mean. You know, that went on for years and we just tried to support each other. And we had great women like Florence Kennedy, the lawyer and activist, and who would say if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament and all the things that—

True.

Encouraged us.

I also wanna return back to something you said earlier in the conversation where you said people were telling you like, you need to get married and have kids. It's so interesting 'cause I was talking to Phoebe the other day. I was calling someone who I looked up to who's very well respected in the business world. And he asked me, what's gonna happen to your company when you get married and have kids? And in the moment, I honestly didn't know how to respond. I was just so—

You could just say to him, that's an illegal question.

Yeah. I was like, I don't think you can ask this.

Would you ask that question of a man?

No.

Definitely not. But in situations like that, I mean, how do you respond to that while still staying professional?

I remember certain moments. I mean, there was a male editor At Look Magazine, I think, a very nice guy, a friend and a colleague who, when I became more active in the women's movement, called me up and said, Gloria, I didn't know you were a lesbian.

No way.

Yes.

What did you say?

I just laughed. I mean, I tried to explain to him that this was just— yes, there were lesbians and heterosexuals. There were all kinds of women, Black, white, everybody. Yeah.

You're like, I'm not lesbian, but I sure wouldn't be into you. I'll tell you that much.

And I'm curious, So as your career has evolved, I know now you have the Gloria Foundation. I'd love if you could share more about like what does your current focus look like?

Well, I do. The Gloria Foundation is the, you know, the name, but I just wanna leave. I own 3 floors of this building. There are 2 perfectly healthy women on floors 4 and 5, but eventually I would like to be able to leave this as a women's building for a place to stay when people are here from another country, for a place to have meetings. I saw in London once a building, a brownstone like this, and it had a plaque on it. It was— and I've always wanted to replicate that.

Oh, that's so nice.

I love that.

I'd love if you could share more about what did your early collaboration look like with all the women that you worked with? I think something people always say to me and Phoebe is, how do you guys work together? You're both such like alpha women, you're so opinionated, don't you have disagreements? What did that look like for you?

Agreements you don't learn from. You learn from disagreements. So regarding them as an asset is helpful for openers. You don't learn from sameness, you learn from diversity. Just to make sure that everybody has an equal opportunity to talk. I mean, it's only lethal, I think, When some people are just ridden over and not able to say what their opinions are.

And I'm curious, did you ever face in the workplace someone who had very different opinions than you? How did you deal with that? I think it can kind of sometimes be stigmatized to talk about politics with your coworkers, especially if you find out someone has a completely different opinion than you. Was that ever something that you had to navigate?

Well, I was never in a job where I was actually dependent.

So were you always really outspoken in everything that you did?

I don't know if I would call it outspoken, but I pretty much always felt I could say what I wanted to say. And I guess part of it was a childhood in which, first of all, I was in love with Louisa May Alcott. And she was a great, you know, she wrote Little Women. And she was a great feminist and civil rights, anti-racist. racist person of her day. So that was kind of helpful because I sort of had her in my head. Secondly, I didn't get it from my family. I mean, my father was a— had 2 points of pride. He never wore a hat. He never had a job. Because he was either running a dance hall in the summertime or being an antique dealer in the wintertime. And my mother had been a newspaper reporter, which she loved and adored.

Let's talk about fashion. How do you think, like, fashion at all has, you know, hindered or helped, like, the feminist movement? And what kind of role do you think it plays?

Hard to know, isn't it? Because I think most of the fashion money probably doesn't go to women. I mean, it goes to male designers, manufacturers. It's a rare industry that welcomes women, but I'm not sure it still treats women equally.

And what about finding your personal sense of style as like a sort of self-expression? Like, I feel like the clothes you wear can be very personal, but also very political. Was that ever something that you leaned into when you were deciding what to wear, if you were like attending a protest or—

Well, I'm trying to— I mean, the first example of it for me was not jeans, which I wear all the time now, but was The miniskirt. The miniskirt and boots. Well, it sure beat high heels.

That's true.

Yeah. I mean, it was clear to me that high heels were, you know, not an invention that set women free, to put it mildly. Right.

Like, what do you think about how political movements have evolved since, like, back when you were really at the forefront of it, when either, like, the feminist movement or just, like, recent political uprisings that we've seen?

We've never had a woman in the White House. How crazy is that?

Why do you think that is?

Bias.

Yeah.

I mean, Shirley Chisholm ran for president, and though I think she was on the ballot in only 14 states, we all ran as her delegates and she had a lot of influence. Bella Abzug could and should have been president.

How can we support more young women to feel like they can do things like that, run for president, run for public office? I think it takes a huge sense of courage that can often be lacking. And so how do we inspire more young women?

Well, we can at least talk about it. We can at least list the countries that have had a female president. And why aren't we among them?

True.

Right. And why have we had only one African American president when the country is sort of by now half people of color? It's important to talk about it because we are missing talent.

One thing kind of like my mom keeps saying to me in the Like wave of, you know, after Roe being rolled back and all of this, like is getting angry, staying angry and staying mad, but like actually using that to fuel action to do something. But I'm really curious how you deal with burnout, especially because, I mean, you've been doing this work for decades.

Well, you may need to rest. I mean, everybody needs to rest. We can't be out there all the time. And having friends, I would say, and a talking circle like this, right? It's very important.

I think something though that we're always told is, oh, like your 20s are supposed to be the best time of your life. And what has surprised you as you've gotten older? Like, what do you think has surprised you about how you've evolved?

Well, I suppose when I was much younger, I would've thought that, oh yes, I'll definitely get married and have children, just not right now. So, and of course, gradually you discover that not everybody has to live the same way. You can continue to Make choices.

Yeah. My aunt, the 2 ex-husbands, no kids, living her best life. Great role model for me. Have you written about her? I haven't written about her. Her joke is she always calls me and it's like, someone needs to write my book and I think it needs to be you.

Well, okay.

Maybe you should.

Maybe I should.

If not a book, at least a chapter, because you could write a whole book with each chapter devoted to a woman you admire.

That's beautiful.

I love that idea.

I love that too.

I mean, I think it's also really interesting when you look at the journeys of people like this, 'cause I think for me, if I didn't have such a strong female role model growing up who was completely self-made, paid her own bills, no husband, no kids, and was just so happy and was so career-driven, I don't think I would be the way that I am today. Where even when I was in school and all my friends would ask me the question of like, oh, like, do you have a boyfriend? Like, what are the boys that you're seeing? I found it so surprising because even if my family is pretty traditional, that was never something that we talked about or cared about. It was always like, how are you doing in school? What is your plan? What do you wanna do with your life? What are your goals and dreams? And I think I feel very lucky that I was able to have that type of support. Like, I can't imagine what it must have been for you with people constantly pressuring you to—

Mm-hmm.

go in a direction that you didn't think made sense for your life.

No. Well, I had it sort of backward from my mother, as I was saying, because when I got engaged to this very nice guy, she said, yes, you know, good thing you get married now because if you get out there working for a while and discover how interesting it is, you'll never get married. Okay. So this was clearly a message.

So she agreed, like she thought that was something that could happen. You said, okay, bye. No.

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't think she was trying to influence me exactly. I mean, she had been a journalist, as I was saying, before she got married, right?

I think one of the last questions we wanna ask is around legacy. As you're thinking about now and future generations of waves of feminism, how do you think about what legacy you wanna leave and how can we contribute to that?

You know, I don't think I can know. I mean, I, Just try to do my best and have a good time and live in the moment and leave this house maybe as a legacy, as a place to meet. But I don't think you can determine your legacy.

What can we do to keep rolling the change that you've already created? I mean, I think a huge part of it—

Anything you fucking well please.

Amen. Amen.

Amen.

And like, what would be your last piece of advice to other young women who are just starting their careers? Like, what's the biggest advice that you would give them?

Do what gives you so much joy that you forget what time it is while you're doing it.

Well, Gloria, thank you so much for your time. You've inspired generations of women and generations of women to come, and I'm so excited for people to hear your words of advice.

No, well, thank you for coming and carrying it all forward. Thank you.