Gloria Of The Aisles

There have been many snide comments about American feminist Gloria Steinem’s recent marriage to a South African-born entrepreneur David Bale. Some smirk, saying it’s so typical that she doesn’t practice what she had been preaching; that she is a hypocrite; that in one stroke she has discredited her entire life’s work. Women have been harsher. Camille Paglia says: "Steinem’s marriage is proof of the emotional desperation of ageing feminists, who for over 30 years worshipped the steely career woman and callously trashed stay-at-home moms."

That’s neither fair nor true. In fact, Steinem fought for the rights of stay-at-home moms - that their work of caring for children and maintaining the home be counted as productive work. Steinem’s definition of Feminism is faultless.

She describes it as "the belief that women are full human beings". She fought against the discrimination women faced in the 1950s and 1960s - in society, in the labour market, at home. She fought for equality and that meant women had rights as well as responsibilities. She often said women’s liberation is men’s liberation. So she argued for drafting women and abolition of alimony.

Steinem’s marriage is an affirmation of her lifelong work. She had always argued for freedom of choice. "If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?" she would ask and that in a nutshell captures her attitude to women’s problems. An agent of change, she was dedicated to fashioning a world that fits the needs of the oppressed people, be they women or Blacks. Freedom for women is to be what they want to be - at every stage of their lives - and not what society, parents or peers expect them to be. For many women who became icons in the ‘80s and ‘90s by being steely career women, there is perhaps an emotional need now to return to traditional values: marriage, remarriage, parenting. So, Steinem decides to be a first-time bride at 66.

As a child, Steinem devoured as many as three books a night. But she always believed the best teacher in life is experience. Her feminism was shaped by her own experiences, starting with her miserable childhood. She was poor and from a broken home. She began caring for her mentally ill mother from the age of 10. She cooked, cleaned, kept house, studied and earned extra money tap-dancing. Throughout her childhood, her mother was severely depressed and it was not until she was a teenager that she discovered the cause. Her mother had been a talented journalist who had to abandon her promising career after she got married because society expected her to devote herself full-time to her husband and children. Perhaps it was then that Steinem saw the extreme dangers of restricting women.

Understandably, her mother’s depression convinced her of the need to pursue a career. She broke off her engagement to a college sweetheart and embarked on a journey to India via Britain. Only then did she realise she was pregnant. Abortion was illegal and she had to use various stratagems to terminate her pregnancy. But the trauma, shame and guilt of the experience was so great she couldn’t speak about it for 15 years...till she realised that millions of American women had suffered the same fate and began campaigning for legalising abortion.

Her two years in India when she studied in Delhi and Calcutta Universities shaped her future life - both in terms of the content of her political beliefs as well as the method to pursue them. Her views on the oppression of women solidified and she saw the power of Mahatma Gandhi’s tenet of non-violence. A feminist was born.

She fought against male prejudice, because she was a victim of it. On her return from India, she was denied a job in Life magazine in New York because the editor’s reaction to her was: "We don’t want a pretty girl. We want a writer."

But she not only had beauty, she had brains and wit, which she used to puncture myths. She wrote: "Probably the ultimate myth is that children must have full-time mothers and that liberated women make bad ones. The truth is that most American children seem to be suffering from too much mother and too little father". She pointed out that women are not the weaker sex - they live longer, survived Nazi concentration camps better, withstand surgery better. She ridiculed the paternalistic assumption that what happens to men is "politics", but what happens to women is "culture". Her fight was really against domination, be it by men or the Caucasian race: "A White minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking that a white skin makes people superior - even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles."

Of course, some of her views are contentious. But that doesn’t diminish her contribution to women’s rights. Her outspokenness often made her ideas seem even more controversial. Till a few years ago, she said she had never contemplated marriage or motherhood. She had viewed marriage as pointless and had come up with some memorable lines..."women need men as much as fish needs bicycle" or "I don’t mate in captivity".

At her age she is still capable of mating, though perhaps not procreating. But for one who says her main accomplishments are "making a difference" and "giving birth to ideas", there is perhaps no need to give birth to children. But clearly she no longer sees marriage as captivity. As she said: "Though I’ve worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself...I hope this proves what feminists have always said - that feminism is about the ability to choose what’s right at each time of our lives."

And so, Steinem is changing her shoe because the old one no longer fits.

(The author can be contacted at anitapratap@journalist.com)