In the late 1960s, she helped create New York magazine, and wrote a column on politics for the publication. Steinem went undercover for the piece, working as a waitress, or a scantily clad “bunny” as they called them, at the club. One of her most famous articles from the time was a 1963 expose on New York City’s Playboy Club for Show magazine. She first worked for Independent Research Service and then established a career for herself as a freelance writer. Pioneering FeministĪfter finishing her degree in 1956, Steinem received a fellowship to study in India. I didn’t want to end up taking care of someone else,” she later told People magazine. “In the 1950s, once you married you became what your husband was, so it seemed like the last choice you’d ever have I’d already been the very small parent of a very big child my mother. It was clear early on that she did not want to follow the most common life path for women in those days marriage and motherhood. At Smith College, she studied government, a non-traditional choice for a woman at that time. Steinem spent six years living with her mother in a rundown home in Toledo before leaving to go to college. With all this traveling, Steinem did not attend school on a regular basis until she was 11.Īround this time, Steinem’s parents divorced and she ended up caring for her mother, Ruth, who suffered from mental illness.

She had an unusual upbringing, spending part of the year in Michigan and the winters in Florida or California. Since the late 1960s, Gloria Steinem has been an outspoken champion of women’s rights.

Gloria steinem life on the road