Gloria Steinem shaped the way America thought about women and sometimes how women thought about themselves. After her death, it is worth considering whether her vision delivered the liberty for women that she promised.
She was an icon to many women, remarkable in many ways for coolly championing women’s rights. I appreciate her work to fight sexual harassment and discrimination against women in the workplace and for equal pay. Steinem and Concerned Women for America Founder Beverly LaHaye, though completely different in their worldviews, contemporaneously blazed a trail for women to stand on the national stage of public policy.
However, Steinem was greatly misguided on the matter of abortion and tragically misled women into believing that their unique capacity to bear life is something to be feared, not celebrated.
Gloria herself admitted to having one abortion, saying, “It gave me my life. I mean, I wouldn’t have been able to live my life otherwise.” Her worldview led women to believe the lie that they cannot have a successful career or live the lives they want if they have children. It is tragic that this pervasive worldview helped to enable 63 million abortions from Roe v. Wade through 2022, when it was overturned. Today, we finally have the ability to fight for life on a state-by-state basis.
But she was wrong, dead wrong. The reality is that millions of women have successful and fulfilling careers while bringing new life into this world. Athletes like Allyson Felix, Serena Williams, Keri Walsh Jennings, or influencers like Meghan McCain and Alley Beth Stuckey. Most notably, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, mother of seven, has laid to rest that lie, and more will follow.
Women should not feel they must choose between motherhood and their careers. Our society should help women embrace the gift of motherhood and flourish in whatever occupation they want. A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that 60% of women who had abortions would have preferred to carry their pregnancies to term if they had received greater support, resources, or assistance.
She was also wrong about marriage. She viewed marriage as “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” a phrase she popularized. It was certainly misguided and has also led women to needlessly choose between career and marriage. Even she realized her error on this front. An excerpt from her forthcoming memoir is revealing: “Given my generation, I also grew up assuming that I would have to marry my identity, not become it. This scary idea caused me to put off marriage, and to live a temporary life. Not until my forties did I begin to see that a different kind of life was possible, one where I wasn’t bound to fulfill my husband’s dreams and depend on him financially. I learned that the work I loved could also create the future I wanted.” This is problematic both from the idea that a woman cannot flourish in her own God-given calling as a married woman and from shaming other women who want to live their lives forging a paycheck to serve their families. That too is changing.
I am glad she eventually embraced marriage, a trusted partnership that can provide love and stability, mutual satisfaction, and a solid foundation to raise children. Sadly, she was only married for three years before the love of her life, David Bale, tragically died of brain lymphoma.
Correctly, Gloria fought for women to be seen and recognized for their unique qualities and contributions. Today we are going in a completely different direction in which the unique dignity of women is being cast aside in favor of men and of gender identity politics. We see this most recently in the California ruling that undermined fairness in women’s sports. Women should defend women when biological sex is at stake.
The women’s movement that Gloria helped to lead ultimately wanted women to be equal to men, but her definition of equality trampled on the unique role of women to bear life, to be a mother, to desire marriage, to create a family, but in the end did not satisfy. A recent study found that only 12% of leftist women describe themselves as “completely satisfied with life,” but their conservative peers were three times more likely to be happy.
Today, young women are forging their own path again. A cooler version of conservative women are stepping up to the microphone and standing up for God’s unique design. Their workplace struggles continue, but they have seen through the propaganda and have found identity and liberty in the things of God rather than the world, truly choosing a path for themselves, not one that the Left has chosen for them. And for this I say, “you’ve come a long way, Baby!”
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Penny Young Nance is CEO and President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, and author of “7 Rules for Success in Business and Life: A Woman’s Guide.” https://concernedwomen.org/
