ISSUE NO. 05: A MANIFESTO BY GLORIA STEINEM

People often ask me how I stay hopeful. I always explain that hope is a form of planning, and suppressing it would have negative consequences in itself. I can’t tell you what to hope for. If anyone had told me this when I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have listened. However, I can share a story from my journey.

In 1968, Clay Felker, first known to me as the talent-obsessed editor of Esquire magazine, where I also was a contributor, invited me to join him and other writers in starting New York Magazine, the first of all the city magazines. I was in the company of Jimmy Breslin, who became known for capturing the characters and local color of Manhattan’s neighborhoods and bars, and Tom Wolfe, always a master of narrative-style and outrageous dress. I was given a column called The City Politic where I could write about such disparate events as the arrival of wounded veterans flown directly home to the United States from the battlefields of Vietnam, or the democratic invention of discos. Before New York, I had been stuck with assignments on things I didn’t care much about, from textured stockings to fancy hair salons.

Then in 1972, thanks to Clay’s generosity in creating a sample issue inside New York Magazine, I and other women writers and editors were able to give birth to Ms. Magazine, the first national magazine for women that was edited, owned and controlled by women, and so went beyond fashion and home.

My part in founding both these magazines meant that sometimes, I had to show up in public to say something about my writing or the publications in general. Since I had become a writer so I didn’t have to talk, this was frightening, yet I knew it was important to do. I was reluctant and not a great speaker, but once I started traveling to do this occasionally, it was hard to stop, creating a time for audience members to take over.

From this on-the-road state of being, I came to see many ways of measuring change. For instance, I often met people over again with a serendipity that felt like fate, or learned the answer to a riddle that was posed a thousand miles away. Months or years later, I might be talking to a total stranger who had no idea I had played a tiny part in the subject they were talking about. Also, a return trip to somewhere I once visited often felt like finishing a novel that I had started a decade ago. My travels as a speaker brought me so many gifts, including the reward of knowing that flowers of change came from seeds once planted and watered or carried from place to place. Some basic global truths, such as respecting women as whole human beings, seemed closer, if not yet in our grasp.

The greatest gift of those decades was witnessing change first hand. I think about 20, 30, even 50 years ago, and the leaps of consciousness I’ve experienced and are now actually here.

For instance:

—When I began, the main way women got into high political office was to marry the man who had a Senate seat or Governorship, and await his illness or death. Now, women can earn political power on our own.

—Then, we bought the idea thatAmerican women were the most equal in the world. Now, we know that the United States may be closer to Afghanistan and Iraq in progress toward democracy.

—Then, some professors said that co-education might not work because it was impossible to learn with such sexual tension in the room. Now, it’s possible for women and men to be friends and colleagues, whether or not there is sex or romance between them.

—Then, being a ‘battered woman’ was just called ‘life,’ and the criminal term “domestic violence” did not yet exist. In 1976, when Ms. had a cover story on domestic violence, the term was just entering mainstream language. Now, we have laws and even shelters for battered women, a reality that first started in England. We are finally beginning to understand that home can be a dangerous place for women. [1]

—Then, rape victims might not be treated as credible witnesses on the grounds that they had “asked for it.” Rape and sexual assault might be excused by what a woman was wearing or where she was walking. Now, we have studied the men who rape, and discovered, at least in the US, that the average rapist is a repeat offender.

—Then, American women were earning on average 59 cents on each dollar earned by men. Now, we earn an average of 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. [2] Still, at the going rate, it will take 50 years before we reach gender parity overall, and an average of 75 years before African American women reach parity with African American men. For Indigenous women in the United States, parity is even more distant. [3]

I know that not all of you reading this were around for those first leaps of consciousness, or even for more recent ones. Yet I hope you know that progress is not a straight line or fate. My country hasn’t even had a female chief of state, unlike other democracies, from Europe to India. Whatever use my story might be to other people, I hope it might contribute to a new democracy that I myself may never see. Social justice movements help us all to become our unique selves, and to challenge conformity by race and sex. Every movement comes out of telling our unique experiences, and discovering they are shared. Together, we have company, power, and also love.

—Gloria Steinem, January 2026, New York City

[1] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
[2] Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz, and Renee Stepler, “The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap,” Pew Research Center.
[3] According to the National Women’s Law Center’s data analysis from 2023, Indigenous women were paid 58 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, costing each woman over $30,000 per year.