Gloria Steinem - On Feminism

"The kind of writing I’d like to do has to do with both theory and reporting. Thesetwo things have to be hooked up. I think that’s what feminism has to contribute to the world at large; that you can’t just write theory out of no reality, that you have to start as we started, in consciousness-raising groups, and say, Here’s the real situation and here’s the theoretical conclusions that the real situation leads to. The separation between experience and theory is part of the whole split between the intellectual and emotional that’s such a problem. I mean, it just doesn’t exist. It’s part of the male/ female split in our culture that has caused us to cut off qualities in ourselves. It’s not that there aren’t two sides to some things. I’m sure there are, but there aren’t two sides to everything. There are eleven, or a hundred and fourteen or one, and it’s a gross distortion of reality to say there are two sides or to say there has to be a winner or a loser. Reality is much more diverse and interesting than that, and all the splits of intellect and emotion and body and mind should be mended. Feminism is the belief that women are full human beings. It’s simple justice." Gloria Steinem

The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Gloria Steinem - On Women in Society

"We’ve gotten where we are today, I think, mainly through individual women telling the truth. I mean, the consciousness-raising group is still the cell of the women’s movement. That means that one woman dared to say that she thought it was unfair that she had to both have a job and take care of the kids while her husband only had a job, and she said this unsayable thing that all of Ladies’ Home Journal was devoted to keep her from saying. And then ten other women said, “Oh, you feel like that? I thought only I felt like that.” And we began to realize that was political, there was a reason why that was true. Or one of us, or a few of us, spoke out about having an abortion and what it meant to have to get an abortion and risk your life. As more and more people spoke out, we began to realize that one out of three or four adult women has had an abortion, so we began to see the politics behind that, that we’re the means of reproduction and that patriarchy was the basic reason for our being in the trouble we were in the first place. " Gloria Steinem

The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Bella Abzug -- On Becoming a Lawyer.

"Since there were only a few women lawyers, I knew that it was going to be very rough. I applied to Harvard Law School because I heard it was the best law school. Harvard wrote back and said they didn’t accept women. I was outraged. I always tell this story because it’s so cute about my mother. I turned to my mother and I said, “Can you believe this?” I always say “I turned to my mother,” because in those days there was no women’s movement so you always turned to your mother. Now I always say, my two daughters have the best of both worlds. They’re able to turn to me and the women’s movement at the same time. But anyway, I turned to my mother and said, “This is an outrage.” (I always had a decent sense of outrage.) My mother said, “What do you want to go to Harvard for? It’s far away. You haven’t got the carfare anyhow. Go to Columbia. It’s near home. They’ll probably give you a scholarship and it only costs five cents on the subway.” And I did that. I got a scholarship and it only cost five cents on the subway. I always say that’s when I became an advocate of low-cost public mass transportation." Bella Abzug

The oral biography of Bella Abzug, an outspoken crusader for peace and human rights who heralded in an era of social change.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On teaching.

"I found I liked teaching. I liked the sense of being my own boss. I had the good fortune not only to teach one of the subjects I wanted to teach but also to write about what interested me. That was different from a law firm where the notion of the hired gun is true to this extent: You have a client, he or she has a problem, and you work on that problem. There’s a tremendous luxury in being a law teacher in that you can spend most of your time doing whatever interests you." Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - HERSTORY

"We know the founding fathers in the eighteenth century did not think men and women were or should be equal before the law. During the nineteenth century, after the Civil War, there were still tremendous differences in the law’s treatment of men and women. It was accepted that men should vote and women shouldn’t vote. It’s hard to read into provisions written over a century ago our modern concept that men and women should have equal opportunities, so far as government action is concerned. Yet the Supreme Court Justices have been doing just that. They have done so because our Constitution is meant to survive through the ages; there must be some adaptation to changing times and conditions. " Ruth Bader Ginsburg 

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Gloria Steinem - On Women's Rights

"What my male colleagues meant by revolution was taking over the army and the radio stations. I mean, that’s nothing. That’s very small potatoes. What we mean by revolution is changing much more than that, not just on the top. It means changing the way we think, the way we relate to each other, what we think divides us or doesn’t divide us, what we think our power relationships are in our daily life."

– Gloria Steinem, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert. The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Gloria Steinem - On Women's Rights

"It wasn’t until the late sixties, early seventies, that real feminist statements began to be made. It wasn’t just some women who were in trouble, but all women. Radical feminists began to talk about patriarchy and about sexual caste and women as a group. That set off all kinds of recognition in my head, as in millions of other women’s heads, because I think many of us, especially those of us who were in the civil rights movement and the old left, had identified with all other “out” groups, all other powerless groups, without understanding why we felt such a strong sense of identification. Women were not “serious” enough to be an out group ourselves. I think that this understanding is what has made this last decade so mind-blowing and exciting and angering, because we have realized we are living in a sexual caste system and it’s unjust, as is the racial caste system. We’ve begun to question and challenge and discard all of those arguments that say biology is destiny and that we were meant to be supportive, secondary creatures. So if you can generalize, which is awfully hard to do, I guess this decade has been about consciousness-raising and building a majority movement and getting majority support for the kind of basic issues of justice for women, whether it’s reproductive freedom or equal pay or equal parenthood."

— Gloria Steinem, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.

The oral biography of Gloria Steinem, whose dedication to feminism and social justice continues to improve life for millions of people worldwide.

Available at Amazon and Apple.

Betty Friedan - Herstory in a chapter

"There was the great first movement for women’s rights beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft, and the early suffragettes in England and America who fought for the vote, and the early rights; but that movement came to a standstill with the winning of the vote in the United States in 1920, before I was born. It didn’t change the lives of women because the rights, while necessary, didn’t lead to the kind of changes that are happening now. The movement was aborted, or it was asleep. There was a backlash, which I then gave a name to: the 'feminine mystique.' We had to break through the whole image of woman and we had to define ourselves as people; and then we had to begin a process that’s still not finished, of restructuring institutions so that women could be people. The essence of the modern woman’s movement is equality and the personhood of woman. That’s what it is and that’s all it is. All the rest of it—all the images of women’s lib, the bra-burning, the man-hating, down with marriage, down with motherhood—was  an expression of anger based on an ideological mistake. It is not essential. It is not a part of the whole change. The anger was real enough, but sexual politics was not what it was really all about."

— Betty Friedan, in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Read the oral interview of Betty Friedan from the late 1970s - available at Apple and Amazon for 99 cents.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - On Equality and the Law

"We believe in racial equality, we believe in free speech. We have recorded those beliefs in the Constitution, our fundamental instrument of government. We are advancing toward the belief that men and women should be seen as equal before the law. We should record that basic principle in the Constitution. We should do that in preference to reading the principle into Constitutional provisions drafted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We know the founding fathers in the eighteenth century did not think men and women were or should be equal before the law. During the nineteenth century, after the Civil War, there were still tremendous differences in the law’s treatment of men and women. It was accepted that men should vote and women shouldn’t vote. It’s hard to read into provisions written over a century ago our modern concept that men and women should have equal opportunities, so far as government action is concerned. Yet the Supreme Court Justices have been doing just that. They have done so because our Constitution is meant to survive through the ages; there must be some adaptation to changing times and conditions."

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Enjoy the oral interview of Ruth Bader Ginsburg from the later 1970s; one of 42 oral interviews captured in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times

The oral biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who continues to contribute to civil and women’s rights as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Available at Apple and Amazon.

Betty Friedan - Herstory.

"Well, they say the women's movement is the largest movement of social change of the last decades and in some ways it’s probably the largest revolution of all time, though it isn’t what anyone else has ever meant by revolution. You have to see it in its own terms. I think we’re only beginning to see the far-flung implications of the change. Also I think the women’s movement is only a step in a larger process of evolution, that it’s a stage. It’s been happening for a long time." Betty Friedan - Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times."

— Betty Friedan, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.

The oral biography of Betty Friedan, who fueled the women’s liberation movement that continues to work toward equal rights for women around the globe.

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Friedan's Feminine Mystique - enjoy her oral interview from the late 1970s; one of 42 interviews captured in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.