Beverly Hills-based nonprofit Visionary Women capped off its third season of engaging salons with over 600 people–mostly women– in attendance at the Nov. 12 conversation with legendary feminist Gloria Steinem.
Moderated by millennial activist and writer Cleo Wade at the Beverly Wilshire, the evening offered a stark reminder for women of the critical importance of shifting a patriarchal narrative.
“Parents are responsible for helping children become who they already are,” Steinem explained, underscoring that oftentimes children are pressured to live out their parents’ unfulfilled dreams. So too, the family is the soil for nurturing behavior and action.
“To transform inequality in the world, we have to start in the home,” Steinem writes in her most recent book, “The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off.”
A revolutionary figure and a leader of the feminist movement, Steinem co-founded New York Magazine and Ms. Magazine, along the way inspiring a generation of women to follow their dreams.
At 85 years young, with an easy smile and inspiring prose, it’s hard to imagine Steinem ever considering that she might have chosen to lead the life of dutiful “housewife.”
However, she shared, in the 1950s, that had always been her expectation given that the world had indoctrinated her to believe that her “real life” wouldn’t even really begin until she began to take on the persona of her husband’s wife. Fortunately, the women’s liberation movement came along and swept up Steinem in its wake, where she began to understand that she could live her life however she chose to do so.
“You can only live in the present fully, you can’t live in the future,” she said.
