Carmen Callil

Where would America be without Gloria Steinem?, asks Carmen Callil

Steinem deserves universal recognition, but Life on the Road, her often stirring memoir, focuses too narrowly on the USA

issue 07 November 2015

This is a book written by a most admirable woman, which is nevertheless — with some rare and excellent exceptions — most tiresome to read. Gloria Steinem has done heroic work as a founding force of American feminism and as an organiser, in America, for a myriad of causes. She is an icon of 1960s feminism, when persons such as she explained to women — mostly western women, but you have to start somewhere —that some sort of equality could be fought for and, if won, could change the world for all men and women. She spent some early years after university in India and a Gandhian philosophy permeates her good works.

Now turned 80, she looks back at more than 40 years on the road, travelling from pillar to post, encouraging, teaching, fighting for the good, celebrating her America — to her a land of hope, if not glory.

The good things first.

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