Gloria Steinem turned 75 this year (!), and she’s been making a lot of speeches to celebrate her birthday. Good thing, because her birthday speech made for a phenomenal last-minute replacement for Maya Angelou at the Chicago Foundation for Women 24th Annual Luncheon today. (Dr. Angelou was taken to the hospital late yesterday but I have no further information about her condition.) I am grateful to my friends at Shorebank for inviting me as their guest to this fantastic gathering of over 2,000 women from every community around Chicago.
Here are some of the things Gloria wished for (I hope I captured the spirit of what she said, if not the exact phrasing):
- A world where any two adults could get married if they want to as long as they don’t hit each other.
- A world where magazine racks are filled with erotica but missing pornography
- A world where the child care providers and educators had the budget of the US Military, while the military had the budget of those who care for our children. And they should only be allowed to use it for peace keeping
- A nightly news broadcast that talks about everything that went right that day
- An episode of Oprah on men trying to successfully combine work and family
- A global understanding that you can’t reach peaceful ends through violent means
Gloria Steinem is doing more than wishing. She’s working every day to break down traditional hierarchical thinking, thinking which damages both men and women. What a phenomenal hero and role model for all who aspire to bring about important social changes. It takes a lot of bravery to challenge the status quo and yet she makes it look so simple, so easy and so common sense. My sincere thanks to Gloria Steinem for taking the years of name-calling that come to trailblazers and pioneers on behalf of all women.
