 Good evening and welcome to tonight's online event from the British Library. My name is Polly Russell and I'm co-curator of the exhibition, Unfinished Business, The Fight for Women's Rights. It gives me enormous pleasure to introduce this evening's conversation with none other than Gloria Steinem, one of the most influential campaigners for women's rights. Gloria will be talking live to Zena Badawi about her remarkable and very much unfinished work as a social justice activist, journalist and author. The many issues that she has tackled since the 1960s are central to unfinished business, which is temporarily closed but the moment it's open please do come back and visit. Or you can join us for regular online events which continue in a week's time with an evening with the one and only Dolly Parton. I'll now hand over to our host Zena Badawi, one of our most respected broadcasters and journalists and also chair of the Royal African Society. Thank you. Well thank you very much indeed to Polly at the British Library there for that very nice introduction. I am Zena Badawi and wow I am so glad to be with the wonderful Gloria Steinem. Hello to you there Gloria in the United States. And I'm so glad we be with you. At this time though it's across the electronic airwaves across the Atlantic Ocean, not like last time when we met in person a couple of years ago in the South of France. It really is great to be part of this event and also welcome to all the audiences in British libraries from all over the country who are part of that living knowledge network. But of course welcome to all of you who are listening to this conversation and you are part of it too because I'm going to kick off with some chat with Gloria but I want you at any time to go to the tab the Q&A tab at the bottom of your screen and just tap in some questions keeping quite brief if you can and I'll do my best to get through as many as I can. And also if you go to your screen at the top you'll see that there's a form and you can give your feedback but also you can also use that to buy some of Gloria's books which are for sale and wait for this the first 50 books are going to have a booklet that's signed by Gloria herself and so some of Gloria's books are going to be you know on sale throughout this this event. Gloria you don't really need much of an introduction but I may as well just remind people about your long and illustrious career because you've done so many things many good things Gloria. You are founder of New York and Ms. Magazines you're the author of several books My Life on the Road Moving Beyond Words and your wonderful new book that's just come out The Truth Will Set You Free but first it will piss you off. You co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus the Free to Be Foundation the Women's Media Center in the United States and also you've worked with Direct Impact Africa that's what I love about your work Gloria because it's relevant across continents Africa you've lived in India and you've won many awards along the way too many to list but I will mention the Emmy that you won in the early 90s BOTV documentary about child abuse and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2013 and most recently Gloria you produced a series of documentaries eight of them on violence against women and around the world. Gloria how relevant is that because we know that COVID-19 has brought so much death and destruction and terrible things in its wake and it's still wreaking havoc but one of the things that it has done it's more than anecdotal and evidence now is that we've seen an increase in domestic violence against women we've seen various trends in women's lives emerge as a result of COVID-19 we know they're more likely to lose their jobs we know they're the ones who are taking a disproportionate burden of the care of children and older relatives they're losing their jobs more than men because they're often part-time vulnerable jobs in the service sector and they're not getting the new jobs which have been created the technology ones because women don't work in the STEM subjects as much so just give us your reflections all in all in in what you think COVID-19 tells us about the state of women today and the unfinished business. I think you've just done an excellent job of surveying what the problems are I mean to have this kind of pandemic reveals the fishers in the systems that we've been living in whether it is the problems with hospitals the unevenness of medical care especially in this country when we don't have the same kind of supposition of universal healthcare that you have in many European countries it is it reveals injustice and I hope that we take this to heart and understand what we must do even after the pandemic is over and look at these injustices and these imbalances in power and not smooth over them ever again it's as if the pandemic is an enormous truth teller about the prejudices that come with gender and race and and class and exacerbate all of these all of these things so I hope I hope it's a lesson I hope we are learning. But Gloria we've also heard a lot said about how women leaders have had a better fight as it were against COVID-19 you know you've got people like Santa Marine the prime minister in Finland, Angela Merkel in Germany, the prime minister of Taiwan Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and we've seen that they have managed to keep levels of infection and deaths lower I mean some of them say look that's nothing to do with my gender or whatever it's just I'm pursuing the right policies but do you think that perhaps it has put the spotlight in a more favorable way on just what women can do when they're in positions of leadership? No yes that's true too and we see it here in states that have women governors and have fared better and I don't think it's something that comes physiologically with being a female it's something that comes with our cultural experience because our model of leadership is much more likely to be centered in the family than in the military say you know so it's not as hierarchical it's more inclusive and consciously or unconsciously I think we take this family model and consider the welfare of the group as a whole and but it's not magic men can learn this many men know how to do this too so I just hope that the example of the pandemic plus the example as you point out of women leaders around the country makes it clear that women are not just people who are trying to make it up in the existing system we are trying to transform the system as it is and teach what we know. Yeah it's very interesting as I was listening to Christine Lagarde the president of the European central bank of course a very you know renowned french woman who's done many things and she said that in her many decades of working in public life that she thinks that women make better leaders because they combine emotional and rational intelligence and that it's when you have those two working together that you have more effective leadership and I wonder if you could comment on that but also give us your views on the fact that we are now going to see on January the 20th the first female vice president in the United States very powerful position she's going to have Senator Carmina Harris and what do you really make of that? Well I can't believe it's taken so long I mean in 1972 Shirley Chisholm perhaps name people know because she was a first in so many ways as an african-american woman and politics in this country but she declared for the presidency in 1972 she was only on the ballot in 14 states but she kind of took the white male only sign off the White House door and it's taken a long time for even a vice president like Kamala Harris a very very very very not just qualified but inspirational leader you know just to be in her presence whatever her position is is is transforming so I hope that we are finally beginning to choose leadership from the whole population not just from half of it or less than half of it it's crazy when you think of it it's absolutely crazy so maybe in my lifetime we'll see we'll see a little sanity. It's interesting you raise the case of Shirley Chisholm in 1972 an election of course which she didn't get the Democratic Party nomination as you said and it was an election that Richard Nixon won but interesting enough Shirley Chisholm said that she encountered more prejudice as a result of being a woman because of her gender rather than the color of her skin and I just wonder because that's always been of course a conversation that runs at the heart of the women's movement you've heard you know a lot of african-american women, Asian-american women saying you know what is the greater obstacle for us is it the color of our skin where we ally ourselves with our fellow you know with our male black males and Asian males and so on or do we ally ourselves with our white sisters so I mean that's what Shirley thought it was gender trumped color but do you well that that was her experience because when she was coming up in the political systems in Brooklyn it had a black male hierarchy so it all it had a hierarchy regardless of race but those particular black men were not receptive to her when she was in the state legislature or when you know when she was coming up altogether so she was reporting on her experience but I don't think we have to have a competition of tears tears are tears right so whatever it is that we are encountering that is what is important but it's not to state which is more important sexism or racism because obviously they're both crucial and I'm they both reinforce each other I mean in order to maintain any visible racial difference you have to control who marries whom and who has children with whom you know so these these evils are intertwined and we can only uproot them together so you've got this new book out that's just come out which I've read which is lovely called the truth will set you free but first it will piss you off and I mean you you talk at the beginning about I think the sayings from the Bible isn't it the idea that that Jesus Christ said that the truth will set you free and the idea is that knowledge is the thing that will set you free I mean how far have you been guided by this in your life's work and your aims because after all this is an event which is one for the British library well I just want to say what a huge role libraries made in my life and continue to make they are so precious when I was a teenager in kind of not too great situation in the the wrong part of Toledo Ohio it was the library that was the resource for me and I was not very intelligent about the way I used it I read books as they came up on the shelves you know I would read them kind of alphabetically so but it allowed me to to enter worlds and to have a kind of comfort level so just the importance of libraries is something we should remember on the upside as because we see that dictators through history have tried to destroy libraries and destroy that knowledge actually there's a wonderful old movie that I recommend if people are now COVID wise into old movies it's called Fahrenheit 451 true foe did you see that ever no I haven't but I shall it's because it is about the importance of books and they live in a society in which books are being burned and so people each person takes it upon himself or herself to memorize a book a complete book so that books become human even after the fire of 451 it's just very very moving yeah yeah I should look at that whenever I think of libraries I remember a professor who once talked to me who said he didn't like Christmas Day very much because it was the only day of the year that his wife would not allow him to go to the library he was such a dedicated academic he hated so there you are people from the British library very happy you've had that really endorsement of libraries um like Gloria Steinem Gloria you talk in your book about how families um are chosen a family is born and chosen you say um you say chosen families of people who share and support our hopes and our interests and that your birth families are often patriarchal and we hear so many women in the women's rights movement talking about how patriarchy what you know everywhere in the world is the kind of the source of the the constraints on women were you yourself brought up in a very patriarchal family uh no I wasn't I was very lucky in that regard because my father was a kind of of I don't know how to explain him he had two points of pride he never wore a hat and he never had a job by which he meant he always worked for himself so he was at home and around at least as much as my mother was I was his buddy his friend he took me with him to when he was buying and selling antiques and I would because I would wrap and unwrap them in newspaper you know I mean I I was lucky to have that kind of um companionship with with both of my parents but the the form of most cultures in which men have been earning the money and have been away from home and women have been consigned uh to child care much more than men means that that we grow up in a the beginning of a hierarchy that's very deep we come to think men can't be as loving and nurturing as women which is a libel on men and we come to think women are not as rational or able to be powerful in the world outside the home which is a libel on women but you talk about you in this book and also your other writings about how women are valued for their reproductive capacity I mean that's never going to change is it really because women do have the children um true but but the the goal is that we can decide when and whether to have children yes we have wombs and that's not going to change but probably although there have been a few children born outside of you know with fertilized eggs but but that is you know far far in the future it's a subject of science fiction um but the point is that we get to decide the fate and use of our own bodies we get to decide when and whether we have children and patriarchy is the contrary patriarchy says no men decide women do not decide so uprooting that system is fundamental to women just simply controlling the fate of our own physical selves but could you also have a situation where perhaps more emphasis is put on reproductive work rather than just productive work which is a more of a kind of male definition of what we see as being work to be valued well it is certainly uh what women's you know that we spend nine months gestating a child in a certain amount of time taking care of the that should be valued and supported because it is clearly a crucial function in society and instead it's often been compelled instead of uh valued and supported so we're getting some questions in which i'm going to uh put to you because um just to put some context of this as well you you were involved in the anti-Vietnam movement and you've written and spoken so much about how women were not treated as equals by many of the men and this is what pissed off a lot of women hence title um part of the title of your book and there's a question from Brabha Holtman here which is men in power still speak so dismissively of women do you think that can change and what should we be doing more of to make it happen uh well it it shouldn't be our burden to educate men in power it should be it's probably more practical to replace them than to educate them but uh so i would say replacing them as comes number is number one but educating them is certainly worthwhile too and we can do that in all kinds of ways we can you know we used to uh occupy men's offices for instance and just not leave you know a dozen women would just occupy the office of some decision maker and just stay there and talk to him uh it may not have to be so forcible we the leader may be willing to make a series of appointments but however it is we should at least be talking to the men who are making decisions in our lives and i mean again the importance of getting men as allies to help effect change is a very important one so you've just said that it's very important to educate men so i'll put that with another question we've had from Liz Mason here which is i'll preface it with this could you re-educate somebody like Donald Trump for instance because Liz Mason asks how much damage has Donald Trump done in terms of sexism and racism i would say as someone who comes from new york and has observed Donald Trump from the beginning that he is hopeless because uh he cannot empathize he is a as as as many psychiatrists wrote i think 200 or so psychiatrists wrote when he was first elected he has narcissistic personality disorder it is he is one of the few or some people who are just incapable of understanding what someone else is feeling so you know we in new york where he came from tried to tell that to the rest of the country but uh they had to learn at the hard way so you were talking there about also we were talking about getting men on board and so on a question from angela here which is what is your definition or defining characteristics of a male feminist you know i i just think it's it's uh the thing of which trump is incapable which is empathy it's it's a man who can imagine uh the world as if they were exactly the same person with all the same humor and hopes and dreams and they were born female what would their lives be like and if they can imagine that then they can they can imagine uh what is helpful to do in society in order to free the full human range of human talents of both women and men yeah we're getting some lots of questions coming in here i'm going to carry on chatting with you in between the questions but i've got one here from a mother and daughter so emma barum says her seven-year-old daughter florins has a question for you gosh seven years of age age wonderful thank you isn't it she said how did you get involved in women's rights in the first place so how and why uh well because i'm an old person i didn't get involved uh as early as i otherwise would have because there was no women's movement when i was growing up it i it just didn't exist so i it wasn't until after i had graduated from college and lived in india for two years where there was a uh national important women's movement that was part of the independence movement that i realized there could be such a thing as a women's movement but fortunately you at seven are growing up in a time when there's very clear um women's movement and a girls movement girls rights you know is i mean people girls write to me the most wonderful letters uh saying things like uh we are organizing to get uh all to be able to use all of the playground the boys otherwise you know we can just play jacks in the corner the boys get the playground we mean that's great you know that's the beginning of a revolutionary gloria i know that you've written about how some of the women you work with you say younger than your blue jeans yes age segregation that is quite shocking right i'm right i think i'm angry with you there but anyway age segregation it's not a good idea if you say because you you say how young people bring you the gift of anger and i've often you know looked at the impatience of youth and and you know they give you you also they give you that gift of hope and optimism but have you lost that kind of indignation of youth as you've got older have you opened your your fight in any way or have you still got that indignation of youth um i think i don't have it in the same way you know because i understand just from the number of years that i you know i've been alive that it's possible it will take a long time and so i'm very energized by the younger women who are mad as hell right now you know so i think we need each other because i can be helpful in pointing out long-term tactics and they supply the anger and the energy that we all need so i said it was a mother and daughter question so um emma's question to you is what's your best advice as to how to convince male leaders why gender equality is an issue worthy of attention she says so many male colleagues support gender equality except when it comes to their own actions or rather not put views into practice so what's your advice about convincing well um you know i i i trust each woman to figure out tactics that are appropriate to the to the situation um but uh any any any way that we can produce empathy so that that leader can understand uh what his life would be like if he had been born female and therefore begin to remedy whatever the the barriers are and you know we've done this in all kinds of ways i mean we once uh occupied the office of the because for a long time here women's magazines were edited by men and earlier in the movement a group of women just occupied his office and refused to let him out and talked to him for hours and he was actually quite fearful of it so it you know it was it was uh quite a uh transforming event in his life so so you know that's extreme just physically occupying somebody's office locking the door and talking to him for a whole day but it's uh but it's possible right and you know sometimes men who have daughters are may be more empathetic because they want the best for their daughters and that becomes a bridge no i mean you've been a great um advocate and participant yourself in street activism and you know you've talked about the power of the slogan i mean it's slightly related to Emma's question in the sense that sometimes people will rally behind a slogan and say yeah yeah yeah i you know i stand for that i believe in women's equality but then their actions actually don't support um you know what they say but i mean the power of the slogan is it's it's it's quite important we've seen two very successful examples set up by women in the last year or so which is BLM black lives matter set up by women and also of course the me too campaign which was initially initially coined by Tarana Burke the african-american activist who actually said me too in order to put a you know focus on the sexual abuse of young women within the african-american community and then it's taken up by hollywood and you had times up and so on so these were slogans but they brought real action and changed behind them how much changed you think they've really brought you know these kinds of slogans are the poetry of everyday life you know they express the feelings of large numbers of people in a very short quotable way and that is very valuable it is a kind of poetry activist poetry so to say black lives matter is very important and in fact the the book that we are talking about in my book was originally called America as if everyone mattered that was its title but once black lives matter came along i dispensed with the main title and just used the subtitle because i thought you know that that slogan belongs to black lives matter yeah interesting but i mean you know that importance of slogans having a unifying effect and also you know people can rally around ideas slogans like me too we've seen me too campaigns in egypt in india just you know really all over the world um do you think that it really was a turning point not only for women in the united states the me too campaign that it really you know you've talked about how evil is often only uh detected in hindsight so we've now got Harvey Weinstein behind bars you know there were many people who were his associates and friends and so on and so forth but do you think that this has brought about fundamental change in helping this unfinished business i think so but it also was part of a continuum because in order for me too to be powerful you had to know what it meant right so it started out in my life at least with uh women in on a university campus who were this was in the early 1970s who were trying to describe what happened to them in their summer jobs and they invented the term sexual harassment we then at miss magazine did a cover story on sexual harassment which i have to say was put out of the supermarkets as too controversial to be on the newsstands because it was on the cover with an illustration even though we did it with puppets so that it wouldn't be too shocking but anyway then sexual harassment became part of of sex discrimination law and and several cases excuse me were brought by the women and and and one and so it's been a long journey right for people to understand sex that sexual what sexual harassment is and therefore to give me too meaning right yeah and i know you one of the quotes in your books is when unique voices are united in a common they make history and i think a lot of people do say that in related to a question we're getting from melanie david here which goes back to what we talked about about you know greater domestic violence because women in lockdown can't escape partners and so on how can we do something about domestic violence i don't know what you would say to melanie well it first of all we can we can name uh men's violence because domestic violence sounds as if nobody's doing it if you know what i mean and to talk about the women who are survivors of domestic violence doesn't name the perpetrator so we can at least begin by naming the violence of men the idea that some men have that they have a right to dominate especially in the household because that's that's the source of patriarchy in many cases we can at least name it and attribute it to the wrongdoer instead of behaving instead of only naming the victim right and i know that as i said you've done work in india in africa and so so a question here from which asks does western feminism run the risk of operating in a bubble forgetting that the majority of the world's women have fundamental struggles so do you think that western feminism has a bit of a kind of blinkered attitude to what we define as women's rights um you know i i'm not sure because it depends where we are looking in my life i mean i learned feminism from living in india and seeing the women's movement there so it was always clear to me that women in other countries were more advanced in the sense of organizing often than we were in the united states but but it probably depends what our individual experiences are i think that we are now greatly aided by the media and by the internet so that we can be in touch with each other and and aid each other you know some sometimes we can publicize in one country the outrages and the injustices in another country with more than that country is willing to do it themselves so it's it's very important that we are in touch with each other and there are groups like equality now and so many so many groups that are global in that way and we need more and so you don't think that there's any kind of variation it to take into account cultural practices and so on you believe that there are universal values that govern what we define as women's rights regardless of where you are in the world well it it depends on the the women who are on the ground what they think and what they want is what we need to support it is the women who are experiencing the problem who are the experts in the problem right very good thank you for that and by the way emma barum who had the daughter florin says thank you gloria for answering my question and florin says bedtime for flow now are for a lot of squealing who are both thrilled so there you are i'm sure that you're you're addressing florins is imprinted on her mind and indeed she's going to do something fantastic in the realm of women's rights in the future when Florence Florence is now imprinted on mine as the future and i'm so grateful the future um she's certainly younger than your blue jeans that's for sure um so now i don't know whether you've been following the um controversy here about the mary wolston craft statue the 17th century british philosopher because Cheryl but Burton asks assuming that you've heard about and seen the pictures of her statue and the debates it's provoked what do you think of it and how it's divided feminist opinion so it was a skull well i yes i have but you know i've seen the photograph and i and we ourselves had various controversies to about statues in central park which we only partly so but i'm not sure i understand this one so can you explain to me well the the controversy was she was um depicted rather small statue but she was naked with very pert breasts and a great deal of hair around her pubis and um a lot of a lot of women and men objected to the fact that you had this woman who was really ahead of her time very iconoclastic and standing up for you know women's rights of feminists as it were and she had to be depicted naked and the idea was that you wouldn't have you know a man with no clothes on so that is ridiculous i think i think that and lost people are willing to take the clothes off the male statues and have them have them recreated nude that i think equality demands that she be as clothed as the male statues are all right okay that's good thank you for answering that question from sherry so um a question here from kathryn war how do we ensure that these feminist conversations that we're having now are not limited to typically middle-class spaces such as this how do we make these campaigns and conversations accessible and useful for all women we've kind of touched on that but you can expand on it a bit well speaking for my experience in this country uh black women have always been in advance uh in terms of feminism more likely to be activists than white women and this remains true if you look at the results of the last uh presidential election for instance 96 percent uh that is the election of trump 96 percent of black women voted against trump and 51 percent of white women voted for trump so it has always been true that women of color have been more um understanding of the issues of equality and more in the leadership of the women's movement than white women just because of situations i mean white women are more likely to be dependent on on their husband's incomes and therefore be voting their husband's interests rather than the interests of women as a group it just i mean we just need to look at the at the real situation and and the issues and and account for um the fact for who is in leadership of those issues and there are of course i mean yes this conversation perhaps maybe in this kind of middle-class space as um kathryn suggests but um there are conversations about women's rights and there are many feminists all over the world you know continent of asia africa and um their own languages they'll be having similar conversations i know because i've experienced them we've seen you know women's rights activists in the Arab world and so on sadly some of them do suffer for voicing their opinions but i i'm sure that we do have those conversations all over the world you you mentioned race there and so on and you i wonder if you would perhaps give us your view on on legislation and just how influential it is so we've had the you know equality act in so many countries in the world and you know pay disparities shouldn't exist and so on but you you talking in in one of your books um about how for example the civil war in the united states may have eliminated slavery but it didn't really challenge the power of racism so you can have a whole raft of equality legislation in favor of women but it doesn't actually address the problem of you know discrimination against women or change mindsets doesn't it you know it depends uh i mean part of the fun and the excitement of a social justice movement is inventing ways to move forward um and some of them are quite simple i mean when we're starting a group uh to address a certain problem we should wait until we have in the room the people who are experiencing the problem i mean people whoever is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts so if we just wait to to start a group until it looks like the people who are experiencing the problem we are addressing will be much more effective right thank you we're getting more questions in again um i think it's no secret that you you support the right to abortion and i think you have a quote in your book one of your book which says if men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament yes which was not mine it was said by a wonderful old woman taxi driver who said that right standout quote in your book which is a wonderful book i do recommend it to everybody sort of your reflections on life and love and and all the rest of it but this question um from um somebody actually the name is not a question from Angela she says can you be a feminist and be pro-life yes absolutely it's just the principle is just that you don't make decisions for other women so you can be pro-life for yourself and you wouldn't dream ever of having an abortion and i and others support you in that it's only it becomes a problem if you are dictating to another woman what her decision should be either way all right yeah so certainly feminism includes women who are pro-life for themselves but let me a more difficult question is can you be a feminist and be pro it can you be opposed to pro-choice you're not pro-choice can you still be a feminist if you're not pro-choice well i i think you can if you're not pro-choice for yourself but i don't think you can dictate to other women i think that that the basis of feminism is women's power first over our own bodies and then our equal power in society right um are you getting difficult questions here we've had a lot of controversy um in the united kingdom particularly with jk Rowling the harry potter author when she talked about um when somebody mentioned people who menstruate and she said there's a word for that surely womad or whatever you know kind of suggesting that actually there's a word women for people who menstruate and so there's a question here from diane strudel which says can a transgender female truly understand women's issues and speak politically for other women you know i i don't think i can answer that because it depends on the individual that we're talking about but i think feminism includes everybody who identifies as a female so even if a person was not born female but now identifies and lives as a female then certainly feminism includes them i had a conversation recently with another eminent american feminist the uh lawyer gloria already and i asked her about this question and um you know she's done a lot as you know in in the field of rights for lgbtq and um she felt that transgender women should be supported as much as one can because there's a lot of space out there which is um not favorable to them and she felt that anything which would open up that space was not something that she would welcome so that's what gloria already another gloria another glorious no i i agree i mean we think that we that we each have a right to determine who we are and if a person who is not born female identifies as female then she is included right okay thank you so um getting more questions here um so oh just a question from okay oh this is about the statue that we had just they say the statue is entitled for mary warlston craft the artist said the female figure is not mary that's the sculptor it is every woman and the lack of clothes makes her timeless clothes would have placed her into a historical context i couldn't help comment it's important to understand that in order to understand the statue so just a qualification from kelly stevens thank you kelly for that um so another question here gloria from rachel fenn hi gloria i'm a teacher and while i see a lot of my students getting angry about the lack of equality in our society and wanting to bring out check bring about change many including female students don't want to call themselves feminists as they believe feminists hate men long question bear with me thank you rachel why do you think calling yourself a feminist is still so problematic for people and how can we reclaim the term feminism as a positive force to bring about equality for everyone in the 21st century there you are well when in the middle of this discussion i usually just send people to the dictionary because if you see if you look up the word feminist it has nothing to do with hating men it has just it has to do with equality for women so i think the dictionary should rule and the kind of notion that of man hating just came from men who were so used to inequality that equality seemed to them uncomfortable and that's their problem but it's not inherent in the word yeah it's interesting isn't it because we all know the word misogynistic men who don't like women and then if you ask a lot of the women what's the other way around women who hate men they're sort of scratching their heads aren't they because we don't use it so often because perhaps it isn't so common misandras by the way if you were wondering there we go it's interesting pointing that out you know there's something there so um you have also talked in your book about how um laughing our way to the revolution is important and you talk about how laughter is the only emotion that can't be compelled um free emotion it has no tactical purpose it's the most contagious of all emotions and um you know you went on to give a series of quotes about feminism and uh so a question here because you know sometimes people say humor is a bit of an underrated tool in feminism and so there's a question here um from Hayley which is do you think anger is the biggest driving factor for an activist movement or can joy and happiness especially in being and protesting together be an important part of a movement so that's the question and I prefaced it with your comments about laughter there you go no absolutely I mean it depends on the situation we are in sometimes anger is the energy cell and sometimes uh shared uh joy and laughter and shared experience is the energy cell it just depends on the situation but I do think that laughter is an underrated emotion because it is the only one that can't be compelled and it's proof of freedom and here are Native American cultures I'm so sorry that I'm hoarse today sorry uh our Native American cultures have often have a figure who is the spirit of laughter and the spirit of freedom so it's it's not a bad uh guide to say okay I'm never going any place where they don't let me laugh including church I must say I guess laughter is the only emotion you can't compel and it is a deep proof of freedom I mean I loved the other Native Americans saying that you quoted in your book which is um tell somebody a fact and they'll forget it tell them a story and they'll remember it right how true that is is that something that's governed the way that you have you know made your public speaking role and trying to convey your message and the importance of your work have you often resorted to stories yourself yes I I do uh because I think generalities are very important but the way we get to them is usually a narrative story so um I I have always tried to do that uh in speeches um and especially I've always tried to leave a lot of time after speeches for whoever is in the room to tell their stories to just get up and if you just trust an audience the audience will take over and become amazingly wise and you know before even now after all these years when I'm someplace of course now we're not in a lecture situation because of COVID but when I am about to give a lecture the person in charge will say well we we should have written questions because otherwise the someone in the audience people in the audience will get up and just go on forever and I always say no you know let's not have written questions because unless you see the person who's asking the question you don't know you know much less and also if someone gets up in the audience and takes over and gives a speech somebody else in the audience will say sit down so you just have to trust the audience and I love that I mean it's uh you know I started out uh doing that because I was afraid to to speak I wasn't comfortable speaking but from that I learned that how smart audiences are lovely um question here from Helen Hastin and also from Sibila and they both ask about what do you think about the portrayal of you yourself and the women's movement in the tv series mrs america um you might have to just give a quick thumbnail sketch to those of people who've not seen the tv series mrs america hmm well um I actually didn't watch it because it was I the the the two the two show runners who were doing it uh got in touch with me and ellie smiel who's a very important woman who was uh ahead of now and you know many organizations beforehand and the script was so inaccurate and crazy that uh we kind of gave up I mean they just you know so I actually didn't watch it all right well there you are so we wouldn't know but then the supplementary question from Sibila is how do you feel women are portrayed on screen do you think that there's been an improvement so big question there and there there there has been a lot of improvement because there have been more women creating the movies that are on screen writing the scripts and being the director uh and having a power to create characters who are whole people not just the girlfriend of the leading man and women of all different ages but but I would say that's still just in the beginning stages of showing women on screen in all of our diversity there's still a lot of emphasis on the way women look and the kind of you know the sexualized poses and so on that that that still hasn't changed it's got better hasn't it yes no it's there there are occasionally good examples but it hasn't really changed fundamentally yet and I mean even for women in public life actually again going back to the Finnish Prime Minister son of marine who is only 34 years of age and was severely criticized by some women when she took part in a photo shoot and was judged to have been wearing clothes which were not fitting the office and revealing a bit too much cleavage for instance and you know we've had various women politicians over the years here in the United Kingdom you know British Prime Minister at the time Theresa May and so on there's still a lot of talk about women and their appearance even when their own positions of power still yes it's as if there's no right way to dress because there's no model of women in power so I just I think we have to allow women in power to dress in whatever way they are comfortable we have of course a variety of choices men have a uniform you know with this ridiculous tie and so on so I hope that they free themselves from their uniform too so we've got still more time and just you've talked about a bit about America and how you hope that Carmina Harris is going to have a transformative impact but going back to the political landscape in the United States Anne Leopold from Germany says all the best from Germany and her question is what do you think will happen in the Supreme Court now that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is no longer with us and of course the late Ruth Bader RBG as she was known was a great champion of equality in its manifestations so that's one Trump legacy that is there um Joe Biden has kept quiet about whether he may expand the numbers of the Supreme Court because there's now a very strong inbuilt conservative bias I think it's six to three so what do you think will happen with the Supreme Court is the question I don't know but I do hope that the numbers are increased because Ruth Bader Ginsburg was replaced by a woman who is not only very conservative but is not qualified you know really has had very little experience and Trump just picked her because you know she was one of the few women who sort of agreed with his politics so I hope one of two things happens either we expand the numbers of the Supreme Court so it can be more representative or we say to ourselves as as women as we have said in the past the Supreme Court has no right to dictate to our lives and we are going to act regardless of what the Supreme Court says a couple of questions related here so I'll take them together and I'll preface it with the something that you have also said that you said that too often we've celebrated progress and not understood the dangers of an earlier majority becoming a minority I slightly you know put that in the context of this question it's not exactly that men are going to become a minority but certainly the the the rights of a majority are being challenged and so a question here from Rosa is what is Gloria's view of international men's day and if celebrating this day is necessary is that going to assuage do you think any ruffled male feathers well I don't know I mean I don't personally know anyone who is celebrating international men's day uh it's sort of like celebrating international white people's day so I mean you know it might it might have some virtue you could I can imagine phrasing it you know in a way that would that would be positive but I haven't uh I don't actually know anyone who is supporting this day right and then Jessica Sambrook a sort of similar question on men it's what are your views on men's rights groups set up in a response to the feminist movement well the the ones that I have experienced uh have been quite hostile to to women's equality uh I understand that there have been uh some legitimate concerns about father's rights about their ability to see their children love their children and certainly they should have that right as long as there is no abuse involved so there is some reason for for those groups when it has to do with parental rights but other than that I haven't seen that that there is a righteous ground for the groups yeah thank you you know I mean the the men fighting for access to their children and so on is something I mean that celebrities like Bob Geldorf have been very active in that particular movement for instance all right got a question here from Penny which is which feminists do you look up to there you go who are the icons of the icon no well there's so many I mean Alice Walker for instance I mean you know is um doesn't depth what others of us are trying to do in width and she is very important Wilma Mannkiller who is the chief of the Cherokee Nation who's no longer with us is someone from whom I learned uh and continue to learn really because she came from a culture that had been matrilineal and egalitarian before the invasion of of of patriarchal and monotheistic Europeans in this country so was interesting to be with someone who who's who was trying to restore what once had been you know so she kind of gave me faith that it could be in the future so both of them have been very important Florence Kennedy who is no longer with us but was my one of my speaking partners was wonderfully instructive because she was so free to be outrageous and um to just break social norms so no I'm I'm constantly learning lovely and oh look another seven-year-old way past your bedtime Rosie her mother Samantha Martin says hi Gloria my daughter Rosie's seven not wanting to be out done by Florence just putting that out there also wants to ask you a question and she says what made you not give up fighting for women's rights uh the company of people like you I mean uh we are we are uh social creatures we you know isolation is the the biggest punishment in the world for a reason because we are social creatures and what keeps us going is the companionship of other women and men or girls and boys who care about equality and who are friends and who we can turn to and work with together we need that community that actually answers partly a question from Kathy Glass who says how can mothers of sons help them grow up as feminists well look speaking as the mother of four children two sons and two daughters I'd love to grab my sons to bring them in to hear what you're going to say Gloria but they're not I would love to hear your sons we have to right I've done my best with them I tell you and with my with my supporting extras my girls we're trying to bring them up in the right way yes brought them up in the right way so you've already said boys and girls but so what's your advice to Kathy Glass mothers of sons to grow up as feminists uh well one question is what they are seeing at home you know are they seeing fathers who are as active in nurturing and caring for children as as women are and are they seeing women who are as active in the world outside the home as fathers are because you know what we see as children influences us in a very deep way so just a couple more questions because you've been like you know the kind of static target with all these questions coming it's just a reflection of how much people want to talk to you um this one look 90 a pound is saying if you can make three wishes for women of the future what would they be thank you much love and respect xxxxx I think three wishes for women of the future have you got them well I I guess I would say that I wish that women of the future can state their own wishes and see them come true I can't know what those wishes are but I support them and um not the question here because we're talking about unfinished business the fight for women's rights which is the whole background of this exhibition by the British library so this is quite a fitting question therefore from penny what do you think is the most pressing issue in feminism today you know I I don't think I can say that because it depends what is pressing in the life of the women who are listening right now it there are all kinds of obvious general issues if we just got equal pay for equal work it would transform the economy and redistribute wealth uh if we saw women in positions of elected authority in the same numbers as men it would change our our parliament or our congress it it it just has to do with um equal representation of men and women in for caregiving in the home for decision making in the nature in the nation uh from from the home to the tops of our decision making globally we should be equally represented as we are in the human race and uh Maura Maura Maloy says this is not a question just a thank you to you Gloria she says Ireland has made great progress over the last two decades especially with the abortion referendum since the 1970s you Gloria have inspired me and many other feminists to stay in the fight she says thank you and I'm sure actually um that must um really represent the huge body of opinion in this audience that's been listening to you to this evening um Gloria our evening here in the but it means a lot that that woman who said that comes from Ireland because I have such I mean I have occasionally visited Ireland and certainly uh you know we we've been in touch about issues and it just is so courageous in a country with such a religious tradition sometimes to the contrary that Irish women have been brave and uh I just very humane and humorous in uh in their move forward that's women in Ireland have been an inspiration but Gloria you you really are an inspiration I mean you know from that time in Manhattan when you were your first time on a picket line outside of Manhattan um supermarket asking people to refuse to buy grapes that had been picked in poverty um you know the anti-Vietnam demonstrations and all the work you've done um for women's rights really you are the inspiration and uh your book which I've I've been referring to I just want to give a quote at the end from one of your male friends because that's the aim of this book of yours which is you want people to find encouragement and company in this lifetime collection of quotes from your speeches articles and books plus some from your friends and you you end your book with a quote from a male friend of yours frankly in Thomas so I just give part of it and you say one day our descendants will think it's incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings I wonder when that unfinished business might bring that day when we will think it's incredible that we have thought these things make a difference well I think we're we're getting there uh I mean because I hope we are past the point when we can look at a group of um white people in a multi racial and multicultural country and think that that's a democratic representation we don't we don't think that anymore right and we we also don't think that uh groups exclusively of men make sense so we're we're getting there we're getting to that place that Frank so well painted for us and somebody's asking here final point which of your books or any feminist book would you recommend to read I mean as I said you've written so many yourself but I suggest this one actually because there's a lot of a lot of truth in these quotes that you've come up with but is there something you want to orientate people towards look going to the library British library or other libraries to get well I I I trust the instincts of the reader to find you know what what it is that they need this this book is interesting just fun I think and hopefully enlightening to start with because I think quotes are the poetry of everyday life and if you if if there's a good quote that you if it's good if you poured water on it would become a novel because it's sort of it is a seed of a plant uh so um I I guess for the moment I would recommend this one okay Gloria Steinem a seed of a plant you have seeded many plants throughout your long and illustrious career that you know we've got forests galore as a result of your work thank you so much indeed I have found it fascinating and a great privilege and honor to have conducted this in conversation with you I'm sure that your words would have inspired many of us thank you very much indeed and don't forget you can buy some of glorious books if you just go to the tab at the top of your screen you'll also find a feedback form the British library have told me to remind you that they have many more online events for unfinished business the fight for women's rights and other programs also and as Polly said at the beginning there's an exclusive evening with um Dolly Parton next week just look at the website for that and Gloria since we're talking about quotes I will end this conversation with one of my favorite quotes from Dolly Parton with the amazing hair and the clothes and the boots and the makeup the nails and she says you've no idea how much it costs to look this cheap as water she is wonderful Dolly Parton I mean she has such a great spirit and it's very clear that she stands for the right of female human beings to be whoever the hell we want to be right so I'm grateful to her right thank you so much indeed Gloria and I hope next time we meet it will be in person again because it's been wonderful so I'm hoping for a third time and I thank you I thank you so much thank you so much and um all the best to you and goodbye from everybody on this event and thank you to all of you listening to me Zana Badawi in conversation with Gloria Steinem as well as all your questions which have been fabulous coming in thank you bye bye thank you