Corazon Aquino: Mother in the Limelight

Hot on the heels of anti-shero Imelda Marcos (or should I saw hot on the 1,600 heels; remember the 800 pairs of shoe scandal?) came Corazon Aquino, a political neophyte who quietly and competently took the helm of the volatile islands nation in the aftermath of the Marcos regime.

Cory didn’t set out to run a country. Educated in the Catholic school system in the United States and the Philippines, she abandoned higher education to marry Benigno Aquino, a promising politician, and served as his helpmate and mother of their five children. Benigno opposed the martial law of Marcos and was jailed in 1972; when he was released, the family fled to the United States, where they lived until 1983. By this time Marcos was losing control of the reins of power, and Benigno decided to return to help agitate for his resignation.

As the Aquinos stepped off the plane, Benigno was assassinated. In that moment, Cory had to decide—turn tail or take up the mantle of her slain husband. She chose the latter, uniting the dissidents against Marcos. In 1986, she ran for the presidency of the Philippines, abandoning the speeches that had been prepared for her to talk of the suffering that Marcos had caused her in life. Although both sides declared victory, Marcos soon fled and Cory assumed power.

After the tabloid dictatorship style of the Marcos family, the widow-turned-stateswoman stunned the world with her no-nonsense manner and absolute fearlessness. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino stood fast amid the corrupt circus of Filipino politics even though coup after coup attempted to remove her from office. She quickly earned the respect of her enemies when they discovered it wasn’t so easy to knock the homemaker and mother of five from her post as president of the explosively unstable nation. And she refused to live in the opulent palace the Marcos had built, proclaiming it a symbol of oppression of the poor masses by the wealthy few, and chose to live in a modest residence nearby.

However, longterm leadership proved difficult. Although she was credited with drafting a new democratic constitution that was ratified by a landslide popular vote, her support dwindled in the face of chronic poverty, an overstrong military, and governmental corruption. Her presidency ended in 1992.

For her achievements and courage, Cory Aquino has received numerous honorary degrees from sources as diverse as Fordham University and Waseda University in Tokyo. Named Time magazine’s Woman of the Year, Cory is also the recipient of many awards and distinctions, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award, the United Nations Silver Medal, and the Canadian International Prize for Freedom. Acknowledged by the Women’s International Center for her “perseverance and dedication,” Corazon Aquino was honored as an International Leadership Living Legacy who “faced adversity with courage and directness.”

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Phoolan Devi: India’s Bandit Queen

While many Indians reviled their own elected Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, they embraced Phoolan Devi, an outlaw believed to have killed sixty people in central India’s Chambal Valley. It is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the story; the male outlaw figure is a common subject of North Indian folklore, and Phoolan’s tale has many of the same elements. This version is based on the story reported by Mala Sen, in her fascinating and assiduously researched biography of Devi.

Born in 1956 into a boatman subcaste, Phoolan’s (which means “flowerlike” in Hindi, but she was more like a steel magnolia!) first insurrection took place when she and her sister wanted to sit in the mustard field they had worked in all day to “stop and smell the mustard blossoms.” When their higher caste landlord beat them up because they wouldn’t instantly leave, Phoolan watched her sister and parents nearly bleed to death. When she refused at age ten to put up with an arranged marriage to a man twenty years older, her traditionally minded village couldn’t deal with it, and Phoolan fell victim to kidnapping by a group of dacoits; bandits to you and me. The kidnapping was just as violent as you might expect a gang of marauders to be, and she was dragged, kicked, slapped, and suffered indignities of guns aimed at her private parts and a threat to cut off her nose. It is a real testament to Phoolan’s strength that she wasn’t utterly broken by the repeated rapes. Phoolan’s family was unable to get any help from authorities, who refused to waste their time looking for their rebellious “good- for-nothing” daughter. Meanwhile, the press had a field day with the story, inventing sensational details of their own to make for a good read in the papers. One such tall tale involved Phoolan engineering her own kidnapping because she wanted to be with the dacoits.

Whatever happened, one year later, Phoolan took charge of the gang through her own strength of will and personal power. Mala Sen also reports that the gang (thanks to the execution of the rapists by Phoolan’s champion, Vikram Mallah) turned into post-Raj Robin Hoods, giving stolen money to elderly and poor Indians. Well-embroidered accounts of Phoolan Devi’s exploits were soon making her the second most famous woman in India after Indira Gandhi, who urged peaceful measures in dealing with the headline-grabbing outlaw girl.

Soon, songs about the “Rebel of the Ravines” were being composed, statues of Phoolan Devi were sold in the market next to Krishna and Kali, and millions of Indians begged for her life to be spared in the “manhunt” to bring “The Bandit Queen” in after the alleged massacre of twenty-two Hindu men by Devi’s gang. Thanks to

the national attention, Phoolan’s capture took place safely in front of thousands of witnesses, and she kept up her spirits in prison, where she gave interviews, prayed, and walked unshackled. (She spent eleven years in prison without ever being charged.) India was even more delighted when they finally saw the Phoolan Devi they’d heard so much about; she is strikingly beautiful, with dark, commanding eyes and a magnificent smile. (Phoolan’s fairy tale-like story contains a tragic footnote, exemplifying the place of women in a societal admixture of medieval and modern. In prison, she suffered a ruptured ovarian cyst and the presiding doctor performed a hysterectomy, admittedly to prevent “Phoolan Devi breeding more Phoolan Devis!”)

Her legend lives on around the globe and Mala Sen’s excellent biography has been made into an acclaimed feature film. In India and England, she has become a folk shero. At her surrender, she is reported to have said, “If I had money, I would build a house with rooms as large as the hall of this prison. But I know this is all a dream. If any woman were to go through my experience, then she too would not be able to think of a normal life. What do I know, except cutting grass, and using a rifle?”

Phoolan was freed and all charges against her were dropped in 1994. In 1996, she ran for and was elected to the Samajwadi Party, but the prejudicial odds against a lower caste woman, even an internationally famous one, were against her in the subcontinent. In August of 1997, Phoolan threatened to kill herself when the criminal charges against her were again raised. Though, tragically, she was assassinated in 2001, her colorful legend lives on.

“She was walking tall, taunting them all, answering the call…with her rifle by her side”

— a popular Indian Phoolan Devi street song

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Elizabeth Warren: Nevertheless, She Persisted

Born in 1949, Elizabeth Warren grew up in a middle- class Oklahoma City family with three older brothers. At age 13, young Elizabeth started waiting tables to help her parents out after her father had a heart attack. A star member of her high school debate team, she won the title of “Oklahoma’s top high school debater.” This took her to George Washington University on a debate scholarship, but two years later she left to marry Jim Warren, her high school sweetheart. The couple moved to Texas when he found a job as an engineer at NASA, and Elizabeth graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology. She taught disabled children at a Texas school for a year before again relocating for her husband’s work, this time to New Jersey.

After the arrival of daughter Amelia, Elizabeth enrolled at Rutgers School of Law–Newark when her daughter turned two. Shortly before receiving her J.D. in 1976, she became pregnant with their second child. After passing the bar, Elizabeth worked from home, specializing in real estate closings and wills in her new law practice. They divorced in 1978; Elizabeth later remarried but kept her surname (under which she was practicing law at that time).

Warren lectured at Rutgers School of Law–Newark for a couple of years, then moved to the University of Houston Law Center where she became the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 1980. In 1987 she became a fulltime professor at U. Penn’s law school, where she obtained an endowed chair in 1990. She became the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in 1995; by 2011, she was the only tenured professor of law there who had gone to law school at a public university in the U.S. Warren assumed an advisory role at the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in 1995, and with others worked to oppose proposed laws which would severely limit consumers’ rights to file for bankruptcy, efforts which in the end did not prove successful. From 2006-2010, she was on the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. Warren is also a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent group which advises Congress on bankruptcy law. Her work in academia and as an advocate spurred the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011, the year that she declared her intention to seek nomination as the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012; she won the nomination and the election, and became the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

While campaigning, Warren made a speech at Andover that went viral; she replied to a charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is “class warfare” by pointing out that no one becomes wealthy in the U.S. without the benefit of infrastructure funded by the taxpayers: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. …You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work that the rest of us paid for. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.”

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Magaret Thatcher: Iron Maiden

Margaret Thatcher may have drawn fire from critics for her staunch conservativism, but she has the respect of the world for her no-nonsense strength and for her rise from greengrocer’s daughter to the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain. MT earned all her laurels through sheer hard work, studying diligently to get into Oxford where she studied chemistry and got her first taste of politics. Upon graduation, she got a law degree, married Dennis Thatcher, and had twins in short order. Her passion for conservative politics increased, and she impressed party members with her zeal and talent for debate. She won a seat in the House of Commons in 1959, and her rise in the party ranks was steady and sure, leading to her election in the eighties as Prime Minister, the first woman ever to head a major Western democracy. Vehemently anti- Communist and anti-waste, she curtailed government with a singular fervor, surprising everyone by going to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Tough as nails, Margaret explains her modus operandi thusly: “I’ve got a fantastic stamina and great physical strength, and I have a woman’s abilitiy to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves.”

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Indira Ghandi: Daughter of Destiny

Indira Nehru Gandhi’s life mirrors the divided country she governed as the first woman Prime Minister of India. She inherited a political consciousness from her nationalist grandfather Motilal Nehru and her father, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. The Nehrus are sometimes called India’s royal dynasty, but this is a contradiction of the very ideals the Nehru family and the peaceful revolutionary Mohandas K. Gandhi believed in as they worked to end England’s colonial rule over India.

As a girl, Indira witnessed up close the birth of modern, independent India under the leadership of Gandhi and her relatives. The Nehrus were a wealthy family who were moved by meeting Mohandas in 1919 to give up all their possessions and join in the struggle for independence. Indira endured the frequent jailings of Jawaharlal (and later, her mother) for nationalist activities. The young girl’s role model was Joan of Arc; later she told of playing with dolls to whom she assigned patriotic roles in the fight to free India from their foreign rulers. Indira’s childhood was unusual, by any means, often accompanying her father in his travels and meeting luminaries such as Albert Einstein and Ernst Toller. Indira also organized The Monkey Brigade for preteen revolutionaries and was later beaten cruelly for marching carrying India’s flag. She and her family often visited Gandhi, who was “always present in my life; he played an enormous role in my development.”

Indira suffered depression, anxiety, and illness from her unsettled life, and at age twenty-two married Feroze Gandhi, a family friend who was a Parsee, a member of a small religious sect, and not considered appropriate for Indira, who was of the Brahmin, or priestly, caste. Arrested for their nationalist activities, both Indira and Feroze spent nine months in jail, which, Indira claimed, was the most important event of her life, strengthening her political resolve.

Upon the deaths of their great leader Gandhi and the continued bloodshed during the Partition dividing India into Hindu India and the new Muslim state of Pakistan, Indira joined India’s Congress party and began to forge her own political sensibility. When India gained independence in 1947, her father became Prime Minister; because he was a widower, he needed Indira to act as his official hostess. During the time of her father’s multiple strokes, Indira was tacitly acting as Prime Minister. Upon his death in 1964, Indira became president of the India National Congress. After her father’s successor Lal Bahdur Shastri’s brief ministry and death from heart failure, Indira won the election by a landslide and became the leader of the world’s largest democracy, a leader of a country where women’s rights were not a top priority. Immediately she became a role model for millions of India’s women, traditionally subservient to men.

Indira inherited a land where starvation, civil wars, severe inflation, and religious revolts were a daily reality. She constantly endangered her health by working sixteen hour days trying to meet the needs of the second most populated country on earth. Her political fortunes rose and fell; she was booted out of office in 1977, only to be reelected a few years later to her fourth term as prime minister. Her controversial birth-control program is overlooked oftentimes in the criticisms that she traded political favors in order to hang onto the ministry.

Indira was constantly caught in between the warring factions and divisions of India’s various provinces and interests, and the history of her ministry reads like a veritable laundry list of riots, uprisings, and revolutions all played out on partisan quicksand. Her assassination demonstrates this fully. In 1919, British troops had massacred thousands of Sikhs, a proud warrior caste, in their sacred place of worship—the Golden Temple of Amritsar Sixty-five years later, Amritsar again ran red with the blood of Sikh extremists attempting to create a stronghold in which to make their demand for greater autonomy. When the Indian army invaded and seized back the temple, the sparks of anger blazed out of control. Across India, Sikhs were cursing the name of Ghandi, including some of her personal security guards. Four months later, Indira was shot to death by a Sikh in her garden, where she was about to be interviewed by Peter Ustinov. Her son, Rajiv, became the next Prime Minister and met an equally violent end when a Sri Lankan Tamil woman leapt onto him and detonated a bomb she had strapped to herself.

Indira Gandhi’s life is difficult to fully comprehend without a grasp of Indian history. Perhaps the deepest understanding of her comes through consideration of her chosen role model, Joan of Arc, a model for self-sacrifice who places the interests of her country above the value of her own life, and as a woman warrior in a battle of religious politics pitting men against men. Indira Gandhi’s own insistence to reporters who wanted to talk about her uniqueness as a woman Prime Minister speaks volumes as well: “I am not a woman. I am a human being.”

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke: Political Standout

Yvonne Burke was the first black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from California, serving from 1973-1978. The daughter of a janitor and a real estate agent, the Angeleno native was noted as exceptionally bright by her teachers and was sent to a “model” UCLA college prep school. The only African American student at the school, Yvonne was treated viciously by the other students, but didn’t let that stop her from turning in a stellar performance. Everywhere Yvonne went, she encountered more bigotry, including the women’s law sorority she was turned down by, compelling her to form an alternative women’s law sorority with two Jewish law students. Starting with her election in 1972, Yvonne Brathwaite’s career in Congress was equally outstanding; she was unfailingly supportive of the causes of desegregation, equal employment, and better housing. In ’78, she chose to run for California State Attorney General rather than seek reelection. She currently practices law in Los Angeles. Yvonne is a visionary with the smarts and dignity to rise above the hatred she has personally experienced just for being black, saying, “It’s just a matter of time until we have a black governor and, yes, a black president.” With the election of Barack Obama, she was proven right.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Shirley Crisholm: “Unbought and Unbossed”

Shirley Chisholm was a nonstop shero whose own sense of empowerment spread to everyone who came in contact with her. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to be elected to Congress, a historic triumph for her gender and race. Four years later, she ran for president in the primaries.

Born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, in 1924, she spent seven years in Barbados with her grandmother, Emily Seale. She credits the “stiff upper lip” yet excellent education she received in Barbados as giving her an advantage when she returned to the United States. Shirley garnered many scholarship offers upon high school graduation, choosing Brooklyn College to study psychology and Spanish with the intention of becoming a teacher. She got involved with the Harriet Tubman Society, where she developed a keen sense of black pride. Acing every course, she received a lot of encouragement to “do something” with her life. A Caucasian political science professor urged her to pursue politics, a daunting idea at the time. But the seed was planted.

After an arduous job search, Shirley finally found work at the Mount Cavalry Child Center; her magna cum laude degree didn’t seem to offset her color for many potential employers. She also took night classes at Columbia, where she met Conrad Chisholm. They married soon after, giving her a stable foundation upon which to build her house of dreams. She continued to work in early childhood education, becoming director of several day care centers and private schools.

In the sixties, Shirley stepped into the political arena, campaigning for a seat in the state assembly in her district. She won the Democratic seat in 1964 and began the first step in a history-making career, winning again in ’65 and ’66. Then she decided to run for the U.S. Assembly. Even though she was up against a much more experienced candidate with deep-pocketed financial backing, Shirley prevailed; she was aware that there were 13,000 more women than men in the district and quickly mobilized the female vote. She also underwent surgery for a tumor at this time, but went back to work immediately, quickly earning a reputation as one of the most hard charging black members of the Assembly.

Even in Congress, the race issue reared its head. She was assigned to the Agricultural Committee to work with food stamp distribution because she was a black woman. Shirley didn’t take this lying down and fought to get off that committee, moving on to Veteran’s Affairs and, finally, Education and Labor where she believed she could really do some good. Known for her straight-shooting verbal style and maverick political ways, she always saw herself as an advocate for her constituency, seeking to be the voice of those traditionally overlooked by politics: Hispanics, Native Americans, drug addicts, and gay activists.

As a presidential candidate for the 1972 Democratic nomination, she placed women’s rights at the center of her campaign, claiming that she was not a “gimmick” candidate, but a serious contender. Although she failed to get the nod, it did make her a national spokesperson for the civil and women’s rights movements. Since then, she helped create the National Political Congress of Black Women and taught, lectured, and authored two books, Unbought and Unbossed and The Good Fight. Shirley Chisholm was at the forefront of obtaining real political power for African American woman.

“I’m the only one among you who has the balls to run for president.”

— Shirley Chisholm to the Black Caucus members at the Democratic convention

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Barbara Walters: The “Today Girl” Who Became A Legendary Journalist

Barbara Walters once said, “I was the kind nobody thought could make it. I had a funny Boston accent. I couldn’t pronounce my Rs. I wasn’t a beauty.” For decades, she has proven everyone who doubted her to be utterly wrong. Born September 25, 1929, Barbara is an American broadcast journalist, author, and television personality who has hosted shows including The Today Show, The View, 20/20, and the ABC Evening News. Barbara attended Sarah Lawrence College in 1951; she obtained a B.A. in English and then worked at a small advertising agency for a year. After that, she went to work at the NBC network affiliate in New York City doing publicity and writing press releases. Barbara continued on to produce a number of shows, including the Eloise McElhone Show until its cancellation in 1954. She then started as a writer on the CBS Morning Show in 1955.

Barbara’s career began to skyrocket in 1961 when she became a writer and researcher for the Today Show; she later moved up to be the show’s “Today Girl”, a position in which she presented the weather and light news items. At that time, it was still early in the second wave of the women’s movement, and no one took a woman presenting hard news seriously, and there were difficulties with news anchors like Frank McGee who demanded preferential treatment as she started to cross over into news anchor territory. After McGee passed away in 1974, NBC at last promoted Barbara to the position of co-host – the first woman ever to rise to such a position on any U.S. news program.

Barbara was on a roll. Two years later, she became the first woman to co-anchor any American evening news show on a major network when she joined the ABC Evening News, ABC’s flagship news program. Walters
had a difficult relationship with her co-anchor Harry Reasoner, because he didn’t want to have to work with a co-anchor. This led to their team-up lasting only from 1976-78. Walters became a household name while a co-host and producer at the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 from 1979 to 2004, as well as for her appearances on special reports as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and coverage of 9/11. She was also a moderator for the final debate between presidential candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Barbara is famous for her interviews with memorable people, including Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, Michael Jackson, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Wintour, and Monica Lewinsky. In addition to her work at 20/20, Walters co-created The View, a current events talk show hosted solely by women, in 1997. She was a co-host on the show until May 2014 but continues as an executive producer. Barbara Walters was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 2007 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has also won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, the Women in Film Lucy Award, the GLAAD Excellence in Media Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women’s Agenda.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Katherine Graham: Katherine the Great

Although Katherine Graham was not a politician, she wielded enormous power in the political arena as owner of the Washington Post, still one of the most important and respected newspapers in the world today. Born Katherine Meyer, she was the daughter of Eugene Meyer, a brilliant French Jew who moved to America and attended Yale, made a fortune in banking and on the stock exchange, and retired a multimillionaire before he was thirty years old!

Katherine’s childhood is a classic silver spoon story, raised by domestic help while her parents maintained the lifestyle of the glittery successes they were. A staunch Republican, Eugene Meyer took on a second career as a public servant and served as an independent thinker, swung to the opposite pole on the left, and earned a degree in journalism. After a brief stint in San Francisco reporting for the now defunct News, Katherine accepted an offer of $29 a week to go and work for the paper Eugene Meyer had bought five years before—the Washington Post.

Katherine fell in love with the publisher of the Post, Philip Graham, and after they wed, they bought the paper from her father for a million dollars. Philip was brilliant and bipolar. He was keenly interested in building a publishing empire, and soon they added the magazine Newsweek to their holdings. Philip also dabbled in the high stakes game of politics and became involved in the very inner circles of power on Capitol Hill, convincing the young John Fitzgerald Kennedy to go with Lyndon Johnson from Texas as his running mate for the presidency. Then, in 1963, he committed suicide after a manic depressive episode. Katherine became a widow and responsible for both Newsweek and the Post in one day.

Katherine battled her shyness and rose to the occasion, becoming the publisher of the Post. Diving in feet first, she saw that the Post had been drifting along listlessly. It needed, Katherine believed, a charismatic editor to become a first-rate example of journalistic excellence. She found him in Ben Bradlee, a hard charging investigative reporter whom she quickly named managing editor.

In 1971, the Post received worldwide attention when President Richard Nixon slapped a restraining order on the paper for the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, revealing the United States government’s involvement in the political machinery of Southeast Asia. Graham refused to back down and later emerged the victor in the skirmish when the Supreme Court decided in the Post’s favor.

One year later, the Post took the spotlight again for breaking the story of the Watergate scandal. Graham financed the Watergate investigation and stood firmly behind her editor and reporters against the White House’s retaliatory measures. Her sheroism in the face of enormous pressure from friends and political players to back off from Watergate was simply astounding. She remained steadfast while the Post’s stock plummeted and so-called friends disappeared rather than be associated with the woman who challenged Richard Nixon and, ultimately, brought him and his house of cards down. When she retired in 1991, she was one of only two women heads of Fortune 500 companies.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media

Gloria Steinem: Wonder Woman

Gloria Steinem’s name is synonymous with feminism. As a leader of the second wave of feminism, she brought a new concern to the fore—the importance of self-esteem for women. Her childhood did little to bolster her sense of self or predict the successful course her life would take. Her father, an antique dealer, traveled a lot for work, and her mother suffered from severe depression and was often bedridden and self-destructive. Because they moved so often, Gloria didn’t attend school until she was ten, after her family was deserted by her father and Gloria assumed the roles of housewife and mother to her mother and sister. Escaping through books and movies, Gloria did well at school and eventually was accepted to Smith College, where her interest in women’s rights, sparked by her awareness that her mother’s illness had not been taken seriously because “her functioning was not necessary to the world” began to take hold.

After a junket in India, she started freelancing; her goal was to be a political reporter. Soon she hit the glass ceiling; while she made enough money to get by, she wasn’t getting the kind of serious assignments her male colleagues were—interviewing presidential candidates and writing on foreign policy. Instead she was assigned in 1963 to go undercover as a Playboy Bunny and write about it. She agreed, seeing it as an investigative journalism piece, a way to expose sexual harassment. However, after the story appeared, no editors would take her seriously; she was the girl who had worked as a Bunny.

But she kept pushing for political assignments and finally, in 1968, came on board the newly founded New York magazine as a contributing editor. When the magazine sent her to cover a radical feminist meeting, no one guessed the assignment would be transformational. After attending the meeting, she moved from the sidelines to stage center of the feminist movement, cofounding the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Action Alliance.

The next year, Steinem, with her background in journalism, was the impetus for the founding of Ms., the first mainstream feminist magazine in America’s history. The first issue, with shero Wonder Woman on the cover, sold out the entire first printing of 300,000 in an unprecedented eight days, and Ms. received an astonishing 20,000 letters soon after the magazine hit the newsstands, indicating it had really struck a chord with the women of America. Steinem’s personal essay, “Sisterhood,” spoke of her reluctance to join the movement at first because of “lack of esteem for women—black women, Chicana women, white women— and for myself.”

The self-described “itinerant speaker and feminist organizer” continued at the helm of Ms. for fifteen years, publishing articles such as the one that posited Marilyn Monroe as the embodiment of fifties women’s struggle to keep up the expectations of society. She penned Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions in 1983, urging women to take up the charge as progenitors of change. This was followed by Revolution from Within in 1992, illuminating her despair at having to take care of her emotionally disturbed mother as well as her struggles with self-image, feeling like “a plump brunette from Toledo, too tall and much too pudding-faced, with…a voice that felt constantly on the verge of revealing some unacceptable emotion.” Steinem stunned her reading public with such self-revelatory confessions. Who would have guessed that this crack editor and leading beauty of the feminist movement had zero self-image?

Gloria Steinem’s real genius lies in her ability to relate to other women, creating the bond of sisterhood with shared feelings, even in her heralded memoir. Still a phenomenally popular speaker and writer, Gloria Steinem crystallizes the seemingly complicated issues and challenges of her work by defining feminism as simply, “the belief that women are full human beings.”

“The sex and race caste systems are very intertwined and the revolutions have always come together, whether it was the suffragist and abolitionist movements or whether it’s the feminist and civil rights movements. They must come together because one can’t succeed without the other.”

— Gloria Steinem

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media