Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton Gave Us Joy and Shared Hope – We Have to Take It From Here 

With the loss of Gloria Steinem this week and Dolly Parton last, a generation is passing on. Two women of vastly different backgrounds – a country music star and a women’s rights activist – have unleashed national outpourings of shared memory and experience as we collectively remember what we liked better about the era that produced them than the world we have right now. 

But – let’s take a beat.

That era, the decades after World War II, was an inflection point in America, especially for women. As the 1950s gave way to the ‘60s and ’70s, it seemed like endless opportunity beckoned. A generation led by young people was determined to break with the conventions of the past and chart a new course for themselves.

For women, it produced a stunning set of changes that resonate today, from abortion to sexual independence to the basic expectation that women be treated equally in pay and workplace conditions. We never got the ERA passed, but we did get the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act in 2009, eventually. 

Most of all, that era led to the resetting of expectations that women could achieve whatever they wanted. Certainly, I grew up expecting to compete with men and, more importantly, believing it was possible. I raised my daughter that way. I hope she will do the same. 

For the women’s movement, both Steinem and Parton carved out paths that were singular for their time. For all her down-home Southern charm, Parton chose a career instead of a family, endlessly explaining but never apologizing for why she chose not to have children.

Her meteoric rise from hardscrabble poverty in the Tennessee back country to international stardom over a half-dozen decades is as unlikely as it is inspiring. Dolly Parton literally invented herself, from her towering blonde wigs to her oversized bosom and dimpled smile. More than that, Parton refused all conventions of the society that made her; she left her husband Carl back home while she toured, recorded and built an entertainment empire.

In the interviews that are resurfacing in the wake of Steinem’s passing at 92, there are many that explore her own singular path. She explained how she always planned to marry and raise a family, but she just kept putting it off, finding other things to do with her life – like create MS magazine, become a feminist activist, write books and lecture. 

She did finally get married in her mid-60s to Christian Bale’s father, David – but only for three years.

Another singular figure remains with us, Jane Fonda, who I sought out backstage at the Diane von Furstenberg awards at the Venice Film Festival. She teared up as she recalled her friend and fellow traveler, Steinem, and it was heartbreaking to think that she was still reeling from the loss of her other dear friend Dolly Parton the week before.

Fonda, Parton and Lily Tomlin created their own icon of feminist culture in the movie “9 to 5,” which has surged on all streaming charts in the wake of Parton’s death at age 80.   

From our vantage point of today, it is easy to believe that we’re moving backward as far as women are concerned. The very real setbacks of today – whether the end of Roe v. Wade or the popularity of trad wives – are tough. But I believe it is temporary. Long term, women are not going to be relegated to the back rooms again.

So while it’s tempting to sit in the sadness of it all, I prefer to look at the abundance of gifts these women leave us. What their generation made us believe is that the future is better than the past. And that the present can be full of joy and kindness, along with ambition.

I met Gloria Steinem at the Sundance Film Festivalin 2020, where she came for the film “The Glorias,” a biopic directed by Julie Taymor that was based on her book and tells the story of her life.

In the film, five Glorias trace her journey from her time as a young woman in India to her role in the women’s rights movement that started in the 1960s. For Steinem, everything changed when she covered an abortion speak-out for New York Magazine in 1969. 

She told me at the time a story that illustrates just how far we have come as women in society:

“In New York state, the legislature was considering whether to liberalize the law, so they invited 14 men and one nun to testify. So a group of women — I was being a journalist — said, ‘No, let’s hear from women; let women testify who have actually had this experience.’ I went to cover it, and for the first time in my life I heard women standing up in public, telling the truth about something that was illegal, unacceptable and I thought, ‘Why am I not telling the truth about this?’”

Even Steinem is amazed by how much she and the women’s movement achieved, despite the ongoing setbacks.

“When I think where we started, I feel amazed, because now the issues that used to be 10, 20 or 30% in the public opinion poll are now majority issues, for all the social justice movements, and that’s huge,” Steinem said.

I got a t-shirt for the film, long-sleeved and black, that I still wear. It has holes under the arms and is all stretched out. I don’t care. It reminds me of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

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