The Redstockings, a group of radical feminists, even accused Steinem of being a CIA agent assigned to subvert the women's movement. In Steinem's case, she was not only attacked by the predictable enemy, namely chauvinistic men, but also by fellow feminists like Betty Friedan. This biography is a reminder of how often the most central and altruistic figure in a time of great social change can become the one who is either forgotten, or worse, reviled and misrepresented, even by members of her own camp. I knew little of Steinem other than a hazy impression of an earnest, willowy beauty, publisher of Ms., the only glossy women's magazine that was really about women's issues, but which failed due to lack of advertising. Other American feminists, like Kate Millett, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, or Naomi Wolf, are more forceful presences, associated in my mind with more memorable insights or actions. To this thirtysomething Irish reporter, Gloria Steinem is not, a particularly familiar feminist icon.
This is how Carolyn Heilbrun describes Gloria Steinem in her new biography: The Education of a Woman: The Life and Times of Gloria Steinem. "AN ENIGMA and a paradox" a woman who is "essential and ubiquitous" in the world of feminism.
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