Women’s Media Center Photo Celebrations:
Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem
Tuesday September 8
The Women’s Media Center had compiled two photo celebrations to mark how important our two history making cofounders, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, have been in our lives and work.
Photos of WMC Co-Founder Robin Morgan — poet, journalist, author, activist, feminist, organizer, and friend.
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Photos of Gloria Steinem WMC Co-Founder, Journalist, Author, Activist, Feminist, Organizer, Friend
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Here is a selection of media coverage honoring the lives of Robin and Gloria:
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She completed her final “Sisterhood” anthology, “Sisterhood Is Forever,” with essays by more than 50 feminists, in 2003. She then joined forces with Ms. Steinem and Jane Fonda in 2005 to create the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit organization supporting women working in the media. She hosted a podcast on politics for the center for many years. (Ms. Steinem died on Wednesday.) |
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Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92.
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In addition to cofounding the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the Free to Be Foundation, she was also part of spearheading the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit focused on boosting stories of women and underrepresented stories in the media. Women’s Media Center President and CEO Julie Burton highlighted Steinem’s impact in a statement following her death. “She used her voice and writing to raise visibility for women and the issues of our time. We came to take it for granted that she would always be where she was most needed — at the podium, on TV, on the plane, on the phone, or at the computer — to make the ideal of social justice a reality,” Burton said, according to the press release. |
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“The first thing I feel whenever I’m in Gloria Steinem’s presence is safe,” Jane Fonda, with whom she co-founded the Women’s Media Center in 2004, said in 2019. “Though she is barraged by demands on her time, she is always willing to stop and listen, wanting to help, to understand. I know there are literally millions of women — I have personally spoken to hundreds of them — whose lives have been changed by Gloria’s words.”
Said Women’s Media Center president and CEO Julie Burton in a statement released Thursday: “Gloria once wrote a letter to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade decision, thanking him for saving more women’s lives than anyone in U.S. History. We could say the same about Gloria’s impact on women’s lives, because for decades she was at the forefront of the struggle for political and social equality and justice for women.”
Steinem’s 85th birthday in March 2019 drew tributes from a host of women across industries, including Lena Dunham, Mariska Hargitay, Ashley Judd, Mellody Hobson, Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Schumer, Meryl Streep and Maxine Waters. |
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Leading second-wave feminist co-founded Women’s Media Center with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem. Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center, called Morgan “one of the architects of the contemporary women’s movement”, hailing her writing and “global leadership for justice and equality”. |
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Dr. Janet Dewart Bell, board chair of the Women’s Media Center, reflect on Steinem’s extraordinary legacy, her groundbreaking journalism—including an undercover Playboy Bunny exposé—and what it means to carry her work forward. |
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The editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine from 1989 to 1994, Morgan, over the last decade, hosted, wrote, and produced the award-winning WMC podcast Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. The podcast recently produced its 500th episode.
Morgan, Fonda and Steinem co-founded the Women’s Media Center 21 years ago with a mission to give voice to and strengthen democracy for women in media and beyond. “Our job is to make women visible and powerful in the media,” Morgan once told Fox 5 Good Day New York. “And we do that through lots of programs — through training women in media skills, through SheSource, which is the go-to place for experts, through many programs and our radio program [now podcast], Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan.”
Today the Women’s Media Center produces original on-air and online journalism by and about women, and documents and fights structural sexism and racism in media. |
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Host Indira Lakshmanan sits down with activist, author and Women’s Media Center board member Soraya Chemaly to reflect on Gloria Steinem’s impact on the feminist movement. |
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In 1984, she was a founder of an early feminist think tank, the Sisterhood Is Global Institute. In 2005, she, Steinem and Jane Fonda launched the Women’s Media Center, which has a mission to support “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.”
More recently, she hosted a syndicated radio show and remained active despite being diagnosed 16 years ago with Parkinson’s disease, which inspired several poems and a TEDWomen talk in 2015. |
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“Robin Morgan was one of the architects of the contemporary women’s movement,” said Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center. “Her global leadership for justice and equality, her work as a pioneering journalist who gave voice and visibility to women, and her fierce artistry as an internationally recognized poet and author of more than 20 books—these all constitute the legacy she has forged over decades of creative, cultural and political work.” |
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Julie Burton, the president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center, recalled: Gloria once wrote a letter to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, author of the Roe v. Wade decision, thanking him for saving more women’s lives than anyone in US history. We could say the same about Gloria’s impact on women’s lives, because for decades she was at the forefront of the struggle for political and social equality and justice for women. She used her voice and writing to raise visibility for women and the issues of our time. We came to take it for granted that she would always be where she was most needed—at the podium, on TV, on the plane, on the phone, or at the computer—to make the ideal of social justice a reality. Her phrases have become mottoes of our time. |
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Chris Hayes honors Gloria Steinem, including an interview with Women’s Media Center’s cofounders Gloria, Robin and Jane. |
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In 2005, she, Steinem and Jane Fonda launched the Women’s Media Center, which has a mission to support “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.” |
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“Gloria was very interested in intergenerational connection,” Soraya Chemaly, author of “All We Want is Everything” and board member of the Women’s Media Center, tells me. “She listened to young women who sat in her living room, never talking down to them, always validating,” says Chemaly, who estimates that she was a guest in Steinem’s living room nearly a dozen times. “She built community and solidarity in a low-key and comfortable space.” |
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In 2005, she, Steinem and Jane Fonda launched the Women’s Media Center, which has a mission to support “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.” |
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Recognizing that true change requires both political power and cultural representation, Steinem co-founded vital organizations including the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, and the Women’s Media Center. She also co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972 and shattered many media glass ceilings by creating a dedicated space for feminist journalism. What many do not realize is that Steinem and the Ms. collective eventually hired former ESSENCE editor-in-chief Marcia Ann Gillespie as the editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine in 1993. |
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In 2005, she, Steinem and Jane Fonda launched the Women’s Media Center, which has a mission to support “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.” More recently, she hosted a syndicated radio show and remained active despite being diagnosed 16 years ago with Parkinson’s disease, which inspired several poems and a TEDWomen talk in 2015.
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Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine in the early 1970s and helped create the Women’s Media Center alongside Jane Fonda and writer Robin Morgan. |
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Her death followed by days that of longtime ally Gloria Steinem, with whom she and Jane Fonda founded the Women’s Media Center. In a statement, per Deadline, Fonda said: “Robin Morgan was an artist, a poet, an activist, and in my eyes, a living legend—a woman whose anthology series, Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Global, and Sisterhood is Forever provided the evidence needed to launch a feminist revolution, and it was part of my feminist education that led to the movie, 9 to 5.” … [Morgan] created and hosted the Women’s Media Center’s weekly program, now the long-running podcast Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. |
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“Her connections in the women of color communities were deep and broad,” Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center, of which Steinem was a co-founder, told Journal-isms. |
Additional media coverage can be found on our website.
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