Gloria Steinem talks women in media

Rather than listening to her words, Gloria Steinem asked her audience last night to turn the event into a town hall meeting.

“Hierarchy came with patriarchy, and neither of them work anymore,” she said.

Steinem, writer, editor and feminist activist, spoke about the media’s representation of women at the Livingston Student Center for “Media: More than Reality,” part of the Susan and Michael Angelides J. Lecture Series.

Steinem is the founder of Ms. magazine and served as an editor for 15 years. In 2013, she was chosen as the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.

Technology has enabled humanity to make progress at an unprecedented rate, she said. But it also has the power to repress different races, classes, genders and religions.

Although the people in the room could find an article or a blog or tweet about the event, she said, it would not be the same as attending and hearing what she had to say.

“Media is not reality,” she said. “Reality is reality.”

For most of humanity’s history, people have not relied on technology for communication, she said. There was no separation between meaning and message.

Now, most people cannot join the campfire of communication, she said. Society gathers information from media outlets, which focus on violence and hatred.

“If you added up all the deaths from Iraq and modern wars, it would still be less than the number of women who died [from gendered violence],” she said.

Women are underrepresented in the newsroom and in movie roles, both as actors and directors, she said. Of 150 print publications covering sports, 90 percent of editors are white males.

Women make up a large percentage of game players but a tiny minority of game developers, she said. The Internet also has become a place for misogyny — female usernames are more likely to be bullied than males.

Pornography is replacing normal sex education as the main form of learning among teenagers, she said.

In response to a question about gender violence, Steinem said the single greatest indicator of whether a country is violent against itself or against its army is violence against women.

“That’s what sets that pattern and normalizes that pattern,” she said.

Alison Bernstein, director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership, said Steinem encompasses all the positive values of a feminist, an activist for the rights of everyone and a dedication to helping all women and girls.

Anyone who says feminists have no sense of humor has not heard of Steinem, she said.

“She is widely quoted. She even has a fridge magnet that says, ‘the truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off,’” she said.

The Institute for Women’s Leadership Consortium sponsored the event. Lisa Hetfield, associate director for the IWL, said the Angelides endowment allows them to invite one distinguished female leader every year.

Bernstein is a personal friend of Steinem’s and invited her to speak after she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November, Hetfield said.

“For many of us, she represented a transformation,” she said. “She changed how we thought about ourselves and our world. She taught us to raise our voices and understand what equality would look like.”