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Gloria Steinem Gets Duke Chapel Audience 'Organized'

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Activist, author, and feminist Gloria Steinem visited Duke Tuesday evening for "one great, big organizing meeting."

Before a filled Duke Chapel, and with people standing in the aisles to hear the talk, Steinem delivered the Jean Fox O'Barr distinguished lecture at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the Baldwin Scholars program. Steinem, who just turned 80 years old, shared life lessons and advice for feminists.

Among them:

  • "All your old lovers will become your friends. If you liked each other in the first place, that won't go away."
  • "The person you most resemble after 50 is your 9 or 10 year-old self. She comes back. The one who said 'it's not fair' and 'you're not the boss of me' - which sums up every liberation movement."
  • "People ask what I'm most proud of. I haven't done it yet. I live in the future. Hope is a form of planning."
  • "That we are living in a post-feminist, post-racist age and the revolution is over could not be further from the truth."

Steinem also outlined key issues facing the next generation of college students, saying strong attention should be given to student loan debt and pay equity.

"This is something you should be mad as hell about," she said.

Some progress has been made regarding violence against women, she said.

"We've stopped blaming the victim. We're now looking at the gendered nature of violence, and we understand that men are born into these systems of control."

Making the connection between warring nations and higher incidences of violence against women, she said "we're never going to have non-violent societies until we have non-violent families," she said. "God may be in the details, but goddess is in the connections."

Equal pay for women, she said, would have made a better economic stimulus plan.

"Women are not going to start Swiss bank accounts. We're going to spend it," she said, citing a statistic that female physicians make, on average, $50,000 less than their male counterparts. "Women are a pool of cheap labor."

She added that the next step as we move toward pay equity would be to attribute value to all modes of work, including caregiving whether done by a man or a woman.

Donna Lisker, co-director of the Baldwin Scholars, provided introductory remarks praising O'Barr for advocating for women at Duke and starting the women's studies program.

"If not for you, this event, a sold-out chapel for a feminist speaker, would not be possible," Lisker said. 

Below: Video of Steinem's talk in Duke Chapel. Bottom: Steinem talks to Baldwin Scholars in the Mary Lou Williams Center following her lecture Tuesday. Photos by Les Todd/Duke University Photography

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