Gloria Steinem

Also written as: Steinem

Involved in

• The feminism represented by Gloria Steinem explicitly focused on gender and explicitly avoided class.

• Gloria Steinem remained on the Independent Research Service board as late as 1968–69.

• The outcome resulted from choices made by people whose institutional formation was explicitly anti‑socialist and whose rise was funded by the CIA.

• Redstockings published a detailed investigation into Gloria Steinem’s CIA ties in May 1975.

• Mainstream feminism in the 1970s and 1980s was shaped decisively by Gloria Steinem’s network and platform and produced real gains for professional women.

• Gloria Steinem described the CIA as “liberal, nonviolent and honorable”.

• Gloria Steinem co‑founded Ms. magazine in 1972.

• Gloria Steinem entered feminist organizing in 1969–70 with no prior record in any women’s group, no feminist publications, and no history of organizing working‑class women.

• Gloria Steinem founded and directed the Independent Research Service.

• Gloria Steinem co‑founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.

• The Village Voice reported in 1979 that Random House removed the Redstockings chapter documenting Gloria Steinem’s CIA history from their forthcoming book Feminist Revolution.

• Gloria Steinem ran the Independent Research Service from 1959 to 1962.

• Gloria Steinem was recruited by CIA officers C. D. Jackson and Cord Meyer into the CIA program after two years in India on a Chester Bowles fellowship.

• Mainstream second‑wave feminism under Gloria Steinem’s influence was built around the concerns of white, college‑educated, professional women and did not center poverty wages, universal childcare, or working‑class labor conditions.

• Gloria Steinem said she would work with the CIA again.

• Gloria Steinem confirmed her role to The New York Times in 1967.

• The Redstockings investigation prompted Gloria Steinem to write a six‑page letter defending herself.

• Legal pressure connected to Gloria Steinem and figures in her network, including Katharine Graham and associates of Cord Meyer, led Random House to remove the Redstockings chapter.

Statements attributed to it

• Gloria Steinem described the CIA as “liberal, nonviolent and honorable”.

  independent

• Gloria Steinem said she would work with the CIA again.

  independent

Voices are counted, never weighed. This is a record of what this entity has been recorded as saying — not a measure of whether it is right.

Origin: first recognised while reading Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Was An Anti-Communist CIA Operative who Kept Feminism From Discussing Class · 2026-09-11 22:08