UPDATED: Feminist Icons: Past, Present, and Future

UPDATED: This blog post of mine was edited and reworked to be posted on the EMILY's List blog here. Below remains the original version posted on my blog last week.

This week The Daily Beast and Newsweek published a profile of one of the greatest icons in feminist history, Gloria Steinem.

Mention the name Gloria Steinem to many women under 30, and if there is a flash of recognition at all, they put her in Florence Nightingale’s league—an admirable figure from the history books. To them, feminism was a war won before they were born, the miniskirted 1970s revolution that freed their mothers and grandmothers from drudgery and discrimination, paving the way for their own generation’s unfettered freedom. But in the living room of the funky Upper East Side duplex where she has lived for more than 35 years, Steinem, 77, is still on the front lines of a fight she considers barely half finished.

Now, on my college campus, the name Gloria Steinem holds incredible weight and even a measure of awe.  For weeks after her visit to American University last year, dozens of friend’s maintained FB profile pictures with Steinem.  But my world is an anomaly in which feminists and progressives abound and feminist icons are not only known but regularly sought out.   So I guess the question remains, does Gloria Steinem sill matter?  Or, perhaps the far more important inquiry is, who’s the next Steinem, Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, or Alice Paul?

When it comes to feminist heroes, there seems to be this problem of giant gaps in time where no one takes the lead. 

But is that entirely true?  I know that throughout my time in highschool, whenever we got around to talking about anything related to feminism, the only people mentioned were Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and maybe Betty Friedan. 

Once I got to college, I discovered the remarkable stories of Alice Paul and Carrie Chapmann Catt and how it was them, not Anthony or Stanton, that actually got the 19^th Amendment passed through Congress and finally ratified by the states in 1929. And then came the 70s and the likes of Shirley Chisholm, Sarah Weddington, and Gloria Steinem.  But these names were never mentioned outside my feminist world.

And while Gloria Steinem still has a voice, and is still fighting hard, I have to wonder, who’s next?  And why are there massive gaps between feminist icons?  Or at least between women whom the history books recognize as icons.

Today, we have Carolyn Maloney, who, every single year, largely unnoticed by everyone but the most dedicated feminists, reintroduces the Equal Rights Amendment.  We have Kirsten Gillibrand who is taking a stand and gaining national recognition for her “Off the Sidelines” campaign which urges more women to get involved in the political process.  And we have women like Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Hillary Clinton who have broken through more ceilings and down more doors than perhaps anyone else in feminist history.

But will these women be viewed as iconic figures in the harsh light of history?  So many of them are still villianized by half of society and the rest are just plain ignored.

Who will stand up?  Who will stand out?  And who will lead the way to finish the race that all of these iconic figures and those running along side of them started so long ago?