Remembering Gloria Steinem’s Quiet Power as a Mentor and Organizer

When I first met Gloria Steinem in 2007, I was a 33-year-old organizer focused on domestic workers’ rights in New York City. Despite having studied women’s history in college, I had not fully understood the depth of Steinem’s commitment to grassroots organizing. She had founded the Ms. Foundation for Women specifically to fund and amplify the kind of work I was doing. At their annual fundraising gala, I was struck by her genuine warmth and enthusiasm for our efforts.

“Do you know about Carolyn Reed?” she asked me. Reed established the Household Technicians of America in 1971. Her organizing, alongside Dorothy Bolden and the National Domestic Workers Union in the South, was instrumental in securing inclusion of domestic workers in federal minimum wage laws after four decades of exclusion under the New Deal. I had never heard of Reed or Bolden; neither figure had been covered in my women’s history classes. Yet Steinem knew Reed well and frequently supported efforts to gain professional recognition for domestic workers.

At the time, I was helping plan what would become the founding meeting of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Steinem’s prompt helped us connect with the legacy of Black women organizers whose bravery strengthened the economy for generations. This exemplified Steinem’s character: she recognized value and power where others saw none, and she actively corrected historical omissions that kept us from finding our collective roots.

A year after we met, I reached out to update her on our campaign to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York State. This legislation would be the first comprehensive state-level law to extend labor rights to domestic workers, including protections like paid leave. We were organizing a 24-hour vigil outside the governor’s office. Steinem communicated via email formatted like formal letters. When she arrived at the vigil, she joined our circle on the sidewalk, listened to our stories, and then spoke into our battery-operated bullhorn. She invoked Carolyn Reed, saying Reed was applauding our campaign from heaven and walking alongside us toward victory.

That moment marked the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship. Steinem’s mentorship was unique; she listened carefully and shared insights she had gathered from other women, curated through her strategic mind and exceptional command of language. She did not offer unsolicited advice but rather shared stories. She did not view herself as a mentor but considered herself constantly mentored by others, especially younger women.

Steinem identified primarily as an organizer rather than an activist, believing that organizers restructure power relations to be more equitable and place authority in the hands of everyday people. When I mentioned we were experimenting with neighborhood-based organizing circles, she recalled how previous women’s movements had gathered in circles of 13—small enough for everyone to feel seen, yet large enough to harness collective power.

Like any dedicated organizer, Steinem was willing to do the groundwork. She wrote letters to governors to help finish legislative campaigns and called mayors to ensure domestic workers were not excluded from paid sick days legislation. If invited to speak at a press conference regarding labor bills, she always consulted with me first to understand how the legislation affected domestic workers.

Several years into our friendship, I discovered her essay “Revaluing Economics” in the collection Moving Beyond Words. Published in 1994, years before the National Domestic Workers Alliance was conceived, Steinem wrote about care as an essential economic resource that has never been adequately valued, largely due to its association with women. She argued that to survive and thrive, society must fundamentally protect and revalue care. These ideas have deeply shaped my work over the past 15 years.

More recently, I spent much of my time with Steinem through an intergenerational, multi-racial group of women we affectionately call the “G Squad.” Composed of a writer, two artists, a pro-democracy organizer, myself, and Steinem, we gathered to celebrate her birthday, strategize major moments in the women’s movement, and even vet new romantic interests. We learned about Steinem’s life and adventures from one another, and about other women through her.

While much has been written about the talking circles Steinem hosted in her home, she was part of dozens of ongoing circles of relationships with women worldwide. I often wondered how she found the time for so many connections. She was among the first to send me a note when I joined the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation.

“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to know that your understanding and way of organizing will be there—you who don’t hold a finger to the wind, but become the wind,” Steinem wrote. “It also makes me feel a little better about the way too early loss of Wilma.”

She was referring to Wilma Mankiller, her close friend and former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, who died of cancer with Steinem at her side. Mankiller was a legendary organizer and leader who also served as a Ford Foundation trustee. Steinem urged me to read Mankiller’s speech, “Context Is Everything.”

Steinem changed the context for women like me, reshaping our choices and our understanding of them. It was as if she lived on a different continuum, composed of circles of women throughout history, all “linked, not ranked.” Her true gift was helping many of us see the hidden stories, ideas, lives, and contributions of women. She helped us locate our place in the story.

In a world sorted by hierarchies of human value, where too many stories are being erased, Steinem’s memory serves as a reminder that we are not alone in the world or in history. We are part of a proud and vast legacy of women, seen and unseen, that continues to change the world. That is exactly what Gloria would have wanted.