- [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas community. - i'm evan smith. she's still and ever a feminist icon without peer, an activist, an agitator, a role model for multiple generations, and a best-selling author of multiple memoirs. the last of these, my life on the road, was recently published in paperback. she's gloria steinem, this is overheard. (audience applause) let's be honest, is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you know, you saw a problem and over time, took it on.

let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you, actually. (audience applause) gloria steinem, welcome. - oh, thank you so much. thank you. - so nice to see you again. - yes, this is our second time- - our second time together, and seeing you again, i'm reminded of how you seem to have boundless energy. you never seem to tire of this work. long ago, you would've been forgiven for saying, "i've done my part." - no, nobody has boundless energy, but i'm so lucky to be- - you seem pretty boundless to me. (audience laughter) - i am so lucky to be doing something i love and care about and get energy from and it makes lots of other things boring. - well, it's hard work - - because you see people changing and things growing and people, like, being born with new courage and new ideas. it's great. - but it's hard work, let's acknowledge, and it's not always successful work. it's ongoing. - yes, that is an understatement.

it's not always successful work. - do you think it's easier now than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, to take your message around the country, to talk to groups, to persuade people that there's still work to be done? - no, it's way easier than it was in the beginning because then, we were viewed as an oddity, and, you know, it was sort of like 12 crazy ladies who were, you know (laughs). and, uh, then the backlash began in the 80s, and i think that was tough, too, because the very fact that we were successful in getting a lot of new issues out there, whether it was domestic violence or, you know, all of them, it got us a backlash which is still going on. but what's different now is they are majority issues, - right, right. - and that is huge. - i mean, we now know for sure we are not crazy, the system is crazy. (laughs) - and, you know, we're having a conversation out in the open about a lot of these issues, whether it's sexual assault or something that seems more mundane like pay equity, right?

we're having these conversations on a regular basis and yet we're still having to have them, which at least tells me that the problem is not solved or the work is not done. - yeah, no, it's not solved, and also i think we are in a stage of very important connection making. - [evan] tell me about that. - well, for instance, we've always talked about equal pay, you know, we know all of that, and we've marched forward from 59 cents on the dollar to 70 some cents on the dollar but what we have not seen is that equal pay for women of all races would be the biggest economic stimulus the country could ever have. way better than giving money to wall street and the banks, you know? (audience applause) because we would, you know, we're not gonna have a swiss bank account, no, we're gonna spend the money and stimulate the economy and it's going to bring families, female-headed households are the most likely to be in poverty, so it's going to bring them up

and diminish government spending on that. i mean, it's like a total win-win. but when they discuss economic stimulus, they don't discuss equal pay. - yeah, and this book, which was out a year ago as we sit here but is now out recently in paperback, and really tells the story of your time- i mean, it literally is called my life on the road and that's what this book is about, stories from your many years of travels and the work that you've done. in part, your motivation as you identify it in the beginning of this book, in part is you wanted to open up the road to women. and i was really struck by that because here we are in 2016, here we are at a time when there are theoretically no barriers for women to do anything that they want to do, and yet we still have a society in which the assumption is women stay home, right, take care of the family, take care of the household, and the men go off and do whatever they do. and you make the point that you wanted women who read this book to see, in the spirit of there's still work to be done, that actually there's an opportunity for them to be out and to do the hard work for themselves. - i mean, the world belongs to us, too. - right. - and, you know,

i also thought it was more dangerous for women, right? - yeah. - i mean, we kinda think that. and then i looked at the statistics and i realized that actually statistically speaking, the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home. that is the place she is most likely to be beaten up and even killed. so, you know, why can't we have this adventure and out there and seeing other people and still be welcomed when we come home? - and in some ways, when women come home, that's when the work begins, right? men come home and that's when the work theoretically ends. - yeah, well, that's true, too. but, ironically, it turns out that we know from dna studies that women are the travelers more than men, actually, are more likely to have voyaged far. some of that is because so many cultures were patrilocal, not matrilocal, so women went to marry. but it's kind of odd that men

are the stay-at-homes, dna-wise. (laughs) - is it a mistake for us to think about the situation that women find themselves in in 2016 as monolithic? surely, it must be so that you travel around this country, you travel to the coasts. talk about what you see when you're out. where is the most work in need of being done? is there a type of situation or area- - well, i don't like to say this is the most important issue something. the most important issue is what's happening to each one of us. you know, i mean, that's what we know about and what we're the most powerful working on. but if you just add it up statistically it's violence against females because if you, for instance, take all the the people who have been murdered by their husbands and boyfriends since 9/11, then you count all the americans killed in 9/11, two wars in iraq and 14 years in afghanistan, way more - - significantly more, right? - women have been killed in domestic terrorism

than have been killed in foreign terrorism. - you used that phrase domestic terrorism, which for some people, people go, "i didn't actually think of it in those terms", but that's, that's what it is. - well, i mean, if you're afraid in your own house, and this is by no means all men, incidentally, i mean, there's men who get hooked on dominance as a, you know, to prove, it's a whole saga, but it doesn't affect all men, but it's really very, very serious. so that is replicated in different ways in different places. there's child marriage, for instance, in a lot of countries, and that means that pregnancy too early and forced birth is the second biggest cause of death among teenage girls. or there's female genital mutilation, or there's son preference in asia, which means you get son surplus and daughter deficit, you know, so this country contributes, but it's all the other countries together

mean that for the first time now, there are fewer females on earth than males. - for the first time ever. - well, we don't know, but it's the first time since - - since measurements, basically. - the united nations says for the first time since they've been measuring, and that's very sobering. but the connection making now shows us, we can prove that in every current country the violence against females is a bigger indicator of all other violence inside the country and the willingness to use military violence than poverty, access to natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy. so, you know, these are things that are connected, you know, violence is normalized at home and then you think that one group of people is born to dominate the other or you think this is the only way of, you know, we're trying now to make those connections. - do you see anything out there that gives you hope that we're headed in the right direction

on some of these issues? - oh, yes, are you kidding me? no, no, no, no, absolutely, i mean, besides the fact that i'm a hopeaholic, which is something usually (laughs) which people in movements are, you know. - 'cause i hear you talk about this stuff, and i think i'm gonna end this interview early because i'm just, i'm depressed. but i wanna know what there is that you see that is hopeful. - well, what's hopeful, i mean, think about just ourselves for, of any age in domestic violence. we didn't have a word for it, you know. it was just, it was the woman's fault, and it was the goal of cops to get the victim and the criminal back together again, that's what they thought was success, you know. now we have laws and definitions and shelters and, you know, i mean, that's just one small example, but we've come a huge, huge distance. - is the fact that we're talking about this again, to come back to this idea that the discussion of these issues is more out in the open - - yeah, absolutely. - is that a sign that things have improved? - absolutely, of course. - because i'm torn between thinking that we simply have more ways to talk about things which is why we're so much more aware of it,

but there does also seem to be a greater willingness to discuss it. - no, there is, there is, i mean, look at racist violence among police, you know, against both men and women of color, okay, that's been going on i'm sure as long, i mean, people in my teenage years were saying to me, you know, if you, if you think that any cop is gonna help you, you probably don't know what it's like to be black in america, you know. and now, now we see it because people have iphones and, you know, there you see the incontrovertible evidence and it's again, it's not all cops, but i mean it's really serious if the people who are supposed to be the carriers of justice are the carriers of injustice. and we know it now, we know it now. i don't think we knew it in the same way before. - and we're talking about it in the same way, and i think of this because we're sitting here on a college campus, there is a more open discussion

of sexual assault on college campuses. - yes, absolutely. - it's not that it all of a sudden, it didn't exist for years, and then one day poof, it started to exist, suddenly now we're more aware. - it didn't exist or it was the girl's fault or - - we're now talking about it. and in professional sports, right, there's a, something approaching a conversation. - right. - right. heading in a direction where there's more of an open acknowledgement that we have a problem in that same way. - not to mention that men are getting hit in the head in football and going bonkers with, you know, the (laughs) the roles, the masculine and feminine roles, are bad for men, too. - i think you should be nfl commissioner, that would be a good - (audience laughter) in case you're wondering what you might do next that would be actually good. can i ask you a broader question about feminism, which is a word that still has enormous meaning but in some ways is thrown around so loosely by people to mean so many things that it's hard to know what people actually mean, do you feel like the movement, and you're very careful to say, "it's not me, it's the movement," right, that the movement has gotten to a place

where people have accepted it as an important aspect of all of our lives, or do we have maybe a divide generationally, where some younger people think to themselves, "well, those problems "that the older generation that came before me solved, "well, they're resolved, so we actually don't need "to think of ourselves as feminists, right, "don't need the movement to be part of our lives." - you know, and i think that's always true. we have to experience problems before we really understand them, so i also thought, you know, well, we've got the vote and, you know, i'm going to college and, you know, i mean, i wasn't walking around saying thank you for the vote, because (laughs) and young women are now not saying thank you for other - which is fine. gratitude never radicalized anybody, okay. we need to realize that - - anger is a greater motivator than joy, i would acknowledge that that's true, right. but you understand where i'm coming from. so i'm the parent of a nearly 20 year old daughter, and i look at her and i think she's tough and she's independent minded and she's smart,

but i also don't think that she's grown up in a world in which she thinks these problems are right here in front of her, right. - that doesn't matter, because life educates you. i mean, you know, once - - the hardship will come. - if you, yeah, no, i mean that - - i'm getting depressed again. - if you, no but i mean if you have kids, you are going to discover that women take care of them more than men do. this is an understatement, okay. and that you probably are not going to earn as much or you may not be as encouraged on the way up. i mean, it's just we need that experience. - yeah, and at a certain point, whether it's now or later, they will, they, an individual young woman, will come to understand or women will come to understand that there is still work to be done. - and the good thing about having a vast movement and women's studies and all kinds of stuff, and black studies, you know, that we didn't have before is that now you have something to turn to. you can see, okay, here was the problem then and this is how they solved it, maybe if we do, you know.

but life educates you, it's not, we're not trying to manufacture something that doesn't exist here. - i don't mean this in a negative way, of course, but you seem accepting of that situation, the fact that there are gonna be these issues that now or later, we're gonna come to and realize work needs to be done, i look at - - no no no, i'm mad as hell, are you kidding me? - right, but, and yet you're so, you're so sweetly mad as hell. - well, that's because i come from the midwest, you know. - is that what it is? oh, it's midwest. - in the midwest, you have to be practically on lsd to know whether we're mad or (laughs) - i'm mad when i get up in the morning, so. we're quite a pair. but i'm thinking of this. there was a new york times data visualization some months ago where they said here are the most powerful people in the country, and they showed the faces of these people as a way to visualize who is in power these days, and it was quite striking to see that whether it was politics or business or any of the creative cultural aspects of our lives,

it was basically men men men men men men men. - white white white white white white white. - and by the way, white white white. and i kind of think, goodness gracious, is this really where we still are? - yeah, well, it is, it is. - the country is half women, and yet the power structure in this country politically and in terms of business and everything else is still largely a vestige of the old. - well, you know, we started out not being able to vote, we started out as chattel, you know. - you started back from, yes, admitted. - so, you know, it takes time, you know. the native american cultures, or at least a couple of them, have a great way of saying it takes four generations to heal one act of violence, you know, and i think we have to understand that it does take time and that it is fundamental and in the family and in the way that we are raised and so on. and that is not to be discouraging because it is exciting.

i mean, to see people's talents being born and to see people doing things they never thought they could do and coming together in groups and supporting each other, you know, it's really exciting. - and yet, of course, as i sit watching this dumpster fire of a political campaign unfold, - i apologize, i'm from new york, i apologize for trump. (audience laughter) - what i'm struck by is the degree to which history may very well, as we sit here in the middle of september, history may very well be made. we may elect, as we've nominated the first woman nominee of a major party, we may elect the first woman president of the united states, and yet that seems to have gotten lost in all of this. and i wonder how you feel about that because here is a moment of consequential progress and achievement on all the issues and all the fights, everything you've done in your entire life is worked

almost toward a moment where finally we see this major leap and yet we hardly seem to be talking about it and in fact, it comes back on her as a negative, on secretary clinton as a negative in some ways. - yeah, well, there's still a lot of bias. women are supposed to be perfect and any flaw, then you - - right, held to a different standard. - held to a different standard, right. - this idea - by the way, i want to take my own profession and your former profession in this, the media has not done a particularly stellar job of - - [gloria] no, i think the media really has - every time somebody in the press says, "why didn't she smile?" i wanna throw the television out the window, right. - well, but also - (audience applause) you know, we've all - - it's cheap applause, let me tell you what to say that. - we've all heard, "why don't you smile, honey?" onit the same thing. but i think the media's really a problem here, not because the individual people, but the way it runs is that you're rewarded for ratings, right, and then you get ads, so he has gotten two billion dollars

by the estimate i think of the new york times of free publicity. - free media, right? - yeah, trump. because he gets ratings, and then there's the myth that there are two sides to every question, in fact there are 7 or 6 or twelve or something, so she, you know, if they ask her, if they ask him negative questions then they ask her negative questions, and, you know, this guy, every word he says is a lie, including and or the. (audience applause) which is a quote from mary mccarthy, i have to say. i didn't make that up. - can i ask you about something that happened during the primary season, where you and madeline albright separately said things that caught the attention of people as it related to the support that secretary clinton enjoyed from women or did not get from women during the primary against bernie sanders. it was i believe secretary albright who said, i hope i get this right, there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women.

you actually said something else, and it related to young women i think you were referring to, who might've supported senator sanders, and you made it sound like it was for them more of a social exercise than it was anything else. can you explain that and how we should think about gender in terms of support for what might be the first woman president. - madeline albright did not vote for sarah palin, okay. (audience laughter) - see you in hell, right. - i mean, she's not talking totally about biology, she's just talking about women in general supporting each other when it's positive, when there's a reason to do so. so i think she got a little, i don't know, i mean it made no sense because she's been saying that for 30 years, that i know of, you know. and in my case, in my case, i had just been talking about women's, young women graduating in debt from college and realizing that they're gonna get paid

a million dollars less over their lifetime to pay the debt back, so they're mad as hell, you know, so they're attracted to bernie for that, because he's talking about - so i was talking about college debt, and i said young women think where the guys are is where the power is, but the power word, i got cut off, and so it sounded as if i was saying where the dates are, where the guys are, it was very - - so it was misconstrued. - well, yeah, and if you see the rest of the thing, i'm sitting, because i'm not realizing what is happening, and i'm sitting there saying no, how well do you know me, you know, things like that, but it was very painful to be misinterpreted in that way, but it was also educational because i see what happens on the web in a twitter length quote when people think you've - you know if i had meant what they thought i meant, i'd be mad at me, too, you know. - context is everything, right? context is everything.

- but it helped me to understand what happens to young people say on the web and they're really - - so for the record, without the limits of 140 characters or being cut off, what do you, how do you believe young women or women of any age should regard the prospect of the history that could be made? are they obligated necessarily to go down that path? - no, of course not, no, and it isn't about biology. i mean, i rest my case with sarah palin. - sarah palin example, right. - it's about representing the majority best interests and if then also you are a person who knows what it's like to walk around female for a lifetime in this country or to walk around african american for a lifetime or to walk around as a lesbian or a gay person or a person with a handicap or whatever it is, that's a real bonus because that kind of knowledge has not been at the top, as you point out. - and it informs decision making, or should.

- but it's not about biology by itself, right. - indeed. so in the few minutes we have left, i wanna ask you about this vice series that you are instrumental in getting on television that you introduce and that was nominated for an emmy. didn't win, but that's okay, i hope it was something that was good at least won, but this is an accomplishment, and it involves identifying remarkable women journalists elsewhere in the world and the stories that they tell. can you explain how you got into this? - yes, it's, i really am very grateful to vice for this because shane smith, who is one of the creators of vice, heard me say what i said earlier, that now because of all the violence there are fewer females on earth than males, and he took it to heart, he has a heart, and he said okay, we have to do something. and because of that, he and i and amy richards, who's my colleague, we sat down with people from vice and began to shape a series of eight documentaries,

each one in a different country, each dealing with a different kind of violence. child marriage, violence against native canadian women, mothers in prison in this country, and each one with a different woman correspondent who had the language and the knowledge and this, you know, to walk around in the congo, say, in the drc where sexualized violence in wartime is huge to ask questions as our surrogate really, and to, not to presume the answer, they're very good journalists, but also they respond like human beings, not, you know. so i'm very proud of these documentaries, because i think they are the closest we could come to being there yourself. - what's great is that you're not talking about the kind of journalism that you might've seen or the sort of even documentary filmmaking you might've seen previously. this is a different platform, it's a different approach. - yeah, it's very different. and also at the end of each of the documentaries,

there are a couple of groups that are doing important work on the ground, so that there's someplace for your energy to go. - call to action. - yeah. it's just called woman, and underneath it says be a witness because if something bad is happening to us, i think we want witnesses, right? and this allows people to be a witness, and then to have a place to put the energy to help change, if they're able to. - we're almost out of time, but i want to observe what i said at the beginning. the remarkable thing about you is to see you unmoved by the many years you've done this and by the enormity of the work, but you seem as energized and as focused as you probably were. - well, i am because i get to do what i love and care about. i mean, how great is that? - and yet the tendency in people like me is to say, well, you've done this for a long time, at some point you're just gonna wanna do nothing and i'm now, there is no nothing for you, right? that's it. - i mean, i can't imagine, there's no else,

because this is everywhere, and it's kind of infinitely interesting. - and gets more so. - yeah, i go out my door in new york city and the garbage man, who's a big political boss in queens, tells me about what he thinks the women's vote in queens is gonna be. i don't know, it's just, it's just part of life. - to be a fly on that garbage, i have to tell you. to be able to hear that conversation, that must be amazing. - no, it's great, and it's very clear to me that i do not learn while i am talking, hello, i learn when i am listening, so i love learning. - well, it's just absolutely great to watch you work. and i appreciate everything you've done, and thank you for that, and thank you for being here again. (audience applause) gloria steinem. we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find

invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. - we all have dollar power, and we should spend it politically and with self respect and not support people who don't support us and we should all remember that the voting booth is the one place on earth where the least powerful and the most powerful are equal, and we absolutely must use it. - [narrator] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation and hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy, and by klru's producers circle, ensuring local programming that reflects the character and interests of the greater austin, texas community.