Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA, Founder and CEO, The Intersectionality Training Institute

September 21, 2026

Ugh!  The gut punches just keep coming.   Last week, the marvelous Dolly Parton, and this morning, when I opened the digital New York Times, I learned that Gloria Steinem, and the marvelous Cassandra Wilson had died too.

Over the course of my life, I’ve admired each of these women: Parton for her talent, kindness, brilliance, wit, vivaciousness, philanthropy, business acumen, and sense of humor; Wilson for her sultry, soulful, and distinctive contralto.  Wilson sounded like no one else, and no one else sounded like Wilson.  She was gifted with a uniquely beautiful voice.

Among them, Steinem has most meaningfully shaped my life.  I likely first learned about Steinem in the mid-1980s during my feminist awakening in my first undergraduate women’s studies class at Georgetown.  There was so much to admire about this ardent intersectional feminist, activist, and self-identified “entrepreneur of social change.”

Her ideas and advocacy that women should have the right to live the lives they choose on their own terms, control what they did or didn’t do with their bodies particularly with regards to sex and reproduction, and have equity in every domain — pay, education, workplace, representation in government, health —is so axiomatic that it doesn’t even warrant discussion.

I also adored her incisive wit and quips in writing and speech.  I can recite my favorites quotes of hers from memory: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament,” and “We didn’t have the phrase sexual harassment until I was in my 40s — it was just called ‘life.”

Not until today, had I pondered what I learned from Steinem.  Four lessons come to mind:

    1. Avoid the temptation to blame people — particularly those from historically oppressed groups — for choices easy to disdain; instead contextualize the choices in terms of the limited opportunities to do otherwise. In 2013, in the wake of Miley Cyrus’ bare-much twerk fest, and lots of media and public discussion about the hyper sexualization of women in music videos — they even had a name for them, “video vixens” — and performances, Steinem was asked whether these women were harming feminism. Steinem demurred.  She wisecracked that “she wished we didn’t have to be nude to be noticed” but acknowledged the decisions that women made considering the society we live in.  Here’s the insight that stuck with me: “I think that we need to change the culture, not blame the people that are playing the only game that exists.”  A year or so later, when I was reading transcripts of how some of the Black heterosexual men in one of my HIV prevention studies discussed their hypersexual escapades or blamed Black women for not initiating condom-use conversations or not demanding condoms, Steinem’s quote reminded me to analyze my participants’ discourses through the context of society’s heteronormative masculinity ideologies, and highlight how many of the messages about women’s responsibilities for condom use also aligned with those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s messages at the time.
    2. Language is powerful. Naming a problem validates it, bonds people with shared experience, and can catalyze activism. In June 2026, I gave an invited virtual keynote to an end of project celebration for the RISE Project in Australia.  The goal of the RISE project was to “build pathways to leadership for culturally and racially marginalized CARM) women in middle management.”  I titled my talk, “Do You Speak Intersectionality? A Powerful Language to Explain the Realities of CARM Women and Workplace Leadership in Australia.” In recounting the backstory of the title and keynote, I showed an image of Gloria Steinem and her quote about not having a word for “sexual harassment… it was just called life.”  I explained that I hoped that learning to “speak intersectionality” — in other words, having the word, “intersectionality” — might better explain why a cohort of highly educated, intelligent, hardworking, ambitious CARM women in middle management were not equitably represented in executive leadership.  The problem wasn’t them or just life; it was structural intersectional discrimination. Steinem’s quote provided an accessible onramp to contextualize their experiences and encourage them to prioritize opportunities to meet, share experiences and support each other, despite the project’s end.
    3. Beware advertising masquerading as substantive content. In 1989, a year after I graduated from Georgetown, Magazine, the feminist magazine that Steinem had co-founded in 1971 was relaunched as a nonprofit, ad-free biweekly. I subscribed after purchasing my first copy from Lammas Bookstore, a feminist bookstore in Dupont Circle that’s long gone, but forever beloved.

Steinem taught me how to be a very critical consumer of media content.  “Sex, Lies and Advertising,” Steinem’s cover story in the relaunched Ms. Magazine was a masterpiece! It’s one of my favorite magazine articles of all time.  At a time in my life where I can hardly remember the key points a media story that I read just yesterday, I remember many of the gems that Steinem dropped in that article.  In it, she exposed how magazines routinely disguised advertisements as editorial content.  Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.  It’s ubiquitous, and on steroids in digital media — looking at you People Magazine and HuffPost!

She highlighted the jaw-dropping expense of front and rear-page cover ads, how companies paid thousands of dollars to have their products positioned near related content. If for example, the article didn’t have a mention of a dog, the company paying for the ad would direct that the article do so, and require their dog food ad be placed nearest the article.  Steinem also described how marketers thrived on feeding women readers a steady diet of contradictory messages.  On page 35, an article about 10 tips to lose weight, on page 37, a luscious ad for a decadent dessert. Thanks to Steinem, my yeah-they-think-I-don’t-know-that-they’re-trying to-sell-me-stuff meter still operates flawlessly.

    1. To express my choice to be child-free without apology or regret. There are other prominent women who have chosen to be child-free with no apologies or regret.  Oprah Winfrey comes to mind. But it was Steinem’s stance that most delighted me and that I modeled.  I’ve lost track of the number of times when, in response to the question, “Do you have children?” I’ve responded with some version of: “I feel blessed to live in a time when I could freely choose not to have children” or simply “I’ve never wanted children.”  These responses seem to halt the pitiful or disappointing gazes the fastest.  Steinem so elegantly modeled and affirmed my choice. When I read in today’s obituary that she at age 82 had noted that she had “not for a millisecond” regretted not having children, I reconnected anew with why I felt such kinship with Steinem and the child-free life she relished.  The obituary recounted her witty retort:

Not for a millisecond. Not everybody with a womb has to have a child, like not everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.  It’s a choice, and it’s a wonderful choice, but if everybody has to do it, it’s no longer a choice.

My heart warmed and I smiled.  Brilliant, clear, and confident.  Vintage Steinem.

Meeting Gloria Steinem

Soon after reading Steinem’s obituary and related tributes, I remembered: “Wait, I met Gloria Steinem.  I may even have a photo of us together.” I dashed upstairs to the armoire where I store some old photo albums.  I opened the doors, looked at the stack of albums, and blanched. My God, I thought, it’s going to take me all day to find that photo, if it even exists.  Fortuitously, the first album that I opened revealed the photo.

Snapped in May 1995, according to the rear date/year stamp, the occasion for the photo was the official book launch for the anthology, Listen Up! Voices from the Next Feminist Generation to which I had contributed a chapter.

I’ve not thought about that book or the excitement that surrounded the launch for decades.  The photos reminded me that the book launch involved a paid trip to New York City to meet the other contributing authors, a radio show interview about the book with two other authors, a structured day of conversations about our work — and this, if memory serves me correctly, is where I met and took the photo with Steinem.  The evening featured a book launch party at a spacious penthouse with a sizeable outdoor patio with spectacular East River views.  The day after, my coauthors and I read our chapters to an audience and signed copies of the book at a local bookstore.

I had even forgotten about a later book reading and signing at Lammas that featured my name on their bulletin board of upcoming reads.

How and when Steinem entered the picture in my album remains foggy.  It is possible that Ms. Magazine sponsored the book or the book launch in some form or fashion.   I also can’t remember much about what I might have chatted with Steinem about that day. I do, however, remember her amiability and warmth.  She spoke and interacted with each of us as if she sincerely valued our work and contributions to the volume.

The photo of Steinem and me is 31 years old. As I study it, it dawns on me that Steinem was 61 years old when the photo was taken, the age that awaits me next month.  I feel time slipping by so quickly these days.   My daily refrain is some version of: “My God how is it 7 pm already?!”  Thirty-one years now feels so short; that it’s just not long enough time to do all that I long to do and still want to accomplish.

But then I realize all that has happened in 31 years.  I was in graduate school when I took that photo, two years away from my doctorate.  I’m now a retired professor.  Turns out, there’s quite a bit one can accomplish in 31 years.

These days, I’m increasingly time obsessed.  Steinem was too.   Her obituary noted that “she hated wasting time and rarely did.”  Alas, a point of departure from Steinem.  I’ve lost some very valuable years of my life trying to quell my anxiety about our political hellscape by reading way too many political news accounts, listening to too many political podcasts, and watching way too many independent media YouTubers pontificate about and try to predict our unknowable, future.

The obituary quotes Steinem as saying in an HBO interview, “the wasting of time is the thing I worry about the most.  Because time is all there is.”  And surely enough, I read that Steinem’s last book will be published this month.  Imagine having finished your last book at age 92! Steinem spent her time on this planet well.  I had not considered until today how much her time on this earth has enriched mine.

I feel no sadness about Steinem’s death itself.  Death awaits us all.  Moreover, from my vantage point, living until 92 and dying at home is an enviable good run.  What saddens me is that Steinem died in a country that, in ways too distressing and enraging to recount, has trampled over so much of what she lived and fought for.  Steinem thought that the girls and women of this country and world deserved better.  And as with most things, Steinem was right.