What Can We Learn from Strong Women?

The death of Gloria Steinem is more than the loss of an icon. It is a warning. 

Women like Gloria Steinem and Maggie Kuhn spent their lives challenging a world that was perfectly comfortable telling women where they belonged, how they should behave, what choices they could make, and when they should become quiet.

Neither woman was very interested in being quiet.

Gloria Steinem challenged sexism and the systems that kept women from power.

Maggie Kuhn challenged ageism and the idea that growing older meant becoming invisible, irrelevant, undesirable, or voiceless.

Both understood something we should remember today:

If we do not use our voices, someone else will use our lack of words  against us.

Rights are not permanent simply because previous generations fought for them. Progress does not move forward automatically. Choices can be restricted. Voices can be dismissed.

People can be pushed out of the rooms where decisions are made.

And women know this history all too well.

We should not have to fight again for the right to control our own bodies, determine our own futures, earn our own money, live independently, love whom we choose, or have a meaningful voice in our communities and our government.

We certainly should not be marching backward toward the 1950s.

Maggie Kuhn believed older people had a special responsibility to speak truth to power. She refused the idea that age required politeness, silence, or retreat.

That is a lesson worth carrying forward.

Women of every age need to be seen.

Our bodies need to be seen.

Our experiences need to be heard.

Our choices need to be honored.

And our voices need to be represented wherever decisions are being made about our lives.

That means voting.

It means showing up.

It means speaking at the meeting when everyone else is silent.

It means writing the letter, making the call, joining the organization, challenging the policy, telling your story, and refusing to accept that someone else knows what is best for you.

It also means refusing to disappear as we grow older.

Steinem and Kuhn belonged to a generation of women who pushed open doors that had been locked for generations.

Our job is not simply to walk through them.

Our job is to keep them from being slammed shut.

So in remembering Gloria Steinem, let us do more than celebrate what she accomplished.

Let us continue the fight.

Stand up.

Speak up.

Show up.

Be difficult when difficult is necessary.

Make some noise.

Take your seat at the table.

And if there is no seat for you?

Pull up a chair anyway.

That feels like something Maggie Kuhn would understand.