AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Among Gloria Steinem's many hard-won achievements is the creation of Ms. magazine. The writer and activist died last week at the age of 92. For many people, she was the face of feminism for decades. And that came in part through that groundbreaking magazine, as NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: The launch of Ms. magazine was national news. Here's NPR in 1972, noting its appearance on newsstands.
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UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: It is staffed by women, published by women, with illustrations and photographs taken by women. M-S is edited by feminist writer Gloria Steinem.
LUDDEN: NPR's Linda Wertheimer explained what M-S. - for Ms. - meant.
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LINDA WERTHEIMER: The form of address which extends to women the privilege men have always had, that of a neutral address - the same for married and unmarried people.
LUDDEN: She and NPR's Susan Stamberg talked about the articles in that first issue. One was called "The Housewife's Moment Of Truth" and told of small moments when it's clear that a man views a woman as second-class. Another explained how to set up a daycare center, and there was a list of groups with information on legal aid, abortion and working women. Gloria Steinem told NPR she didn't want to be like other women's magazines that focused only on the roles of wife and mother.
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GLORIA STEINEM: I feel even I and lots of other women are very isolated from each other. So that we need a magazine that's a kind of consciousness-raising group in itself, a friend, you know, that comes into your house and is something that really tells the truth about your life.
AMY FARRELL: I don't think we can underestimate how important Ms. was in terms of popularizing feminism.
LUDDEN: Amy Farrell is a professor at Dickinson College and wrote about Ms. in the 1998 book "Yours In Sisterhood." Before the magazine, she says the issues it took on could only be found in small local underground journals.
FARRELL: Ms. showed up, like, at the grocery store, you know, fighting for space, fighting for a voice and saying, we belong here.
LUDDEN: It was groundbreaking in its coverage of sexual harassment. At a time when a typical cartoon gag would be a boss chasing his secretary, Farrell says, Ms. called that out for what it was. And readers responded in droves, writing intimate letters to the magazine as if to a close friend.
FARRELL: They were experiencing violence in their home. They were being treated like crap at work. And the magazine made them literally feel not alone, not crazy, realizing there's a whole movement going on out there.
LUDDEN: But if the audience was loyal to Ms., advertisers often were not, says writer Maggie Doherty.
MAGGIE DOHERTY: This was also a world run by men.
LUDDEN: She wrote about Ms.' legacy a few years ago for The Yale Review. The magazine faced a constant battle between satisfying readers and funders, as it wrote about things like welfare and lesbianism and published articles written by and about Black women.
DOHERTY: And these were all seen as very controversial things to write about and to write about for a broad audience and really dangerous for a magazine that wanted to be financially successful.
LUDDEN: Southern newsstand owners boycotted Ms. when it put a Black woman on the cover. In 1980, Revlon pulled out of a contract after Soviet women appeared on the cover without makeup. And there were other tensions with advertisers, Steinem told NPR in 1990.
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STEINEM: You know, one says, for instance, we don't want to be in any issue with anything about gun control, anything about abortion. Women's magazines are supposed to be a big version of, why don't you smile, honey, you know?
LUDDEN: That year, Ms. revamped itself as a smaller nonprofit with no commercial ads, which it remains today. Writer Doherty hadn't thought much about the struggles of Gloria Steinem and Ms. magazine growing up in the 1990s.
DOHERTY: In a moment that felt post-feminist, or in a moment that felt like we figured all of this stuff out.
LUDDEN: But these days, with the rollback of Roe v. Wade and high-profile misogynistic rhetoric, she has new appreciation for how hard it was to succeed back then. And she says seeing how Steinem persevered reminds her to not lose hope.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ROLLING STONES' "HEARTBREAKER (INSTRUMENTAL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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