THE LONG REVOLUTION
"SEX
and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organising human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.”
Fifty years ago this week, feminist campaigner Gloria Steinem stood at the front of a hotel conference room in Washington DC and delivered these words.St was one of the most important speeches of the 20th century.
Addressing sexism and misogyny, racism, social class and poverty, the central rallying cry of the Address to the Women of America remains the core demand of feminists to this day – the institution of a society “in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned”.
On that July 10 day in 1971, Steinem was a co-convenor of a gathering of more than 300 women, including such fellow luminaries as author Betty Friedan, civil rights activist and journalist
