wOw: Your marriage was tragically cut short by your husband’s unexpected death. But, blessedly, you had a wonderful union, even if only for a short time. What makes for a good marriage? And is the institution evolving for better or worse?

Steinem: We were more surprised than anyone else when we got married – I was 66 and he was 59 – but we loved each other and wanted to be together, and the women’s movement had spent 30 years equalizing the marriage laws, so why not? Of course, “husband and wife” still sounded like roles, not people, so we referred to each other as “the friend I married.” We got married legally in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. It turned out to be very important two years later when he became very ill with primary brain lymphoma and there were medical permissions and almost a year of huge expense that wouldn’t otherwise have been covered by my insurance. It made me realize even more deeply that marriage has to be an institution open to everyone.

I think the rock-bottom requirement for any good partnership is that you want what’s best for the other person. Then come such things as shared humor and sensuousness, loving to do the little stuff together, and respecting each other’s work and purpose in life.

So does an honest idea of marriage. Margaret Mead always pointed out that marriage worked better in the 19th century because we only lived to be 50. The problem now is that we’re made to blame ourselves if it doesn’t last for a lifetime that’s about 30 years longer. David and I married late. Other people marry early, raise children together and then go amicably off to another stage of life. Who says that living longer or having different stages in our lives is a failure?

Yes, the institution of marriage is getting better because it’s more equal, freely chosen, no longer the only way to have sex or get out of your parents’ house. It’s become a “want to” rather than a “have to.” Even its words are changing from the old, bad ones like “marriage trap,” “ball and chain,” “my husband lets me …” and so on.

wOw: You wrote an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times in January 2008 before the primary elections saying that you thought Sen. Obama was seen as unifying his race while Sen. Clinton was seen as divisive by her sex (playing the gender card, etc.). You felt the gender barrier was not taken as seriously as the race barrier. Upon reflection, do you think it was Secretary Clinton’s sex that lost out to Obama’s race?

Steinem: I think race and sex are intertwined and can only be uprooted together. For one thing, most people in the world are affected by both, and for another, racism needs some degree of visible difference to keep going in the long run, and the female body has to be controlled as the means of production in order to maintain that difference. That’s why it’s not practical to be a feminist without also being anti-racist, and it’s not practical to fight racism without also being a feminist.

I also wrote about supporting both Clinton and Obama for a year, then when I had to decide who to vote for in the primary, I supported Clinton. She had far more experience, especially with the ultra-right wing, but I also made clear that I would be happy to work for Obama. What made me the craziest about the election was that sex and race were being ranked instead of linked – even though Obama and Clinton were almost identical on issues.

I never thought Hillary Clinton could win, which made it all the more important to support her – not because I believed that sexism is more serious than racism. I didn’t think she could win for the same reason that over the years when asked when we would have a woman president, I’ve always said that several varieties of men would come first. It’s because sexism is more pervasive. Females are half of every group, and most of us of every race have experienced female authority when we were children, so we think it’s not appropriate to adulthood. Some people feel regressed to childhood when they see a powerful woman – which is another reason why men should play an equal role in raising children, and why women should be equally in authority outside the home.

I think that Clinton and Obama are not the end but the beginning. Together, they showed us the talent we’ve been missing for 200 years by choosing our national leadership from such a tiny talent pool – only about six percent of the population, which is what’s left after eliminating Americans by sex, race and class. They symbolize the richness of future leadership.