wOw: President Obama reversed the "global gag rule" that withheld U.S. foreign aid from any group that referred women for abortions, even if it used its own funds to do so. What new legislation do you wish Obama would put forth next?

Steinem: There’s plenty just waiting to restore the damage done by eight years of Bush marching in lockstep with the anti-woman right wing. For instance, there are seven bills gathered together under the heading, “Prevention First.” They include REAL, which stands for Respectful Education About Life; a bill that would restore sex education to schools. Under Bush, federally funded sex education was the only subject in which knowledge was valued by its absence. Our tax dollars were used fraudulently to support abstinence-only education that increased all the problems it was supposed to diminish, from unwanted teenage pregnancy and STDs to abortions and an increased number of abused children. These seven bills also include treating prescription contraception like any other prescription, making emergency contraception available at hospitals for rape survivors — and much more.

We also need to include reproductive health in any upcoming health-care legislation — from contraception and safe abortion to prenatal care — and not just exclude parts of our bodies.

It isn’t part of national discussion yet, but there’s also an opportunity to change tax policy so that caregiving has an attributed value – whether it’s raising children or caring for elderly parents or AIDS patients, whether by women or by men – and this value becomes tax deductible if we pay taxes, and tax refundable if we’re too poor to pay taxes. It’s in the national interest to reward doing this work at home where it’s less expensive and usually better done, and we would finally be making visible a third of the productive work in the country.

There are a lot of things that don’t need legislation, just looking at the way policy already affects the female half of the country – and vice versa. For instance, a lack of childcare doubly burdens young girls who have to become substitute parents for their younger siblings. Hospital emergency rooms are bearing an impossible burden, and half of the women who need them have been hurt by an intimate partner.

wOw: What is your new book about? Of the four books you have written, which remains the most meaningful to you?

Steinem: I’m writing an on-the-road book about being an itinerant feminist organizer for almost 40 years. It’s been the least visible part of my life, but the biggest and most important part of my time. As Gandhi always said, you have to go where people are. People still need to be in a room together with all five senses; that ‘s why we have reflector cells in our brains — they allow empathy. Mass media and the Internet are great, but you wouldn’t expect babies to bond with their parents over the Internet, and adults have a hard time doing that, too. In the abolitionist and suffragist era, there were many traveling organizers, and I’m hoping to tempt a few readers into this wandering life. Going on the road is right up there with life-threatening emergencies, meditation and truly mutual sex as a way of being fully alive in the present.

Choosing a favorite book is like choosing a favorite child. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions is still the most translated and used in courses. As a writer, I’m glad it’s still relevant, but as an activist, I wish it weren’t. Revolution From Within is deeper and gets more this-changed-my-life responses. The most unusual one lately was from a young man who had a paragraph from Revolution From Within tattooed on one side of his chest, and  sent me a photograph. I was shocked! When I asked a young woman in my office what she thought, she said, “I would have chosen a different font.” I guess you could say that’s a generational difference!

wOw: Men continue to dominate decision-making roles in corporations, government and the media. Do you see any strong strides in these three areas?

Steinem: Women in corporations are like an immigrant group. We have a hard time making it up through someone else’s hierarchy, so we’re more likely to start our own businesses, in the way that Irish and Italians and Jews had to do. Yes, it’s important to keep pressing inside corporations, but by itself, it’s not enough.

Politics gives us the best chance of choosing our own leaders, not just having them picked for us. Our voting power was how we got Bella Abzug and Patsy Mink and Shirley Chisholm and Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee and Hillary Clinton; all very different from those who were hired; say, Carly Fiorina and Condoleezza Rice. 

In media, we now have a large group of women with expertise and a track record, but on camera, they still have to be younger and better looking than their male counterparts. Off camera, they still occupy only about six percent of the “clout” positions; that is, the jobs where programming and news decisions are made.

This last dilemma is why we started the Women’s Media Center. It monitors the media, as we did during the election, it trains women experts to be on-camera authorities, and it covers stories that are otherwise invisible. You can go to womensmediacenter.com with your coffee in the morning.

wOw: Are you still friendly with any of the "groundbreakers" — Susan Brownmiller, Germaine Greer — or know what they are up to?

Steinem: I only once met Germaine Greer, but I sometimes see Susan or Kate Millett. I often see and work with Robin Morgan, Alice Walker, Wilma Mankiller, Dolores Huerta, Marilyn French, Esther Broner, Suzanne Braun Levine, Letty Pogrebin, Marie Wilson, Ellie Smeal, Marlo Thomas. Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Holly Near, Johnnetta Cole, Marysa Navarro – and a lot more. I can’t imagine any bigger reward than their friendship, smarts, humor, knowing they’ll be there no matter what, and the “Aha!” of understanding because we’re always discovering something new.

wOw: In your wonderful book, Outrageous Acts, you advocate that we should do something outrageous every day. Your quote: "Once I began to listen to my own authentic voice — or at least to realize I had one — I discovered a new answer to my earlier rhetorical question: How much more rebellious could I get? The answer was: a lot." Are you still doing outrageous acts? What did you do on your birthday?

Steinem: I had a great dinner with friends in a Lower East Side restaurant. My only regret is that I didn’t tape the stories they told, from one who had gone to a Buddhist retreat in the Himalayas but found she could only meditate on sexual fantasies, to another who identified with his favorite age of 59 and then never changed it.

I’m thinking of having a tattoo for my birthday. I like the art nouveau-looking ones that I see on women’s backs just below their jeans — it’s rebelliously known as a tramp stamp — but if it hurts, I won’t do it. My real birthday present to myself is going back to Zambia to live with elephants for a few days.

Gloria Steinem’s birthday is being celebrated through the Ms Foundation’s Be Outrageous! Commit, Share and Support Outrageous Acts for Simple Justice (see the video below and visit the Facebook Outrageous Acts page and at the website Outrageousacts.org.