FEMALE SPEAKER: So,
Gloria, welcome to Google and YouTube it's amazing
to have you here. GLORIA STEINEM: I'm
dependent on all of you, so I'm really glad to see you. FEMALE SPEAKER: Well,
you're definitely a woman that needs
absolutely no introduction, but I will have to take at
least a minute to embarrass you. I actually don't
think that's possible, but you are truly
someone who has changed the lives for everyone
in this room, both men and women. You've been an icon of the
entire women's movement for many, many decades. You're a writer, you're an
activist, you're an organizer, and you're just an
incredibly inspiring woman. You co-founded Ms. Magazine. You've got numerous awards,
including the National Magazine Award, the Society of Writers
Award from the United Nations, and recently-- and it
should have happened decades before-- the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from President Obama. [APPLAUSE] Pretty incredible. As an activist, you helped
launch the National Women's Political Caucus, a
group that supports women seeking public office. She's been arrested for
protesting Apartheid in South Africa. And this summer, she visited
North Korea to promote peace. Incredibly important,
given everything happening. And she's an author of
this incredible new book, "My Life on the Road." I literally stayed
up half the weekend reading every page of it. That's her eighth
book, by the way. So if you love this one, make
sure you check them all out. And your book is getting
incredible reviews. And it's so exciting
to have you here, but I have to say, personally,
I'm probably the most excited, because I've had the
privilege of having a few dinners and long
lunches with you over time. And she's someone who
deeply has inspired me-- her depth of knowledge
in almost any topic you can possibly think of,
around politics, economics, third world, development, the
women's movement in the US, of course. But it's far, far beyond that. And what I love about
every conversation with you is you challenge me
to think differently, to go back to the
assumptions on which I've based any point of view. And you always leave me in that
conversation feeling inspired that I need to do something. So I hope that every
person in this room will be equally inspired today
to think deeper than you ever have about the subjects
that matter to you, and to be also someone
who takes action. So with that in mind-- and of
course we're in Silicon Valley, one of the hot topics
in Silicon Valley has absolutely been
women in leadership. We have some women now running
some of our big tech firms. We have an increasing number
of women in STEM leadership, and we also have some women on
the boards of Silicon Valley companies. But at the same
time, I think we all know we haven't done enough. And it's really
important our user base is highly representative. We need to make sure we
have diverse leadership to ensure that the
quality of our products and services in the next
evolution are gonna be amazing. You've have so many great
experiences over time. What advice do you have for us
as leaders in Silicon Valley? What should we be
thinking about and doing to try to help speed progress? GLORIA STEINEM: First, I
have to worry about how to follow that introduction. I don't know if I
can follow myself. Well, it's partly what I think
of as the Mozart's sister Sandy learnt to Sandy
learner syndrome. Mozart had a slightly
older sister. Do you know this? You probably know this. And they traveled together as
child geniuses through Europe. And we know about
Mozart's sister, because Mozart wrote
letters to her. They wrote back and
forth to each other. They were closer
than anyone else, because they'd been traveling
their whole childhood to perform in Europe's capitals. And he said she was
the talented one. Now, she was sent
home at 16 to marry. And she became a teacher
of other musicians. So I think part of it is
just listening and learning to the folks who
were already there, and learning how
to identify them. I also think about Sandy Lerner. Do you know who Sandy Lerner is? She was the co-inventor of
whatever the invention that all of Cisco was based on, right? FEMALE SPEAKER: Yup. GLORIA STEINEM: Yup. And she is still out there
inventing new sound systems and so on. But after Cisco got started, she
found it inhospitable and left. But she was the
co-inventor of the router, I guess one would say, right,
on which Cisco was based. So I'm just saying that
to say that they're there. I mean, it isn't like the
women and men who are talented in this way are not there. The question is
how to find them. Now, my college, Smith
College, started at the bottom, because they had been sending
engineering students from Smith to UMass, which is nearby. But they were not called
on equally in class, and had a certain
amount of harassment. And this was relatively recent. This is not Mozart. So finally Ruth Simmons, the
great the president of Smith, started an engineering
school at Smith. And that's part
of the answer too. It really has to do with
being open, and looking. And if you're not
requiring degrees and completed PhDs of men, don't
require them of women either. Because there's huge
talent out there. Women are usually required to
have degrees that men are not. And it is the culture
once you're here. And it is-- I mean, I
don't have to say this-- it is having one job, not two. So as has Sheryl
Sandberg points out, if you want to have children,
if women plan to have children, the single most important
career decision you will make is who your partner is. Is that partner really
going to be equal in terms of child bearing? And then there is the fact
that we live in the one developed democracy in the
world with no national system of child care, and
that affects you too. So at all those levels, we
just need to be aware and open, and then it will work. FEMALE SPEAKER: So
you're such an icon. Thank you for those. GLORIA STEINEM: I'm not--
the word icon calls out for iconoclast, you know. So I think, oh wait, no. FEMALE SPEAKER: Well,
I mean, I think you you're always challenging the
status quo, that's for sure. And as you think about all the
things you've done and pushed in terms of how to put women
in the right conversations at the right time, as you look
at those issues you worked so hard to change, do you feel like
we've made the progress you'd hope we'd make? And what are some of
the things that you'd like to see happen
over the next 10 years? GLORIA STEINEM: No, we
haven't made the progress, but I think part of
it was my naivete. I thought in the
beginning that if we got the majority of Americans
to change consciousness, and support a certain
set of issues related to equality by sex,
race, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on,
that that would do it. I just overestimated
our democracy big time. And also I overestimated
or underestimated the degree of resistance. And here's why in a
deep sense this affects what we're talking about today. Unfortunately, our
courses on economics don't start with reproduction. They start with production. It happens that reproduction
is much more basic. And the very definition of
androcentric or patriarchal systems is controlling
reproduction, and that means controlling
women's bodies. So that means a
whole set of things, like you're valued when
you're young and can either have children or
look after children. You're valued for your
womb more than your brain. And it also is redoubled
if there is a racial caste system, or a caste system
like in India, or class, because to maintain
those separations, it's doubly important
to control reproduction. It's also connected of course
to the environmental movement. I mean, I'm really glad
that the pope spoke out about global warming. This is good. He's against global warming. He's for dogs. I'm really grateful for
both of those things. But it happens that he's part
of a huge patriarchal structure that forces women to have
children whether they want them or not. And that's the single biggest
cause of global warming, just the overload of
human beings on Earth. If you let women decide over
the long term when and whether to have children, it boils down
to a little over replacement level, just because
it's a health issue. So some women have six. Some women have one or none,
and it always works out. But right now child
marriage, and suppression of contraception, abortion--
incidentally, the Church approved of abortion
until the 1840s. No, I won't go there,
but it's interesting. And then when they
disapproved, it was all about the deal
with France for population. It wasn't about what
the dialogue is now. Anyway, I think I didn't
see the depth of it. I didn't understand that
reproduction is the whole ball game in many ways,
for how many workers, how many soldiers, what race,
caste, or class they are. And so the fact that we as
women, as female human beings, have to seize control of
the means of reproduction-- even sounds radical,
doesn't it-- in order to be
healthy is the biggest determinant of
whether we're educated or not, healthy or not,
work outside the home or not, and how long we live. But as you can see by
what's going on now, and having lost the battle
somewhat in Washington to control reproduction
and to eliminate sex education, contraception,
and abortion, and so on, they're now doing it
in state legislatures, where the ultra right
wing has a lot more power. So it is basic. I think I did not
understand that it is basic, which is all the more reason
that we are going to succeed in saying that
reproductive freedom is a fundamental human right,
like freedom of speech. FEMALE SPEAKER:
So when you think about reproductive
freedom and looking ahead, is that the biggest single
thing that you think will help shift the
tide, and really ensure that some of the things
you've tried to make progress on in the broader scheme
will really carry forward? GLORIA STEINEM: I don't think
there's a hierarchy of what we should work on. I think we each need to
work on what hurts the most, or what we know the best. Because it's all important. So for instance, it right
now for the first time that we're aware of, there is so
much violence against females. Violence means son preference. It means child marriage. It means FGM. It means domestic
violence in this country. It means sexualized
violence in war zones. Anyway, if you add
all of that up, for the first time
that we know of, there are fewer females
on Earth than males. And this is dangerous. So certainly wherever we
are, being aware of violence and understanding the why of
it, and understanding that it's connected to everything else. What's an example? For instance, let's take this
country, domestic violence. Violence at home is
the biggest indicator that there will be
violence outside the home. We're looking at and are
faced with the racist violence of our cops, some of our cops. It turns out that that
is completely connected to violence at home. And the cops have
four times the rate of domestic violence
in their families that the nation at large does. But that is not taken as a
predictor of other violence and dealt with either
by helping people or by eliminating them
as a job applicants. We're not making
the connections yet. FEMALE SPEAKER: So I
really take away your point of go to the root cause
and some of the drivers. It reminds me of a quote that
I wrote down from your book. And I've actually heard you
say this in other talks, and I think it's very inspiring. "There is no such thing
as gender, race, or class. They are cultural inventions. We are all linked, not ranked." I really thought that was
a beautiful statement. Can you tell us what
you meant by that? GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah,
I've just done an event with Ta-Nehisi Coates and
Bryan Stevenson, whose work I hope you know, and I hope
you read their books. And it was great, because we
were all trying to say this. On the one hand,
there is no gender. There is no race. There is no class. There is no caste. On the other hand, we as human
beings are very adaptable. The good news is
that we're adaptable, and the bad news is
that we're adaptable. We survive, because
we're so adaptable. We're born with immature
brains, unlike other animals, who can get up and walk
around 20 minutes later. So we have a really long
period of dependency. So we're deeply adaptable
and influenceable. So race, and class, and caste,
and gender are embedded in us. But we made them
up as human beings. We made them up. And if you look at
the ancient cultures, the original cultures, many
of which are still with us, there's not even he and
she in the language. There's no gender. People are people. What a concept. There's no word for nature,
because we're part of nature. So I think what's great about
Ta-Nehisi's book and Brian's book is that they
are saying the same. They are trying to make us see
how deep racism is, and sexism too, at the same time
that they fully understand that it doesn't exist. And those, I think,
are the two ideas we need to go forward with. FEMALE SPEAKER: So
as a person of ideas, you're someone that really
emphasizes both in your book but in your life how much
transformative ideas often come from unexpected places. It's certainly something I
took away in reading the book. Of all the people that
you've met, who has really had the greatest impact on you? GLORIA STEINEM: You
mean I have to choose? FEMALE SPEAKER: No, a few. GLORIA STEINEM: It's
hard, but I would say because I've
been in more touch here with people
in Indian Country than in other countries, I mean,
it's the original cultures, OK? So it's the Khoi and the
San in Africa, which we all came from, the Dalits in India. But since I live here,
it's Indian Country here. I once made a button that said,
the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. Because I was so mad
that nobody ever told me what was here before
Columbus showed up, that there were pyramids
bigger than the ones in Egypt, that there were earthworks, the
biggest system of earthworks in the world, that
there were cultures with great sophistication
about pharmacology, about agriculture, and that
they were what we would call egalitarian cultures that
were whose model, at least as much as we know, because there
were 500 different ones, whose model was the circle,
not a pyramid. So people were connected. People were linked, not ranked,
and also linked to nature. You could do a great
experiment to just find out who lived here, and
how did they live right here? There's something intimate
about vertical history. You can go out and put your
hand on the land and say. Who was here and
probably still is here? There were more
tribes in California than any other part
of the country. So on that basis, I would
say that Wilma Mankiller, who was the chief of the Cherokee
Nation influenced me the most. And she's no longer with
us, but before she died, we were trying to
do a book together which I'm gonna try to do. I mean, I want this
to be practical. I don't want it to be
theoretical and out there. So I'll give you an example. We were taking examples
from original cultures around the world,
and taking ones that we could do to make
a bridge, to keep us from thinking, oh that's either
the romantic or terrible past or something, but
just practical things. For instance, in of the
oldest cultures in Ghana, when someone does an
anti-social destructive thing, they are indeed
punished with isolation, which may be a universal
human punishment, since we're communal people. We need each other. Communal animals. Not like our
solitary confinement, mind you, just a brief
period of isolation. And when that person is
brought back into society, there is a long
ritual amount of time in which everyone
who knows that person tells that person every good
thing he or she ever did. We could do that. We do the reverse. We take votes away. We take jobs away. We punish forever. We've just won a tiny victory
of getting rid of the box at the beginning
of job applications that says whether you've
ever been arrested or not, and at least putting
it at the bottom after you've seen all
the qualifications. So there are a ton
of things like that. I mean, I don't know
why we're so-- well, history is political. We should remember that. There are two things--
history and the past, and they're not the same. FEMALE SPEAKER: That's so true. We had the opportunity to
be deeply inspired by Bryan Stevenson recently. He was at Google Zeitgeist. So for anyone one
here at Google, you can go on to watch
the videos from Zeitgeist, one of the most compelling talks
I've ever heard in my life. And I think genuinely
many people talk about him as the next Martin Luther King,
really pushing the thinking on that concept of
what we're doing as a society and our
collective responsibility. As I think about so
many of the passages in this book, another one
I wanted to highlight, because I think it's
so relevant to us at Google and as a leader,
you wrote in the book, "one of the simplest
paths to deep change is for the more powerful to
listen as much as they speak." And that really made
me think about so many of the conversations
that we've had. And I think that inspiration
I always find from you is that connection
to something deeper, to that historical context,
to all that framework. How did you learn to become such
a good listener and connector? GLORIA STEINEM: I think
we choose our professions a little bit on our
persona, what we want to do. So I have wanted to be two
things in my life, a dancer, because I had the
completely bonkers idea that was gonna get me out of Toledo. I was gonna dance my
way out of Toledo. Because I think show
business is to girls what sports is to boys. It's the only way, or at
least in poor neighborhoods, it's the only place you
see somebody who looks like you who's getting out. A dancer and a writer,
and as a speech teacher said to me, no wonder
you're in such trouble speaking-- because
I was terrified. Those are the two professions
in which you don't have to talk. So I once wrote a long essay
about the politics of talking. Because I also believed that
women talk more than men do. I thought it's probably
one of the few ways we can show our power. But the studies are
the reverse, actually. In general, men talk more than
women do, even about subjects of female expertise. And what happens is that
women introduce topics until one captures the attention
of the men in the group, and continue with it. Whereas men-- I'm
sorry to generalize, because I'm sure that it's not
true of the men in this room, but in a kind of
sociological way-- whereas men feel completely
comfortable sitting there talking about their work
while women are listening. And women don't do that. If the men are
not participating, they get anxious and start
to introduce other subjects. So just the politics of
talking interested me. And I realized from living
in India-- it's a long story, but anyway, if you want
people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. And if you have
not been powerful, you have to speak as much
as you listen if you're not the powerful one in this group. And sometimes,
that's as difficult. Because those of us
who may have been in a position of lesser power
have protected ourselves by not talking. I mean, I felt like an open
mouthed bird in flight, just the first time when
I began to talk. I felt so vulnerable. But if you balance
talking and listening, it's a very organic
step to equality. FEMALE SPEAKER: That's
actually very profound, an organic step to equality,
talking and listening. I think that's one thing I
could definitely take out of this room to really commit,
because I do think that's one of the biggest
challenges as a leader is to ensure that you're
listening as much as talking. As you talked about people that
influenced you, in the book, you talked a lot
about your father and what a profound
impact he had on you. And it also sounds like a
complicated relationship, because it was harder
for you to attend school through the age of 11. How did that experience in the
world shape you as a person? GLORIA STEINEM:
Well, at the time, my father was kind of a
gypsy, I should explain. We lived in Michigan. He had a little summer resort. He hated the cold
weather, so as soon as it got cold at
Halloween, I left school, and we all got in the house
trailer and schlepped, buying and selling antiques, to
Florida or California. So I wasn't going to school. And of course I wanted to go
to school like the other kids I saw in movies. But in retrospect, I realized
that it was probably not bad, because I missed a
lot of brainwashing. I didn't read all those
Dick and Jane books. I paid a penalty. I still can't add, subtract,
and my geography is nowhere, but my vocabulary is
off the-- because I was reading all the time. But still, I think
it was important that I missed that
kind of brainwashing. And also, I have to say
that it was important that my father treated me
like a buddy, a friend. His favorite story about me
was that when I was, like, five or something, we went
to a little country store, and I asked him for a nickel. And he said what for? And according to him, I
said you can give it to me or not give it to me, but
you can't ask what it's for. And to me, this
story is about him, because he said that's right. And he gave me the nickel. FEMALE SPEAKER: I thought
that was pretty great. A good negotiator,
even early on. So given it's election season,
I can avoid this topic, because you've been such a
passionate supporter of women getting into public office. You're a vocal Hillary
Clinton supporter. Are things different
for Hillary now than they were
the last election? GLORIA STEINEM: My sense is
that they are, but we'll see. If you'll remember
the last time, I mean, first of all,
it was not so urgent, because you had to
be on LSD to see the difference between
Hillary and Obama on issues. The whole first year
people, would say are you supporting
Hillary Clinton or Obama, and I would say, yes. But she had so much more
experience with the ultra right wing, which is so crucial. And I think that the lack
of that experience for Obama made it harder for
him in Washington in the first couple of years,
because being a good person, he thought he could reach out
and somehow this would work. And he didn't quite realize that
if the right wing had cancer, and he had the cure,
they wouldn't accept it. But then, even though
I supported her based on her experience, I
didn't think that she could win, because I thought that
too few people had seen women in public authority,
and almost all of us have seen female authority
in childhood, which I think is why some of the big,
serious television guys behaved so badly,
and said things like, she reminds me of my first
wife outside alimony court, and I cross my legs
whenever I see Hilary. What is that about? I think they felt
regressed to childhood, because the last time they saw
a powerful woman, they were six. Now, I think that's different. I think it's not
completely different, but I think partly thanks to
Hillary herself, but thanks to great Californian women, like
Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters, and thanks to Barbara
Mikulski, and thanks to women in all kinds of
business ventures, we're a little more
accustomed to seeing women in public authorities. So I think it might
be possible now. FEMALE SPEAKER: Well,
it's interesting, because a lot of people
have been talking about how to some
extent, Carly Fiorina is taking a lot of the brunt
that Hillary got last time, talking about her looks,
getting off on many side points rather than focusing
on her record, her ability to
perform in office, the real ideas that
are coming out. What's your sense on
why the media continues to go off on these
tangents and not really just allow the
candidates to be the candidates? GLORIA STEINEM:
Well, the Women's Media Center, which
I helped to start, we try to keep track of
fair coverage in that way. And so we were
critical of the media both for Carly Fiorina
and Sarah Palin, who were criticized in ways that
their male counterparts would not have been. At the same time, I'm dead
set opposed to both of them, because Carly Fiorina is
against every majority issue that women want,
every single one. It's outrageous. So I'm completely
happy to that she has served to prove that
it isn't about biology. It's about
consciousness But she's kind of the Clarence
Thomas of the situation. FEMALE SPEAKER: Sorry, any Carly
Fiorina supporters in the room. GLORIA STEINEM: I'm not sorry. I mean, hello? There's no issue that
the majority of women want that she supports. At least, I haven't found one. Maybe you can tell me one. But anyway, there are too
many that she doesn't support. And she lied about Planned
Parenthood completely, and she knew better, right? FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah,
that was a scary moment. So we have a lot issues
right now in the country, in the world. As you think about
your vast experience on so many of these
topics, I think one of the things that curse
occurs to so many of us is that as a society, we're
really struggling to separate the urgent from the important. Is there a single
issue on your mind as we go into this election
that really needs to be at the center of the plate? GLORIA STEINEM: I
mean, we don't have to say how economically-- we're
as economically polarized as we were in the Depression now. But what worries me is that when
we say big things like that, we get stunned out of activity. So I think what we
need to do is look at the place we know the
most and it hurts the most and attend to that. For instance, part of the reason
we're so economically divided is that young people
and old people are graduating from
colleges and universities indentured, in huge debt. That was not
happening in my era. It's much worse now. Why is that happening? Because state
legislatures-- the moral here is we really need to focus
on state legislatures more. We do it somewhat better
in California, New York, and a few others,
but we need to do it a lot more, because the
state legislatures have been taking money away from
universities and building prisons with it. It's part of the reason-- FEMALE SPEAKER:
$60 billion a year. GLORIA STEINEM: Because
state legislatures are controlled by the
interests they regulate for the most part,
especially insurance, but a lot of other ones too. So what we need to
focus on the big issues, but in a way that's
practical, that we don't get stunned into inactivity. Does that make sense? FEMALE SPEAKER: I
think it's complicated. This morning, I came from a
really interesting discussion with a number of economists,
the CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, and a few others
who were talking a lot about the digital economy. McKinsey just published a
new piece of research that actually put more facts out. When you talk about
income inequality, there's a lot of
discussion about, will digital technology really
end up automating so many jobs, and we'll have a
lot of people that are even more disenfranchised. And I thought the data was
incredibly interesting. It actually said that only 5% of
jobs will really be automated, but the big challenge is
that 30% to 40% of jobs will have components of them
re-imagined, and therefore fundamental occupations
and work itself will need to shift significantly. So that does become, then, a
very big societal challenge that we have to
take on, which is that this is gonna happen over
the course of a few years, maybe three to five years,
whereas the Industrial Revolution happened
over decades. So it was much easier for
people to slowly reposition themselves, find
different paths. And so I do think as a
society one of things that we think a lot about is
the impact that the Digital Revolution is having on society. Do you have any points
of view on that, and what we could do as Google--
as you know, we deeply care about the world around us--
to help manage that transition? GLORIA STEINEM: In this
room above all others, I don't have to say how
important technology is in democratizing
knowledge, and allowing people to say what otherwise they
were dependent on the media. I don't have to say all that. And I do worry about
the distancing function of technology. I don't know if
it's still there, but on the Google
campus, there was a map with searches going up
in colored lines in real time. Is it still there? And you can see whole parts
of the world that are dark. You can see where
literacy is low, where electricity is unavailable. So we have to remember
that technology can be divisive in a big way. And we also have to
remember that technology doesn't allow empathy. You know the oxytocin, or the
so-called "tend and befriend" hormones that both
men and women are flooded with if you hold
a child, for instance? It's what allows us to know
what other people are feeling. I asked my friendly
neurologist if that could be produced from reading,
as much as I love books, or from the screen? And she said, no. You have to be together
with all five senses. It's part of the
reason people can be so mean to each other online. And we need to remember that. It's pretty crucial. McClellan said it long ago,
high tech means high touch. Remember that? I think that's what he meant. But now I think we're
really seeing it big time. FEMALE SPEAKER: Actually,
one of the biggest topics of conversation around
this was actually as jobs are reformed, because so
many of the computational tasks or other things
can be automated, whether you're a doctor, or
in many other professions, that actually the
humanity of work would actually be
emphasized even more. So in fact, now medical
schools or places like that are fundamentally
rethinking the curriculum, because it's no longer
who has the encyclopedic memory of all the things. You can actually
have that automated. Now what really matters
is that connection between doctor and patient. So I do think, actually,
technology and humanity can come back around. GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, I do too. I just think we have
to be conscious of it. We have to make it happen. I once read a whole
essay by a doctor who was mourning
the stethoscope, because he said, how
can you possibly know what's going on in the
body of your patients unless you put your
ear on their chest, unless you feel the vibrations
of that person's body? And look how far we are, way
further than the stethoscope. So I just think we need
to be conscious of it. And while we're
doing it, also, we need to think of ways to do it. I mean in terms of employment. That's the "it" I'm thinking of. So for instance, why not make
the status salary for the job instead of for the person? Anybody who gets that
job, gets that salary. They may perform better
or less well along the way and get fewer or more raises,
but at least at entry level, or when they first
take that job, you're not gonna have to
bargain and get somebody cheap. We could do that. That's not rocket science. And it would help enormously. And it would help the
economy, because right now, the single biggest economic
stimulus would be equal pay for women of all races. I think it would put $400
billion, something huge. And women are gonna spend it. They're not gonna put it
in a Swiss bank account. And then on top
of that, the kids who are most likely to
need government services are most likely to be in
a female-headed household. So you're gonna
reduce the demands for government services. I mean, it's a win-win. We could do this. FEMALE SPEAKER: So
I'm gonna open it up for questions in a minute. So please feel free
to stroll to the mic as I pursue one
additional question. So what's your advice? There's a lot of amazing
women in this audience. They are feeling empowered. They work for a company that
highly values free speech. We value them speaking
out, and taking initiative, and having a voice. What would you
recommend to them? How could they most
make a difference as women coming up the ranks? GLORIA STEINEM: Actually,
my really deep advice is don't listen to me. Listen to yourself. Because you know what's
unfair, or what talent you have that you're
unable to use. You know things I don't know. So we're here to empower
each other, right? I mean, I sit around, of
course, and think of things that Google could do. I'll just say one,
because why not? We've spent a huge amount of
time and effort explaining, and we have convinced
the country, we have shown the country,
that rape, sexual assault, is not about sexuality. It's about violence. And actually, always
worry about saying the rate of sexual assault,
say one in five women on campus and so on, because it makes
it sound like one in five men is a rapist. No, in New York State, at
least, the average rapist has raped 14 times. I mean, it's men who
are hooked on it. It's a superiority crime. It's not about
sex, and most rapes involve objects, not penises. So it's about domination. They're hooked on the
drug of domination. OK, so we have demonstrated
that sexual assault and rape are about violence, not sex. We have not demonstrated that
pornography is not erotica. Porne means female
slaves in Greek. It's about domination and
violence, and the infliction of pain and control and so on. Eros, erotica, means love. It implies mutuality,
free choice. And I don't think the
pornographers wouldn't mind being listed as
part of pornography, but I think the people
who are doing erotica would love being
listed as erotic. Could you do that? Hello? But just to recognize the
difference would be huge, huge. Because what's literally
killing people now is that pornography
is viewed as sex. And kids are getting sex
education via pornography online without understanding
that, wait a minute. There is such a thing
as mutual pleasure. It's not about roles
and domination. FEMALE SPEAKER: So it looks
like we have some questions. AUDIENCE: With
the recent release of Ruth Bader
Ginsburg's biography, I've been reading much
more about her career, and hadn't realized that all
of the cases that she took to the Supreme Court
when she was at the ACLU were actually defending
men, about how gender inequality affected
men, in an attempt to create incremental change. And it's really sparked
a lot of interest on my part about over time
how do we bring both genders in order to create more change? In fact, for all the
gentlemen who are here, it's very gratifying to see
that there are gentleman here, because sometimes at women's
talks around gender equality, you actually only see women. Do you think that it's
still necessary to utilize how gender inequality
affects men in order to create that change? And do you also think
that we could be or should be doing a better job
bringing all genders along for these sorts
of conversations? GLORIA STEINEM: Certainly men
have become way more active in terms of asking
for parental leave. It's not maternity
leave anymore. At least in most places,
it's parental leave, which is clear in Europe as
well in terms of social policy. And gender discrimination
obviously affects everybody. I mean, men may be in a prison
that has wall-to-wall carpeting and people to serve you
coffee, but it's a prison, because it's not the full
circle of human qualities. It doesn't allow
men the full circle, just as it doesn't allow
women the full circle. And there are more and
more men in this world, in this country-- look
at the public opinion polls-- who understand that. Gender punishes everybody. It divides up human qualities. It also, I have to say, causes
us to divide everything. The world is divided
into two kinds of people, those who divide the world into
two kinds of people and those who don't. It's part of the reason we have
a press that thinks there's two sides to every question. There are not two sides
to every question. There's 6, 12, 17, 3. It depends on the question. So the crazed idea of
gender punishes all about us in a wide variety of ways. AUDIENCE: Thanks for this. This has been great. So I was really
struck by the way you revisit the past, and
your notion of history. But sometimes I
struggle, because when I see some something
from the recent past, it kind of feels
like brainwashing, which is another part that
you mentioned as well. So could you talk a
little bit about how to progressively
revisit the past, or revisit it in a
thoughtful way that doesn't continue brainwashing? GLORIA STEINEM: I think
that we have approached that by having what I think
of as remedial history of the recent past. So we have African-American
women's history, gay and lesbian history,
Asian-American history, Native American--
this is all remedial. We're nowhere near
human history. And we haven't really a done
the thing we need to do, which is to start
when people started. We don't. At least, I mean
did anybody here study history that started
when people started, 100,000 years ago? I certainly didn't. And if we had, we
would have seen that for 90% of human
history or more, there was a very, very different
idea of-- the paradigm was the circle. There weren't straight lines. Have you ever flown
out of a city or town in Africa in a little plane, and
then you get into the Kalahari, you get into some big territory? All the straight lines go,
and everything is curved. The people plow
around a tree, or plow in circles or curves, which
is way better for erosion. The straight line is
just about possession. It's not inevitable. I mean, there's just so
much that we're not seeing. A friend of mine is
writing a book called, "Everything We Want
Once Was Here," and I think that will help us. FEMALE SPEAKER: So
here's a question from our Dory so people that are
tuning in via the live stream that couldn't it in person. And I think it's related
to the first question that was asked, perhaps with
an action item component. So the question is, "I
still find resistance from seemingly
educated and support of men around the concept
of feminism and equality. What, as empowered women, can
we do in our everyday lives to encourage male
peers to embrace feminism and the movement
for gender equality? GLORIA STEINEM: Leave. I don't know. Do whatever you
think is necessary. Talk, leave, explain. Maybe this person has been
discriminated against himself, because of race, or
ethnicity, or religion, and if you hook it to that,
will begin to understand. Whatever it is, try it. But it's not your job, either. So if you can't do it,
just leave and find some place where you can do it. FEMALE SPEAKER: I
love that concept of finding common ground. I think so many people-- they're
such good evidence that when people have to go to
the root of an issue and explore it together, it's
amazing how most people will find that those issues-- I think
it's one of the reasons why so many people in
our own company have been excited about things
like YouTube, which allow everyone to have a voice, and
so many people that have felt discriminated against or
bullied or whatever it is, to be able to
express themselves, and miraculously there
are millions and millions of people who want to share in
that conversation with them. Or that our work
on virtual reality, where there's such
great evidence that when we go to
the halls of power, in the UN or other places, and
we allow people to really go and see what it feels like
to be that Syrian refugee, and then they have to
make that policy decision, they actually feel very, very,
very different about what they're doing, because they've
been able to put themselves in the humanity of the other. And I think so
often as individuals we forget that everyone has
their own reference point. And maybe, to your point,
that man felt at some point, per the first
question, discriminated against themselves,
and therefore they're struggling to really understand
that they maybe taking that common ground, I think,
often works incredibly well. GLORIA STEINEM:
Yeah, there's nothing more important than empathy. Maybe kindness, just
general kindness, is even more important, but
then definitely comes empathy. But I do think we have to
understand how powerful the way we were raised is. And if, as the
early cultures say, it takes four generations
to heal one act of violence, and if somebody has
really been raised feeling that his or her identity
depends on being dominant or being obedient, it may not
be possible in one generation. I mean, we change by increments. So trust your instinct
about how much you can do to make change in
that particular situation. AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Susanna. It's so nice to be
here with everyone, and to ask you this question. One of the things that I
really admired about your work is your recognition that
feminism incorporates so many other different
issues other than just gender equity, for example,
systemic racism and so many of the other issues
that you've discussed in developing countries. And you mentioned earlier
about having a consciousness, and having conversations
about your own feminism. And for so many of
us, feminism includes topics like systemic racism,
like immigration laws that are not the best. But sometimes, our
work here at Google doesn't incorporate those
elements of our consciousness in our day-today day lives. So especially with
election coming up, what do you think we can do to
bring our consciousness either into the workplace, or to carry
our experience here at Google out into the workplace, and to
make the change that we really wanna see? GLORIA STEINEM: I think
they're not other issues. I think they're all the same
issue, if you know what I mean? AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah. GLORIA STEINEM: So I think
we need to behave that way, and we need to beware, because
I hope we don't get back into another situation like
the Obama-Clinton race, when reporters were asking
questions like, which is more important, sex or race? I mean, that's an
unacceptable question. It's ridiculous. So I hope that we can keep
our connections clear. And that means we need
to approach it that way. If we'd been invisible, we need
to name ourselves, and emerge, and do all of that. But we're way past the
stage where movement should be in silos like this. Movements are all connected. The press is not
yet-- I don't mean to overgeneralize
about the media, but there's still
putting people in silos. So we have to be
very aware of that. AUDIENCE: All right. So thank you so
much for being here. I am definitely a feminist. I wanna see more
female managers. That said, in my career, I
have encountered many deeply stereotypical female managers. So I find myself taking this
uncomfortably sexist position, where I'm not willing
to work in a job where I would have
a female manager. So I'm wondering if you
can help us understand what we can do as employees to
work with our female managers to help them overcome
what's happening, but also if you've
seen counterproductive characteristics in
female managers, and just how we as a
culture can overcome that. Thank you. GLORIA STEINEM: Well, we're
back to Carly Fiorina again. Yeah, sure. It's not about biology. It's about consciousness. So clearly there are
people who look like you and behave like them. You're less likely to find
them in political life than anywhere else, because
they had to get elected. And so usually, they had to have
their constituency behind them. You may find them
in corporate life, because they're
likely to be promoted, because the people promoting
them maybe unconsciously understand that they're
gonna keep their group down. So it's not uncommon
to find a queen bee, as they say, in a
corporate situation. And I think you just have to
behave the way you would want somebody to behave toward you. First, talk to her, and
be as open as you can, and explain the problem, and
hope that maybe that will work. And if it doesn't work, then
proceed accordingly, and tell other people, organize. It's very demoralizing to have
somebody who looks like you and behaves like them,
but it's inevitable, because we internalize the
power structure around us. There will always
be some of that. Not always. At the moment, there
will be some of that. FEMALE SPEAKER: Were there any
other questions from the Dory? FEMALE SPEAKER: There was
one question I remember off the top of my head. As you look back on your
life, was there one moment that you are most proud of? And if it hasn't happened
yet, is there something that you wanna put your stamp on
that you will be the most proud of? GLORIA STEINEM:
Yes, I'm at an age now where people ask
me things like that. What are you the most proud of? And I always say I
haven't done it yet. And a reporter said to me
the other day, in this life, he said? But i live in the future. I think maybe we acquire a habit
of mind when we're children. I don't know, but
because I was always trying to get out as a child,
I still live in the future. So I definitely
haven't done it yet. And I don't know that I can
think of one accomplishment. I guess I would just
want people to think that I left the world around me
a little kinder, and more just, and more equal than it
was when I got here-- something like that. Does anybody here wanna try
to answer this question? Do you wanna try to
answer this question? FEMALE SPEAKER: No, but
what this is interesting, if you think of what's behind
it, just listening to you even over time, like, I remember
hearing you speak 10 years ago even versus now. The one thing I would
say is you've really put everything in perspective,
I think, as you've gone along. And what I love is that
ability and that humility of understanding how big
these problems really are, and how systemic they are. And so you do, to your
point, have to look back, but you also have
to look forward. But I don't know. I can say that,
I, for one, would be a person who would
say you've definitely left the world a
better place than you found it, and definitely
more just than when we all got started. GLORIA STEINEM:
Well, what's fun is to just change
whatever comes at you, and to figure out how you
can creatively change it. Like, at my age now,
people are always saying, who are you passing
the torch to, right? So I always say, wait a minute. I'm not giving up my
torch, thank you very much. I'm keeping my torch. And I am using it to
light other torches. Because the whole
idea that there's one torch is total bullshit. No wonder we don't
know where we're going. Everybody needs a torch. FEMALE SPEAKER: Anyone here
willing to carry a torch? GLORIA STEINEM:
But it's fun just to transform images like that,
which are hierarchical images. There's one person
with the torch? No wonder we're in such
deep shit, you know? Nobody knows. And it's fun to do that. And also, it's fun
to value what is-- Alice Walker has a wonderful
poem that in something like, and this shall be
our revolution. We shall value what is plentiful
more than what is rare. So in a hierarchical kind
of structure like this, you're not supposed to
value laughter or joy. And the reason why is because
it happens that laughter is the only free emotion. You can compel fear, we know. You can even compel love if
you're isolated and dependent for long enough. But you can't compel laughter. It happens when two things
come together and make a third. It happens when
you have an idea. It's like an orgasm of the mind. And in original
cultures, especially at least in Native American
cultures, there is a figure. I've forgotten what he's called. Maybe somebody here remembers. It's a he or a she, naturally. And it's not a jester,
but it's a word like it. It's trickster. It's the trickster. it isn't about making a
king laugh, like a jester. It's about laughter itself. And the idea is that laughter
breaks into the unknown, from the known to the
unknown, and you can't pray unless you can laugh. All right, that's a
pretty good measure. Don't go any place where
they won't let you laugh. You know that you're
being imprisoned. And it's why
monotheistic, patriarchal, hierarchical religions
don't let you laugh. Whereas the ancient
religions let you laugh. It was quite OK. FEMALE SPEAKER: I'm getting
the "it's time" sign. Because I know everyone has
an incredibly busy schedule, including Gloria, who's been
so gracious with her time in coming here today. She's got an incredibly
busy schedule for the rest of the day. I cannot tell you how much
it means to everyone that you're here, especially
to me, personally. And I had to end with
a quote from your book, because it ties to what we
were just talking about. "We have to behave as if
everything we do matters, because sometimes it does." Thank you for doing so much that
matters, and congratulations on your new book. [APPLAUSE]
