Leading Our Way

7CIRCULARITY: Gloria Steinem

by Katie Lyman GS

WE ARE BORN INTO a hierarchy. And are taught that to move up, we must identify with that system, the hierarchical mind, rather than change it. The reality though is that things have not always been this way: historically, the power to give birth—on top of all the other capacities women have—used to give women equal power as men, till the moment men started controlling women's wombs, taking power away from them, and increasing their own, starting off what is known as “patriarchy”. A system in which dominance and privileges are retained primarily by men and in which those who don't adhere to this hierarchy are stigmatised and marginalised: witches were burned alive because they used herbs to control fertility, and even today, women affirming their rights and their power over their bodies are stigmatised and discriminated against—be it through laws, through family or societal pressure, through gender‐based violence.

One of the only places today where a woman has the power to stand equal to a man is the voting booth. A power that women didn't have up until a few decades ago, across most countries in the world—with Saudi Arabia being the last country to grant this right, in 2015.

Gianna, my Italian grandmother, was one of them. Born in 1922—the year fascism entered government in Italy—she didn't gain her right to be a full citizen, ...