US writer Gloria Steinem, awarded the Princess of Asturias for Communication

USPA NEWS - The American journalist and writer Gloria Steinem has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2021, according to the jury in charge of its award. This candidacy was proposed by Socorro Suarez Lafuente, professor and member of the TransLIT Research Group at the University of Oviedo.

Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo (Ohio, USA) on March 25, 1934. She graduated from Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts) in 1956, after which she moved to India for two years on a scholarship. In 1960 she settled in New York and started working for Help! Magazine. In 1968, after having worked at the Playboy Club in New York to write an exclusive about the working conditions and wages of these women, she helped found New York Magazine. As a freelance journalist she wrote for Esquire and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications.

In 1972 she co-founded Ms., the first feminist magazine and the first created and run exclusively by women. She was one of its editors for fifteen years and is a member of its advisory committee, from which position she had a prominent role in the sale of the magazine to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001. She also devoted herself to feminist activism, as well as through of her articles and journalistic works, with her participation in different forums and in the founding of women's organizations, such as the National Women's Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, of which she is founding mother; the Women's Action Alliance, the Women and AIDS Fund and the Women's Media Center.

A prominent member of the American feminist movement since the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gloria Steinem gained notoriety with the publication of the article 'After Black Power, Women's Liberation' in 1969 in New York Magazine. As a journalist, Steinem has written about labor issues and minority rights, and has covered demonstrations whose causes she has also publicly supported.

In his role as an activist, Steinem, currently considered in the United States as one of the most significant and iconic figures in the women's rights movement, has also stood out for his fight in favor of the legalization of abortion, equal pay for men and women and the approval of the Equal Rights Amendment, as well as against the death penalty, female genital mutilation and child abuse.

Gloria Steinem is also the author of several best-sellers, including 'The Beach Book' (1963), 'Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions' (1983), 'Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem' (1992), 'Marilyn' (1997), 'Doing Sixty & Seventy' (2006) and 'My Life on the Road' (2015). In 2020 the biographical film 'The Glorias' was released, based on this latest book, and the HBO network premiered the series 'Mrs. America', which narrates some of the main episodes of the beginnings of the feminist struggle in the US starring Steinem.

She has achieved, among others, the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award (1970), the Women's Sports Journalism Award (2004) and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award (2015). An honorary doctorate from various universities, she has been recognized with the first Ph.D. in Human Justice from Simmons College (1973), the National Gay Rights Advocates Award, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal Award (2013). In addition, in 1993 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and in 2000 the Library of Congress of the United States included her among the Living Legends of her. In 2013, Barack Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rutgers University created the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies in 2017. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proclaimed March 31, 2019 as Gloria Steinem Day.

The Princess of Asturias Awards are intended to reward "scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out by people, institutions, groups of people or institutions in the international arena." In accordance with these principles, the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities is awarded to "the work of cultivating and improving the sciences and disciplines considered as humanistic activities and of everything related to the media of social communication in all its expressions." In this edition, a total of 36 candidatures from 16 nationalities attended the Communication and Humanities award.

This has been the second of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards that are awarded this year, in which they reach their forty-first edition. The Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts was previously awarded to performance artist Marina Abramović. In the coming weeks those corresponding to Social Sciences, Sports, Letters, International Cooperation, Scientific and Technical Research and Concord will be decided. Each of the Princess of Asturias Awards is endowed with a sculpture by Joan Miró - a representative symbol of the award - a diploma, a badge and the cash amount of 50,000 euros.