Gloria Steinem has been announced as a headliner at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
The American feminist, who began to really make her mark on the history of women’s rights when she penned the essay After Black Power, Women’s Liberation in 1969, will appear at Sydney Town Hall on Friday 20 May in a talk named after her memoir, My Life On The Road.
Steinem, 81, is expected to talk about personal encounters from her lifetime of work dedicated to feminism, from an early experience of social activism among women in India to founding liberal feminist magazine, Ms., in 1972. She will also comment on the current US election, which historically features Hillary Clinton as a front-running female presidential candidate.
A supporter of Democratic candidate Clinton, Steinem recently caused controversy by suggesting that young women, including model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, were voting for Clinton’s fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders to “meet members of the opposite sex” on Bill Maher’s US TV show, Real Time.
Afterwards she apologised on Facebook, saying her comments had been “misinterpreted” and that “whether they gravitate to Bernie or Hillary, young women are activist and feminist in greater numbers than ever before.”
Steinem, who last visited Australia in the 1980s, will also appear in Brisbane (15 May) and Melbourne (16 May), and the full Sydney Writers’ Festival lineup will be announced on Thursday 31 March.
Grab tickets to the Sydney event, here.
