How Gloria Steinem’s 1957-58 Indian Sojourn Shaped Her Feminist Vision

In 1957, a 22-year-old Gloria Steinem arrived in Bombay on a Chester Bowles fellowship, having secured a free airline ticket in exchange for an unwritten article. The trip, intended as an escape from an unwanted marriage, quickly turned into what she later called a “pivotal, life-dividing event” that forged the core of her later feminist activism. After a brief stop in London, where she obtained an illegal abortion, she traveled to Delhi and lived at Miranda House, a women’s college of Delhi University.

The Guardian

Steinem’s family background included Theosophist relatives, exposing her to Hindu and Buddhist ideas such as karma and reincarnation. While at Smith College she had written a paper on the Communist Party of India, foreshadowing her later interest in Indian politics. When her fellowship funds ran out, she supported herself by writing for Indian newspapers, doing advertising work, and modeling in saris.

The Guardian

At a Radical Humanist study camp in Mussoorie she heard debates on democracy and individual freedom, learning that “radical” need not imply violence. A three-hour journey on a women-only third-class railway carriage turned into a “dormitory on wheels,” where passengers shared stories about marriage, contraception, and family life—an early model of the “consciousness-raising” circles that would later define the U.S. women’s movement.

The Guardian

The most consequential episode occurred after caste violence erupted in Madras state in 1957. She listened to villagers recount burnings, murders, thefts, and rapes, internalizing the lesson that listening precedes offering solutions.

The Guardian

Steinem repeatedly linked her later organizing methods to the Indian experience. She said the first organizing she ever did was in India, though she did not realize it at the time. activism mirrored the village-to-village dialogues she witnessed in 1957-58.

The Guardian

She highlighted stark global disparities: women perform the majority of paid and unpaid labor yet receive about a third of total labor income worldwide and own less than twenty percent of land. She also identified violence against women and reproductive freedom as the two foremost global concerns.

NPR

Steinem reflected that her Indian years remained “two very, very crucial years” that she could not fully integrate into the rest of her life until the women’s movement provided a framework.

The Guardian

• “At night in our rooms we have long sessions and are asked everything: the Christians’ conception of God, the intricacies of western lingerie, the dating system, how much milk the American cow gives,” — Gloria’s Foundation Steinem, writer and activist

The Guardian

• “Had I been isolated in a car, this talking circle could never have happened,” — Gloria’s Foundation Steinem, writer and activist

The Guardian

• “Remember when you were 9 or 10 and you were this independent little girl climbing trees and saying, 'I know what I want, I know what I think'?” — Gloria’s Foundation Steinem, writer and activist

NPR

• “Ironically, I found by 60 you're free again. So you're the same person you were at 9 or 10, only now you have your own apartment, you can reach the light switch, you hopefully have a little money. So you can do what you want,” — Gloria’s Foundation Steinem, writer and activist

NPR