A Man Is Like A Fish Without A Bicycle Summary

The Reagan-Carter Debates: Gloria Steinem
"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
This Gloria Steinem quote is an accurate summary of one of her primary issues. She has spent, and continues to spend, her entire life fighting for the equality of all people, but particularly the rights of American women. Her main beliefs are in support of a women's reproductive freedom, equal opportunity, equal pay, and anti-discrimination for all genders, races, sexualities, and castes. One of her main topics, as addressed by the preceding quote, was the independence of women in the world. She is a well-known feminist speaker, author, activist and organizer who has fought for equality in America her whole life. She travels across the country
to inspire new activists to her cause and has sparked some of America's great equality changes – both politically and socially.
In 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed as the first civil rights bill since the end of reconstruction, many people felt it was long overdue. Gloria Steinem was one of those people. She was in support of the federal government assisting in change, but felt that true equality could only be achieved through social change. However, the act prohibited race, religious, national origin and gender discrimination by employers and labor unions, thus advancing the civil rights, feminist, and religious equality movements. Steinem was just one of the many people who saw the Civil Rights Act as the first step in the long journey America needed to take towards the complete equality of all its citizens.
In 1961, the term "affirmative action" was first used by John F.
Kennedy in an executive order aimed at ending discrimination against minority Americans. However, this is a topic still widely debated today, as many close-minded traditionalists view it as reverse discrimination. Steinem held, and still holds, herself in favor of affirmative action, viewing it as one of America's preliminary attempts to redeem itself for the horrible way minority groups were treated throughout American history and, in some ways, are still treated today. She is in favor of this Kennedy implemented policy because it does support her main platform of equality for everyone, including many minority
groups.
The Warren Court is a name given to the time when the Supreme Court was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
During this era, many rights were acknowledged such as: the declaration of segregation as unconstitutional, making illegally obtained evidence inadmissible in court, established the right to be represented by a lawyer, initiated the declaration of a criminal's Miranda Rights upon an arrest, chartered the separation of church and state, and the protection of a citizen's right to symbolic speech. Most of the rights established by the Warren Court benefited prisoners, but some did serve to further the feminist movement. While Steinem didn't focus on the rights of criminals, she did support the advancement of anyone's rights so she was greatly in favor of most of the decisions made by the Warren Court. During this era, many progressive movements found their footing in the many court cases used to establish the rights of the American people, including the civil rights and feminist
movements.
During the election of 1980, Gloria Steinem was not particularly active in supporting either candidate for two reasons. The first reason was that she was diagnosed with breast cancer that same year and she spent most of that year fighting the disease. The second reason was that neither candidate really shared her political views. Between the two options, she supported Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan because, while Reagan strongly opposed the Civil Rights Act, Carter was an enthusiastic supporter of the Civil Rights Act and women's rights. He made campaign promises to take steps to close the gender wage gap, establish abortion rights, and promised to eliminate discrimination against women in all federal programs. In fact, Carter received support from 46% of female voters in the election of 1980. Steinem, consistent with her support and active campaigning for women's rights, provided Carter with the meager support she could offer in 1980.
Gloria Steinem was largely in favor of the federal government implementing more programs to improve the economic and social equality of American minorities. She thought that not enough was being done to address the injustices taking place every day in our country and that the government would have to play a part in ending the harsh gender roles, unfair racial biases, and last-century values held by a large number of Americans during the 1960s and '70s. Steinem has built her entire career off of improving the rights of minority groups in America, particularly those of women. Even today, she doesn't count her job as done and she continues to campaign for minority rights in America –something she will continue to do until either equality achieves or her life concludes because, as she says, "I'm a realist, but I'm also a dreamer. And I'm not just a dreamer, I'm a hopeaholic."