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Ms. Celebrates 40 at Sold-Out Press Club Event

Ms. founding editor Gloria Steinem, current executive editor Kathy Spillar, Chair of the Ms. Committee of Scholars Bonnie Thornton Dill, PhD, and Ms. publisher Eleanor Smeal celebrated 40 years of Ms. magazine today at the National Press Club along with some of the nation’s leading feminist journalists, reporters, and commentators.

“For 40 years, Ms. has been making history, pushing forward and inspiring a movement that has forever changed the world,” said Spillar. “Ms. has always been ahead of the mainstream media in reporting on issues impacting women and girls. Ms. has played an important role in the struggles for reproductive rights, against rape and violence, for equal pay and educational opportunities,” Spillar continued.

Introduced to a standing ovation, President of Feminist Majority Foundation and publisher of Ms., Eleanor Smeal, reminded the audience that “Ms. is not a quarterly -we’re a daily,” with breaking news stories and coverage of women published every day on-line. “Ms. is read by feminists all over the world – our impact is global,” Smeal continued. She announced that Ms. would launch a digital Ms. app in November.

Bonnie Thornton Dill, the chair of the Ms. Committee of Scholars, explained the important connections between women’s studies scholars and Ms. and the Ms. community of activists. “It’s a two-way street,” Dill observed. “Ms. is a platform for women’s studies scholars to bring forward breakthrough strategies to advance the status of women and girls, increasing public knowledge,” Dill continued. “And Ms. is used as a teaching text in women’s studies, political science, sociology, journalism and communications, by faculty in 48 states at 415 colleges and universities through its special Ms. in the Classroom digital program.”

The audience rose to its feet when Steinem was introduced. Steinem spoke to the future: “I hope that we will after today never again fall for the idea that it (the feminist movement) is over, or that it’s not necessary anymore or that it doesn’t have huge majority support. It does, absolutely. We have won the hearts and minds, but we have not won the power, the employers, the hierarchical religions. That’s the source of the backlash, that’s where it is. But one day, one day, we will get there.”

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