Who will replace Gloria Steinem?

Over the last 40 years,Gloria Steinem has almost always given an opinion on a pressing issue involving women’s rights: Roe v. Wade (“If men could get pregnant,abortion would be a sacrament”),the tax problems that all but doomed the chances of the first woman to run for vice president on a major ticket (“What has the women’s movement learned from Geraldine Ferraro’s candidacy for vice president? Never get married”).

And that raises a question: where is the next Gloria Steinem,and why has no one emerged to take her place? There is no singular voice of opposition on issue like women’s reproductive rights. The past year has been a time of reflection about Steinem’s legacy: she was the subject of a widely viewed HBO documentary,In Her Own Words,and the recipient of Glamour magazine’s lifetime achievement award. History’s most formidable figures have always been a tough act to follow,of course. There will never be another Martin Luther King Jr.,but Jesse Jackson was certainly waiting in the wings to give it a go.

Reflecting recently on Steinem’s pivotal role in the women’s rights movement,the author Susan Faludi said,“We’ve not seen another Gloria Steinem because there is only one Gloria,and someone with her combination of conviction,wit,smarts and grace under fire doesn’t come along every day.” Faludi may actually be the closest thing to an heir apparent. Her 1991 book,Backlash,was a barnburner,a bold depiction of how the Reagan decade had rolled back feminist gains. Along with Naomi Wolf,whose best-selling Beauty Myth took aim at an image-obsessed culture,she seemed poised to become a voice of change.

Twenty years after Faludi and Wolf burst onto the scene,both have receded from the front lines. For her part,Faludi said she was not interested in leading any battles. “I’m a writer,not a political organiser,” she said.

“Gloria Steinem did not invent feminism,” said Rebecca Traister,author of Big Girls Don’t Cry. “She was a figurehead chosen by the media for complicated reasons. She was young and white and pretty,and she looked great on magazine covers.”

Leaders of all stripes are hard to come by lately. Occupy Wall Street is a populist movement without any identifiable spokesperson. Last summer’s feminist eruption—the SlutWalks against sexual violence—were organised by legions of men and women together. Rage is channelled into online comments and Facebook posts and tweeting for the revolution,whatever that revolution may be.

Also,the movement has changed in undeniable ways. The injustices that united so many under one umbrella in the ’70s—no,sir,you can’t put your hand on a female employee’s rear —have been replaced by a thousand shades of gray. The battle over who speaks for women and why has always been fraught. And Steinem’s role came with scars. Betty Friedan is said to have resented Steinem’s influence,and the racial and political implications of a beautiful white woman becoming the face of a movement still create problems today.

“We watched the second-wave feminists wrestle about this question of who owns the movement and why,” said Courtney E. Martin,a founder of the blog Feministing. Along with Jessica Valenti,Martin is a pioneer of the feminist blogosphere where the raucous spirit of the ’70s still thrives. Latoya Peterson,editor of the blog Racialicious,said ‘Feminism’ has given way to what other women have termed ‘feminisms’—all the various ways that we seek justice and equality.” Racialicious is a blog about race and pop culture,but big political issues of yesteryear have been supplanted by messier sociocultural questions on “rape culture” and “slut shaming” and “fat positive” and “cisgender.”

And so the 21st century labours on with a more inchoate sense of feminist leadership. Steinem’s DNA has been scattered into a million cells. Which brings the discussion back to Steinem herself. “Only a diverse group can symbolise a movement,” she said. As for whether there should be another Gloria Steinem,she replied,“I don’t think there should have been a first one.”