Varied and vibrant womanhood

When asked if she were a feminist, Dolly Parton regularly rejected that label.Gloria Steinem, on the other hand, didn’t wait to be asked – she owned it.These uniquely American and universally known cultural icons, who recently died within days of each other, represented quite divergent versions of modern womanhood.When it came to looks and outward appearances, this Monitor tribute noted, Ms. Parton exhibited a “flamboyantly constructed femininity.” Ms. Steinem leaned toward the muted and understated.But when it came to outlooks and achievements, in their distinct yet overlapping lifetimes, both women had more in common. And this convergence underscores how their varied yet deeply rooted commitments to values of equality and fairness helped shift and shape society for the better.Ms. Parton and Ms. Steinem each overturned preconceptions of traditional male-female, as well as breadwinner-homemaker, roles. They upheld and demonstrated women’s unlimited creativity and capacities. Emerging from unconventional and poor childhoods, they empathized with and supported those who experienced poverty and discrimination. Solidarity and sisterhood were central to their outreach to other women and young girls.In this lifework, they remained self-described optimists with faith in human goodness and progress.“We all have a place in this world. We all need to be loved and respected,” Ms. Parton told PBS a few years ago.“I’m a hope-aholic,” Ms. Steinem told an interviewer last December, describing hope as “a form of planning” for a better future. It’s a sentiment repeated in her final memoir, due out later this month.Both women recognized that fully realizing the aspirations and talents of women and girls also requires valuing the virtues and qualities that men and boys contribute, in the private and public spheres. The long-married Ms. Parton spoke often and glowingly of the support she received from her husband, who avoided the spotlight.“Women’s Liberation is Men’s Liberation, too,” Ms. Steinem declared at a 1970 United States Senate hearing. Pointing out that American children at the time seemed to have “too much mother, and too little father,” she observed that asserting equality would also liberate and legitimize an innate desire of many men to do more for and with their children.This was prescient. In June, the Institute for Family Studies reported that today’s dads put in three times as many hours on housework and childcare as in the 1960s. And yet, another study showed, 63% of fathers still think they spend too little time with their children, compared with 35% for mothers. Clearly, there’s room for continued change and rebalancing.Richard Reeves, founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men, is behind such efforts. When he interviewed Ms. Steinem last December, he was struck by her use of the word “liberation” to amplify the “uplift and joy” in pursuing equality.“This is an important message right now,” Dr. Reeves wrote in his Substack newsletter in January, pointing to the “negativity, lack of goodwill and humorlessness” in public debates. He was buoyed, he said, by Ms. Steinem’s insistence on “a more joyful approach” – and on women and men working jointly to extend and entrench the values of equality.Such views align with values held by the founder of this publication, Mary Baker Eddy. Long before American women gained the right to vote, she established a religion and church that would become global in scope. For decades, she faced opposition and scorn from the male-dominated world of theologians and preachers. But she never wavered in her conviction that the foundation of equality – for men and women – is spiritual and absolute.“In natural law and in religion the right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened understanding and the highest places in government, is inalienable,” she wrote in a short text titled “No and Yes,” “and these rights are ably vindicated by the noblest of both sexes.”