Gloria Steinem, activist and author, came to Auburn to give a lecture in the seventies and is returning Feb. 18 to kick off the fifth annual Extraordinary Women Lecture series as part of Auburn University's Women's Studies Program.
"Gloria Steinem is probably the most influential woman in the United States," said Barbara Baker, executive editor of the Women's Leadership Institute. "She has been for my entire lifetime and I'm not young. Really, she is a key figure in a struggle for equality for all people. She has worked in every facet of all race, gender and every other kind of inequality you can think of for 50 to 60 years."
The lecture will take place at the Auburn Hotel in the Dixon Conference Center at 4 p.m. and is open to the general public.
The first woman to ever speak at Auburn's Extraordinary Women Lecture series, Leslie Kennedy, was an Auburn graduate and the first woman three-star general in the United States Air Force.
"Our lecture series has been a trajectory," Baker said.
Since then, Lily Ledbetter, woman's right activist who the Fair Pay Act is named after; Marie Wilson, founder and president of the White House Project; and Maya Angelou, renowned author and poet, have all come to Auburn to partake in the lecture series.
"This year our goal was to bring as many of the units across campus together, as we could," Baker said. "We wanted to see if we could get everybody on board together to get behind somebody. So we got somebody that really has a super indisputable reputation as a national icon and legendary figure."
Steinem is the co-founder of Ms. Magazine, the Women's Media Center, and the National Women's Political Caucus, among other foundations.
Steinem has also received numerous awards, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and written five books, with As If Women Matter, being the latest.
"What I think the catch here is, you have the opportunity to be in the presence of an absolute legend, an icon, somebody that not everybody gets to be in the presence of everyday of the week," Baker said.
Mary Elizabeth Woodward, junior in hotel and restaurant management, serves as a mentee for the Women's Philanthropy board and attends similar lectures and luncheons offered by the Women's Studies Program.
"I think they're very beneficial," Woodward said. "It's really awesome that we have the opportunity, as students, to hear from all these really cool people who make a difference, through all these different programs that Auburn offers."
Students such as Lauren Romano, sophomore in elementary education, heard about the lecture series through her professor in in her human developmental life studies class.
According to Romano, most of her class will be attending the lecture.
"We how families and relationships work,"
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