It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh.

Here is Gloria Steinem, feminist activist and writer, in conversation with TED Women curator, Pat Mitchell.

Yes, hello, hello, hello.

Hello, hello. What a thrill to have this opportunity. When we ask all of our TED community, many of them, who would you like to hear from if we're going to look forward and onward when it comes to women in the world? Unanimously, the answer was Gloria Steinem.

Now, I know you're way too modest to accept that easily.

So before we move onward, may I go back a bit since we have known each other for a long time

and talk about those early days when you were building a movement, challenging stereotypes,

moving beyond cultural norms.

You must have had some manifestation of fearless in your life.

What were your fears and how did you overcome them?

No, I certainly had a lot of fears and chief among them was speaking in public just like I am now.

Because, you know, we choose to express ourselves in the way that is most natural.

And I became a writer because I didn't want to talk.

So the first thing I had to overcome

was the fear of public speaking. And because I was afraid to do it by myself, I asked a friend to do

it with me, Dorothy Pittman Hughes, and then Flo Kennedy. Anyway, so we became, in that way, somewhat

accidentally, one white woman, one black

woman speaking together, which, you know, was very helpful to express that the movement was for

everyone. And in those early days when you were becoming not only a really powerful public speaker in spite of your fears,

you were also normalizing and creating response to a word that became the anthem for so many of us,

literally changing lives, standing in front of crowds and saying feminism is for every woman.

And I see now, as you do, that there are still ways in which feminism is not understood as a concept,

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