Even when the entire world looks up to you, you still look to the rest of the world for insight. Below, I spoke to Steinem about WOMAN, women, and what it takes to turn empathy into real life action….
But the most important prelude to empathy is contact — is talking to each other, seeing each other, listening to each other’s stories. I think we’ve seen on campus a growing emphasis on sexual assault, or, in the military, a growing understanding of how far it goes, and how difficult it is to report and the chain of command…
What are our obligations to one another as women?
“I wouldn’t put it as an obligation. The human race could not have survived without empathy.
If we didn’t feel a natural leap of empathy when a member of our species is in trouble, the species wouldn’t have survived. [Laughs] We just need to follow our empathetic impulse and not allow it to be turned off by the idea that problems can only be solved from above.”
