Gloria Steinem and the Intersectional Struggle Against Global Trade Hegemony An analysis of how feminist icon Gloria Steinem integrated her fight for gender equality with a broader critique of the World Trade Organization and the exploitation of cheap labor. Gloria Steinem, the legendary feminist writer and relentless activist who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 92, left behind a legacy that extended far beyond the fight for women's suffrage and legal equality. One of the less discussed but equally passionate chapters of her political life was her fierce opposition to the free-trade order that began to crystallize during the 1990s. Steinem was a prominent voice against the trade agreements that eventually led to the creation of the World Trade Organization. In August 1994, she joined a diverse group of more than 130 influential Americans in signing a critical letter addressed to President Bill Clinton.This letter urged the administration to delay the congressional review of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, commonly known as GATT. This massive international agreement, involving over 100 nations, aimed to dismantle trade barriers and empower the WTO to enforce global trade rules with unprecedented authority. The coalition supporting this opposition was strikingly eclectic, bridging a deep ideological divide.On the left, Steinem stood alongside figures like Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and former California Governor Jerry Brown. Simultaneously, she found common ground with conservative stalwarts such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich, and Richard Viguerie. Other signatories included Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger, Pat Choate, and R. Emmet Tyrrell Jr. Together, they warned the Clinton administration against a 'rush to judgment' regarding the legislation, fearing that WTO mandates could override domestic health, environmental, and food-safety standards.For Steinem, this political stance was not a detour from feminism but a direct extension of it. She had spent decades developing an economic critique that linked the oppression of women to the structural needs of capitalism. She argued that the capitalist system relies heavily on a steady supply of cheap labor, which is disproportionately provided by women of various races and backgrounds.In a 1976 interview with India Today, she articulated that the entire economic structure is dependent on these undervalued workers whose lack of bargaining power keeps costs low for corporations. This perspective evolved into a broader resistance to the global trade regime. By the time of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, Steinem saw the uprising as a focal point for the women's movement.When asked by Canadian feminist Judy Rebick about the current state of feminism, Steinem famously replied that 'Seattle is the women's movement.' By identifying the struggle against the WTO with the broader fight against corporate power, economic inequality, and labor exploitation, she repositioned feminism as an intersectional battle against a global system that profits from the marginalized. This sentiment echoed some of the populist rhetoric of the time, including comments made by Donald Trump in a 1999 interview where he expressed skepticism toward the WTO, suggesting it was 'not necessarily fair to America.' In her 1994 book Moving Beyond Words, specifically in the essay titled Revaluing Economics, Steinem challenged the traditional understanding of market value. She posited that wages are rarely a reflection of the actual economic value of the work being performed; instead, they reflect the social and political power of the people performing that work. She argued that a cheap labor force effectively cheapens the quality and value of whatever it produces.To illustrate this, she pointed to the disparity in pay and status for similar tasks performed by different demographic groups across various countries, asserting that the free market had very little to do with these discrepancies. A poignant example she used was the perceived shortage of nurses in the United States. Steinem argued that there was no actual shortage of qualified personnel, but rather 'only a shortage of wages and respect,' which drove trained nurses out of the profession.She criticized employers who, instead of raising wages to attract talent, sought to lower training requirements or import nurses from lower-wage countries to maintain a low-cost workforce. She defended the efforts of nurses' unions to resist these practices, prompting readers to consider how automobile companies would be viewed if they slashed the wages of male assembly-line workers and replaced them with imported low-wage labor. This connection between feminism and labor policy was central to Steinem's worldview.She believed that the availability of cheap labor provided an unfair economic advantage to employers, allowing them to suppress compensation across the board by pitting different pools of low-paid workers against one another. Furthermore, she proposed that eliminating the reliance on cheap labor would actually stimulate economic progress.In a 1970 essay for Time magazine, she predicted that 'higher wages would encourage further mechanization' and technological innovation for repetitive jobs that were only economically viable because the human labor was so inexpensive. This high-wage argument stood in stark contrast to the narrative pushed by the Clinton administration and major business lobbies during the 1990s. While the government argued that lowering trade barriers would spur growth, exports, and employment, Steinem saw a different reality.For one of the most recognizable leaders of the American feminist movement, the fight against the emerging global trade system was a fight for the dignity and bargaining power of all workers, regardless of gender, ensuring that human value was not sacrificed for corporate profit