Updated

Updated · USA TODAY · Sep 3

Gloria Steinem Married David Bale in 2000, Defying Decades of Criticism of Marriage

Updated

Updated · USA TODAY · Sep 3

Gloria Steinem Married David Bale in 2000, Defying Decades of Criticism of Marriage

Q: What specific legal changes finally convinced this pioneering feminist that marriage could be an equal partnership rather than a trap?

It was the broad overhaul of U.S. marriage laws that persuaded Gloria Steinem, especially reforms that let a married woman keep her own legal identity and civil standing. Steinem herself framed it this way: after “30 years in the United States changing the marriage laws,” marriage no longer automatically meant losing “my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights.” In practical terms, that meant wives were no longer expected to surrender their surnames, their domicile was no longer simply absorbed into a husband’s, and women had far stronger independent rights to credit, contracts, and legal personhood. Those changes were part of the larger feminist legal push of the late 20th century, including the dismantling of old coverture-style rules and the spread of equal-credit protections and more gender-neutral family law. By the time she married David Bale in 2000, Steinem said marriage had changed enough that it could be entered as a choice between equals rather than as a structure of female dependency. She underscored that point in the wedding itself: the ceremony used “partners” instead of “husband and wife,” and she kept her last name.

3 articles · Updated · USA TODAY · Sep 3

At 66, Gloria Steinem married David Bale in rural Oklahoma in 2000, a move that stunned many because she had long argued marriage disadvantaged women.
Steinem said she married only after legal and social changes made an equal marriage possible, keeping her last name and replacing “husband and wife” with “partners” in the ceremony.
Bale — a South African-born English entrepreneur and animal welfare activist, and father of actor Christian Bale — had faced deportation over an overstayed visa, though the couple said that was not a factor.
The marriage lasted 3 years until Bale died of brain lymphoma in 2003 at 62; Steinem never remarried and said she never regretted not having children.