Gloria Steinem and Dolly Parton Gave Us Joy and Shared Hope – We Have to Take It From Here

With the loss of Gloria Steinem this week and Dolly Parton last, a generation is passing on. Two women of vastly different backgrounds – a country music star and a women's rights activist – have unleashed national outpourings of shared memory and experience as we collectively remember what we liked better about the era that produced them than the world we have right now. But – let's take a beat. That era, the decades after World War II, was an inflection point in America, especially for women. As the 1950s gave way to the '60s and '70s, it seemed like endless opportunity . . .