Gloria Steinem Instagram – My paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, was the first woman to be elected to the Toledo School Board — and perhaps the first Jewish woman elected to any public office in the United States, even before women could vote nationally. She ran on a coalition ticket with the Socialists and the Anarchists, and got elected by organizing women to go to vote together. Women were kept away from the polls by gangs of mens and boys who would harass them if they came to vote. So she organized women to go in a group. But I didn’t know any of this until a feminist historian wrote a monograph about her. What survived as admirable in the family history was that she was a great cook, that she had four sons, that she kept a kosher table, that she was an educator. I didn’t hear about the more rebellious parts. I am thinking of her today, and the work yet to be done.