Gloria Steinem, the American feminist and journalist whose activism helped advance women’s rights around the world, has died at the age of 92.
Steinem “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her,” according to a statement shared on her Instagram page.
“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end,” the post added. “Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard. Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves.”
Steinem brought a feminist perspective into the mainstream through rigorous journalism, public speaking, and activism. The author of nine books, she campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, the pornography industry, and the Vietnam and Gulf wars. She also supported causes including Black Lives Matter, the reunification of Korea, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and the Times Up movement. In 1984, she was arrested while protesting apartheid outside the South African embassy in Washington DC.
Born in Ohio in 1934, Steinem grew up in a trailer home. Her mother’s mental illness made it hard for her to keep a job, and she spent time in and out of sanatoriums. When Steinem was 10, her parents separated. While growing up in a rundown home in Toledo with her mother, she began to notice the hostility her mother faced as a working woman.
After graduating from a women’s liberal arts college in 1956, Steinem traveled to India for two years, where she worked as a legal clerk in the country’s supreme court. Returning to the US, she served as the director of the Independent Research Service, a CIA front that recruited American students to disrupt the Soviet-controlled World Youth Festivals in Vienna and Helsinki. Steinem later revealed she had always known who was funding the operation: “If I had a choice I would do it again.”
In 1962, she received her first “serious assignment” in journalism from Esquire magazine editor Clay Felker. Her feature on contraception, The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed, detailed how women were forced to choose between careers and family. The following year, Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for 11 days to write her infamous two-part exposé on how the glamour models were treated while working in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. Forced into tight costumes and high heels, Steinem lost 10 pounds—half of them in a single night—during her stint; her manager celebrated by making her costume two inches tighter. After the article came out, she couldn’t find work “because I had now become a Bunny—and it didn’t matter why.”
In 1968, Felker hired her to work at New York magazine, where she would coin the term “reproductive freedom” for an article about an abortion “speakout” in Greenwich Village. Having had an abortion in London when she was 22, she later described feeling a “big click” while at the protest and said that day marked the start of her life as an “active feminist.”
“I think the person who said: ‘Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament’ was right,” she told the Observer in 2011. “Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive.”
She also credited black feminists including Florynce Kennedy, Evelyn Cunningham, Shirley Chisholm, and Fannie Lou Hamer for teaching her the importance of activism. “It was like finding a family,” she said of that time. “As wildly different as we may be, and we certainly were, women share hopes and a certain vision of the world, and a certain shit detector.”
This also began Steinem’s career as a provocative journalist, writing articles that challenged the status quo.Including pieces like If Men Could Menstruate, which appeared in Ms., a magazine co-founded by Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes in 1971. The first issue featured Wonder Woman on the cover; the superhero had recently given up her powers to stay with her male love interest, and the essay argued that DC Comics should restore her powers and bring the character back to her feminist roots. Steinem also wrote articles such as What It Would Be Like If Women Win in Time, and After Black Power, Women’s Liberation, the 1969 New York magazine piece that would establish her as a feminist leader.
Steinem was terrified of public speaking and conflict, but she was media-savvy. She used the platform she gained as a white, educated woman to speak out for those often ignored—Black people, ethnic minorities, and the working class. She argued in 1971 that sex and race were always connected, “because they are easy, and visible differences have been the primary ways of organising human beings into superior and inferior groups and into the cheap labour on which this system still depends.” In 2017, she said: “It doesn’t surprise me that the most virulent anti-abortion measures are coming from Alabama and other southern states because racism and sexism are always intertwined. You can’t perpetuate racism without controlling women and reproduction.”
Steinem was also a polarising figure. Some feminists felt her role as a public leader in the movement was chosen by the media, not earned by merit, because she was young, white, and attractive. In her 2015 book My Life on the Road, she wrote that the “idea that whatever I had accomplished was all about looks would remain a biased and hurtful accusation even into my old age.”
For decades, she faced strong criticism for a 1998 opinion piece in the New York Times where she supported President Bill Clinton amid sexual harassment allegations. She wrote, “He is not guilty of sexual harassment,” only “a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life.” In 2017, she said: “We have to believe women. I wouldn’t write the same thing now because there’s probably more known about other women now.” She was also seen as hostile to transgender rights because of a piece she wrote in 1977, a position she clarified in 2013: “I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned.”
In 1986, Steinem was diagnosed with breast cancer, and in 1994 with the chronic pain condition trigeminal neuralgia. After years of dismissing marriage, she married environmental activist David Bale in 2000, and stayed close with her stepson, the actor Christian Bale, after his father’s death in 2003.
Having supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Steinem was a prominent critic of Donald Trump. She co-chaired and spoke at the Women’s March on Washington, a mass protest held the day after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. “The only good news of Trump is that the galvanising of activism is like nothing I have ever seen in my life,” she told the Guardian that year. “A thousand times more even than the Vietnam war, and how important that was—or of any other thing I’ve ever seen.”
In 2011, she told the Observer: “I hope to live to 100. There is so much to do.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs regarding the passing of Gloria Steinem written in a natural tone with clear and concise answers
General Questions
1 Is it true that Gloria Steinem has died
Yes it is true Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at the age of 92 Her death marks the end of an era for the feminist movement
2 Who was Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem was an American feminist journalist and socialpolitical activist She became the face of the womens liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s fighting for equality in the workplace reproductive rights and an end to genderbased discrimination
3 What is she most famous for
She is most famous for cofounding Ms magazine in 1972 which brought feminist issues into the mainstream She was also a powerful speaker and writer who helped organize the Womens Strike for Equality in 1970 and cofounded the National Womens Political Caucus
4 Was she just an activist or was she also a journalist
She was both Before she was a fulltime activist she was a successful journalist Her undercover report on the working conditions at the Playboy Club in 1963 was a landmark piece of investigative journalism that helped launch her career
Questions About Her Legacy and Impact
5 What was her biggest contribution to the womens movement
Her biggest contribution was her ability to communicate complex feminist ideas to a wide audience She made feminism accessible and relatable to everyday women She also helped bridge the gap between different factions of the movement focusing on unity and coalitionbuilding
6 Did she only focus on womens rights
No she understood that all forms of oppression are connected She was an outspoken advocate for civil rights LGBTQ rights and economic justice She famously said We are linked not ranked meaning that fighting for one groups rights helps all groups
7 Why was she sometimes a controversial figure
In her early career some critics dismissed her because of her physical appearance Later some younger feminists criticized her for focusing too much on the experiences of white middleclass women However she consistently acknowledged these critiques and worked to make the movement more inclusive over time
8 What is her lasting legacy for future generations
Her legacy is the blueprint for
