Who Was Gloria Steinem? Feminist Icon Who Fought For Women's Rights For Six Decades Dies At 92

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Gloria Steinem, the celebrated author, journalist and activist who became one of the most influential voices of the US women's movement, has died at the age of 92.

Steinem died on Wednesday (September 2) at her home in New York City after a period of declining health, according to a post on her social media accounts. She had recently completed a memoir that is scheduled to be published this fall.

For more than six decades, Steinem campaigned for gender equality and became a defining figure in the feminist movement. With her distinctive aviator glasses and streaked hair, she was a highly recognizable presence at rallies, marches, college campuses and community events across the US and around the world.

“Gloria's greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” a post announcing her death said.“Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves.”

From journalism to feminism

Steinem began her professional career as a journalist. In 1963, she went undercover to report on working conditions at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club, an experience she later said she regretted.

Her career took a decisive turn several years later after attending a meeting where women publicly shared their experiences and advocated for abortion rights. Steinem, who had herself undergone an illegal abortion at 22, said the experience pushed her toward activism.

“That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,” she said in a 2022 interview while reflecting on the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Steinem became an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights, arguing that control over one's body was fundamental to equality and democracy.

A leading voice of the women's movement

In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, which became an important platform for feminist writing and helped bring women's issues into mainstream public debate.

Her prominence also made her a target of criticism. Some commentators dismissed the magazine when it launched, predicting that it would quickly disappear. Then-President Richard Nixon was also recorded mocking Steinem and the publication's name.

Steinem often answered hostility with humor, becoming known for sharp and memorable lines. Before marrying at the age of 66, she famously joked about her long single life:“I can't mate in captivity.”

Her wit was accompanied by a willingness to confront issues ranging from reproductive rights and workplace discrimination to female genital mutilation and international human rights.

Fighting stereotypes

Despite her public influence, Steinem frequently criticized the media's focus on her appearance.

She objected to being described primarily as beautiful or glamorous, arguing that such descriptions diminished her decades of political and intellectual work.

“Nobody ever called me beautiful until I was publicly a feminist,” she said in a 2011 interview.

Her visibility nevertheless endured for decades. Even in her 80s, Steinem continued traveling and speaking publicly, maintaining the same commitment to women's equality that had defined her career.

“Being a feminist means that you see the world as whole instead of half,” she once said.

A legacy that extended beyond feminism

Steinem's influence reached generations of activists and writers. Her life became the subject of the 2020 film The Glorias, A Life on the Road, while she continued working with younger activists and authors late into her life.

At 91, she collaborated with Liberian peace activist and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee on the children's picture book Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All, published in February.

Friend and fellow activist Abigail Disney, who visited Steinem at her Manhattan home shortly before her death, said Steinem remained mentally sharp despite becoming physically frailer.

“She was just as funny and just as sharp as I have ever known her,” Disney said, adding that generosity and kindness were central to Steinem's activism.

Steinem leaves behind a legacy that helped reshape the American conversation around women's rights, equality and reproductive freedom. Her activism, writing and public presence made her one of the most recognizable figures of the modern feminist movement - a role she continued to embrace for more than 60 years.

A childhood spent on the road

Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio. Her father worked as a traveling antique salesperson, and Steinem spent much of her early childhood traveling with her parents rather than attending a conventional school.

She later recalled that she educated herself largely through reading. Her childhood changed dramatically in 1944, when her parents divorced. At just 10, Steinem found herself helping care for her mother, a former journalist who struggled to balance work and running a household and eventually suffered a nervous breakdown.

As a child, Steinem was an accomplished tap dancer and once imagined that dancing might provide her escape from Toledo. Instead, she went on to attend Smith College in the 1950s.

At the time, she believed women were largely being educated to become wives and mothers. Marriage, however, was not part of the future she envisioned for herself.

From India to New York journalism

After college, Steinem accepted a modest fellowship that allowed her to travel to India. She later moved to Manhattan and began pursuing a career in journalism.

But the opportunities available to women journalists were limited. Steinem wanted to write about politics, while editors frequently assigned her stories about food, fashion and lifestyle topics.

One assignment she particularly disliked was an article about textured stockings. She also recalled a disturbing encounter with an editor who offered her an inappropriate choice: spend the afternoon with him in a hotel or mail his letters.

She chose the letters.

At the time, she said, there was no widely used term for sexual harassment.“It was just life,” she later recalled.

The Playboy assignment that changed her career

In 1963, Steinem took an undercover assignment for Show magazine that required her to pose as a Playboy Bunny and work at the Playboy Club.

She initially assumed she would fail the audition. Instead, she was hired and worked at the club for about a month, documenting the conditions faced by the women employed there.

The resulting article brought her attention, but Steinem later came to regard the experience as a mistake. She said it made it harder to obtain assignments in the short term and was later repeatedly used by critics to ridicule her.

Her journalism, however, gradually became more political as she entered her 30s and joined the editorial board of New York magazine.

Abortion rights became a turning point

Steinem's transformation into a women's rights activist came in 1969, when she covered an abortion-rights hearing.

At the time, she had never publicly discussed having undergone an illegal abortion in London at age 22. The hearing prompted her to confront her own experience and helped set her on the path toward activism.

In 1971, Steinem joined Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug in founding the National Women's Political Caucus.

She also began developing her skills as a public speaker. Although she was initially uncomfortable speaking before crowds, she found a powerful partner in Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a Black feminist and child-welfare advocate.

Their partnership helped challenge the perception that feminism was primarily a white, middle-class movement. A famous photograph of the two women raising their fists together in the Black Power salute became an enduring image of the era.

The birth of Ms. Magazine

One of the defining moments of Steinem's career came in 1972, when she co-founded Ms. Magazine.

Steinem initially feared that the publication would fail and embarrass the women's movement. Critics openly predicted that it would not survive.

Instead, Ms. became a major platform for feminist ideas and helped bring subjects such as discrimination, reproductive rights and women's equality into mainstream American debate.

Steinem remained involved with the magazine after it was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001, continuing as an adviser.

Challenging conventional ideas about marriage and motherhood

Steinem never had children and said she never regretted that decision.

She viewed her choice as part of the freedom women should have to determine their own lives rather than being expected to become mothers.

Marriage also came much later than it did for most women of her generation. In 2000, at the age of 66, Steinem married British activist and businessman David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale.

The marriage was unexpected even to Steinem. She later joked that she had not changed her views about marriage - marriage itself had changed.

The couple married in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. Bale later developed brain lymphoma, and Steinem cared for him until his death in 2003.

A lifetime on the road

Steinem became famous for her distinctive appearance, including her streaked hair and large aviator glasses. She once explained that her hairstyle was inspired by Holly Golightly, the character played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The glasses, she said, were partly“more about hiding.”

Her public visibility sometimes came with hostility and personal attacks. Yet she often responded with humor.

She also continued traveling extensively. Her 2015 memoir, A Life on the Road, reflected her decades of speaking engagements and organizing work.

Ironically, Steinem never learned to drive. She said driving would have deprived her of opportunities to talk with the people who picked her up from airports and train stations - including taxi drivers, whom she particularly enjoyed talking to.

The 2017 Women's March

Steinem remained an important public figure well into her 80s.

On January 21, 2017, she was among the leading speakers at the historic Women's March in Washington, where hundreds of thousands of women gathered.

Addressing the crowd, Steinem emphasized solidarity and collective action, telling demonstrators that they were connected and that their gathering would change them because they were together.

The moment underscored the continuing influence she had on generations of activists.

A legacy built around choice

Despite becoming one of the most recognizable faces of feminism, Steinem often rejected the idea that she alone had changed history. She believed that if she had not taken up the cause, someone else eventually would have.

Her message to younger generations was similarly focused less on following her than on discovering their own identities.

“The primary thing is not that they know who I am,” she said,“but that they know who THEY are.”

That idea perhaps best captures Steinem's legacy: not simply that she became a powerful voice for women, but that she spent more than six decades arguing that women should have the freedom to decide who they wanted to be.

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