![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/AP26246398405243-e1788446049929.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gloria Steinem, the celebrated author and activist who became one of the most visible symbols and potent voices of the U.S. women\u2019s movement and a fierce advocate for feminist causes for over six decades, has died. She was 92.<\/p>\n
With her trademark streaked hair parted down the middle and large aviator glasses, Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, was\u00a0a hugely recognizable presence\u00a0wherever she went. And she went everywhere: Much of her life as an advocate was spent on the road, speaking at college campuses and community centers, at rallies and marches.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do it on the phone or on the web,\u201d she told The Associated Press\u00a0in a 2015 interview.\u00a0\u201cYou have to be there with all five senses. It should be obvious that people can\u2019t empathize with each other unless we\u2019re in the same room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinem, who had been in declining health, died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to a post on her social media page. She had recently completed a memoir, to be released this fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cGloria\u2019s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,\u201d the post said. \u201cHer words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Steinem had recently become more frail physically, her wit and humor remained totally intact. Her friend and fellow activist, Abigail Disney, said she\u2019d visited Steinem\u2019s Manhattan home a bit over a week ago, as those close to her gathered by her side. \u201cShe was just as funny and just as sharp as I have ever known her,\u201d Disney said. And, she said, generous.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything Gloria did was rooted in kindness,\u201d Disney said. \u201cIt flowed through her political activism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinem began her career as a journalist, notably reporting in 1963 on degrading conditions in Hugh Hefner\u2019s Playboy empire \u2014 an undercover assignment she came to later regret. She credits a meeting six years later, where women spoke out in favor of abortion rights, with changing her career path.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,\u201d Steinem, who had undergone a secret illegal abortion herself at age 22, told the AP in an email in 2022,\u00a0reflecting on the reversal of Roe v. Wade.\u00a0\u201cEither our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we\u2019re not living in a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who watched Steinem denounce discrimination for so many years likely never suspected that she\u2019d had to overcome a deep fear of public speaking. She would have simply stuck to writing, she said, if only editors at the time had been willing to let her write about the women\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n
But they weren\u2019t interested, she told the AP in 2015. \u201cSo I ended up going out and speaking, which was my nightmare,\u201d she said. \u201cI mean, I was terrified. But I\u2019m grateful, even though I still get scared even now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Time hardly slowed Steinem down; through her 80s, she was traveling the globe and speaking out on issues of importance to her. These included everything from genital mutilation to\u00a0Korean reconciliation, but it was equality for women that took precedence. \u201cBeing a feminist means that you see the world as whole instead of half,\u201d she once said. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t need a name, and one day it won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the years went on, Steinem\u2019s visibility endured. A few days after her 85th birthday, she was leading a women\u2019s \u201ctalking circle\u201d at an off-Broadway play celebrating her life, where one by one, women in the audience \u2014 many fighting tears \u2014 rose to thank her and tell their own stories of discrimination. In 2020, her life was the subject of a feature film, \u201cThe Glorias, A Life on The Road.\u201d<\/p>\n
And at 91,\u00a0she collaborated on a picture book\u00a0with Liberian peace activist and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee aimed at inspiring young people to change the world. \u201cRise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All\u201d was published in February.<\/p>\n
The constant visibility came with a price; even into her older years, Steinem expressed frustration that despite her accomplishments, she was often described as beautiful or glamorous. A 1992 Vanity Fair profile even noted her \u201cspectacular racehorse legs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody ever called me beautiful until I was publicly a feminist, and that was in my mid-30s,\u201d she told AP in a 2011 interview. \u201cIt was clear that label was being assigned to me. The most hurtful part is that you work very hard, and people say it\u2019s because of your looks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Steinem also had to deal with hostility \u2014 sometimes from surprising places. Appearing on Larry King\u2019s talk show on CNN in 1990, she was visibly stunned when a female caller greeted her cheerfully, then told her to \u201crot in hell\u201d because she had ruined \u201cthe beautiful American family.\u201d<\/p>\n
But by then, she noted, at least people were taking feminists seriously. That wasn\u2019t the case in 1972 when she co-founded Ms. Magazine and many commentators \u2014 especially male \u2014 dismissed it as ridiculous, predicting an early demise.<\/p>\n
Among Steinem\u2019s detractors was President Richard Nixon, who was caught on an Oval Office tape ridiculing both her and the \u201cMs.\u201d title. The ridicule was mutual: In a 1972 National Press Club speech, Steinem called Nixon \u201cthe most sexually insecure chief of state since Napoleon.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was just one example of Steinem\u2019s trademark wit. Before she married at 66, she often explained her singlehood by saying \u201cI can\u2019t mate in captivity.\u201d Laughter, she wrote, was \u201cthe only free emotion \u2014 the only one that can\u2019t be compelled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gloria Marie Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was a traveling antique salesperson; she spent her early years on the road with her parents, not attending regular school. \u201cI just read everything I could get my hands on,\u201d she told an audience at Manhattan\u2019s 92NY earlier this year.<\/p>\n
In 1944 her parents divorced, and 10-year-old Gloria was left to take care of her mother, a once-promising journalist who struggled to combine her work with running a household and who eventually suffered a nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n
As a young girl she excelled at tap dancing \u2014 it was even going to be her \u201cticket out of Toledo,\u201d she said. That particular career did not materialize, though, and she attended Smith College in the 1950s \u2014 a time when, she said, women were being educated to be mothers and wives.<\/p>\n
But marriage was not on Steinem\u2019s mind. \u201cI was engaged to a very nice man. It wasn\u2019t his fault, but I just didn\u2019t want to get married,\u201d she told her 2026 audience. Instead, she took a modest fellowship to travel to India. After that, Steinem headed to Manhattan, where she couldn\u2019t rent her own apartment because landlords assumed if a single woman \u201ccould earn enough, you must be a hooker.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wanted to write about politics. But editors gave her assignments on food, fashion, and, in what she jokingly called \u201cthe lowpoint of my life,\u201d an article about textured stockings. Even more demoralizing was her experience with an editor who, she said, gave her a choice one day: Spend the afternoon in a hotel with him, or mail his letters on the way out.<\/p>\n
She chose to mail the letters. \u201cThere was no word for sexual harassment then,\u201d she has said. \u201cIt was just life.\u201d<\/p>\n
But one assignment in 1963 sounded compelling: posing as a Playboy Bunny for an expos\u00e9 in the now-defunct Show magazine. Steinem auditioned, assuming she\u2019d be weeded out. But she was given her bunny costume \u2014 \u201cso tight, it would give a man a cleavage\u201d \u2014 and worked at the job for about a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not have made a bigger mistake,\u201d she told the AP in 2011. \u201cIt was personally and professionally a disaster. In the short term, it was much harder to get assignments, and in the long term it\u2019s been used to ridicule me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinem was in her 30s when she joined the editorial board of New York magazine, and her writing became more political. In 1969, she went to cover an abortion rights hearing. She had never told anyone about her illegal abortion at 22, in London. That was the moment, she has said, that triggered her career as a women\u2019s rights activist.<\/p>\n
Steinem founded the National Women\u2019s Political Caucus in 1971 along with Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug.<\/p>\n
Unlike her friend Abzug, however, Steinem was not comfortable in front of a crowd. Gradually, with her early speaking partner Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a Black feminist and child welfare advocate, she found her footing. The two formed a powerful partnership at a time when feminism was viewed as largely a white, middle-class movement. In an iconic photo, the two raise their right arms together in the Black Power salute.<\/p>\n
As she grew more famous, Steinem drew attention not just for her work but for a glamorous Manhattan life. Asked once about her streaked hair and aviator glasses, she explained that the hair was inspired by Holly Golightly, the free-spirited character in \u201cBreakfast at Tiffany\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
The glasses? They were \u201cmore about hiding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When reaction was hostile, Steinem would try to reason that it was a step above ridicule. But sometimes it stung, like a snarky Esquire profile in the early \u201970s, so hurtful that she cried, and colleagues called a news conference to defend her.<\/p>\n
Then came Ms. Magazine in 1972. \u201cI was so obsessed with the fear that it would fail and be a disgrace to the movement,\u201d Steinem said later. And opponents hoped that would happen. TV newsman Harry Reasoner, an especially tart critic, later apologized on air. Steinem continued with Ms. until it was bought in 2001 by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and remained an adviser.<\/p>\n
Steinem never had children, and said she never regretted it. \u201cNo, not for a millisecond,\u201d she told the AP. \u201cIt\u2019s important that some of us not have children, to show that we have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2000, Steinem made a choice she\u2019d never planned to: She got married, at 66, to British activist and businessman David Bale, whom she met at a fundraiser. Bale was the father of actor Christian Bale.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018I haven\u2019t changed, marriage had changed,\u2019\u201d Steinem said. \u201cDavid and I wanted to be together, we loved each other. He needed a green card.\u201d They married at a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. Several years later, he became ill with brain lymphoma, and Steinem cared for him until his death in 2003.<\/p>\n
Steinem said she had few regrets in life, but did miss being present when her father died. She received word that he\u2019d been in a serious car accident, but did not respond in time, and he died alone. \u201cI had taken care of my mom as a child, and I feared I\u2019d never come back,\u201d she explained. She was also sorry that she didn\u2019t become closer to her mother. \u201cI was so fearful of becoming her,\u201d she said in an HBO documentary, \u201cGloria: In Her Own Words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinem\u2019s books included the 2015 road memoir \u201cA Life on the Road\u201d \u2014 but she wryly noted at the time that she\u2019d never learned to drive. It would have taken away, she said, from her ability to converse with hosts who picked her up from airports or train stations. And, she noted, she always loved to chat with taxi drivers.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 21, 2017, when hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington in their pink \u201cpussy hats\u201d for the historic Women\u2019s March, it surprised nobody that the keynote speaker, and the most rousing, was Steinem.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are linked,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cAnd this is a day that will change us forever because we are together.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many women, Steinem was the galvanizing voice that day. She would go on to advocate fiercely. But, though many saw her as a singular figure in history, she often liked to say that if she hadn\u2019t come along, someone else would have accomplished the same things.<\/p>\n
By the same token, she said, it was less important that younger people listen to her, and more important that they listen to themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe primary thing is not that they know who I am,\u201d she said, \u201cbut that they know who THEY are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Gloria #Steinem #fought #decades #womens #equality #dies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gloria Steinem, the celebrated… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5296,1553,6639,4185,6637,6636,6638,167,543],"class_list":["post-3796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-decades","tag-dies","tag-equality","tag-fought","tag-gloria","tag-gloria-steinem","tag-steinem","tag-women","tag-womens"],"yoast_head":"\n