Gloria Steinem, the feminist activist and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, died on Wednesday at her home in New York City. She was 92.
A post on her social media page confirmed her death, saying she had been in declining health. ‘Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,’ the post read.
Steinem had recently completed a memoir. Bertelsmann confirmed the book is titled An Unexpected Life and is scheduled for publication by Random House on 22 September.
A life shaped by activism, not ambition
Steinem began as a journalist. In 1963 she went undercover at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire, an assignment she came to regret. Six years later, attending a speak-out on abortion rights, she found the cause that defined the rest of her life.
‘That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,’ she told the Associated Press in 2022. ‘Either our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we’re not living in a democracy.’
She had undergone a secret illegal abortion herself at 22. She did not speak of it publicly until that 1969 hearing.
In 1971 she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. Ms. Magazine followed in 1972, dismissed by many commentators at the time as a short-lived experiment. TV newsman Harry Reasoner, an especially harsh critic, later apologised on air.
Steinem remained an adviser to Ms. Magazine after it was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001.
Gloria Steinem feminist activist who overcame a fear of public speaking
Few of those who watched Steinem address packed rallies would have guessed she was terrified of crowds. She told the AP in 2015 that speaking had been ‘my nightmare’.
‘I was terrified. But I’m grateful, even though I still get scared even now,’ she said.
Editors had refused to let her write about the women’s movement, she explained, so the podium became her only outlet. Her early speaking partner was Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a Black feminist and child welfare advocate. Together they challenged the perception that feminism was a white, middle-class cause.
Her wit was a consistent weapon. Before marrying at 66, she explained her singlehood by saying: ‘I can’t mate in captivity.’ When President Richard Nixon ridiculed both her and the ‘Ms.’ title on an Oval Office tape, she responded in kind: at a 1972 National Press Club speech she called Nixon ‘the most sexually insecure chief of state since Napoleon.’
Laughter, she wrote, was ‘the only free emotion, the only one that can’t be compelled.’ (Note: her written words, not paraphrase.)
Abigail Disney, a friend and fellow activist, said she had visited Steinem at her Manhattan home shortly before her death. ‘She was just as funny and just as sharp as I have ever known her,’ Disney said. ‘Everything Gloria did was rooted in kindness. It flowed through her political activism.’
Later years and lasting legacy
Born on 25 March 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem attended Smith College in the 1950s before moving to Manhattan to build a writing career. Landlords refused to rent to single women, she recalled; editors assigned her food and fashion rather than politics.
She married British activist David Bale in 2000, at a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma. He died of brain lymphoma in 2003. She never had children, and said she had no regrets: ‘It’s important that some of us not have children, to show that we have a choice.’
In 2020 her life became the subject of a feature film. At 91 she co-authored a picture book with Liberian Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee. An Unexpected Life, her memoir, is due from Random House on 22 September.
