Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Dies At 92, Leaving Behind A Legacy That Reshaped Women’s Rights

Gloria Steinem, one of the most recognizable figures of the modern women’s liberation movement, has died at 92.

An official social media account shared that she passed peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by people who loved her, adding that she spent nearly a century of her life working toward equality up until the end.

Steinem was born in 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, and studied government at Smith College, graduating magna cum laude in 1956. A fellowship took her to India for two years afterward, an experience that helped shape the activism that would define the rest of her life. Over the decades that followed, she became one of the most prominent voices in feminism, writing and speaking on politics, reproductive rights, and marriage.

According to ABC News, her national profile grew in 1963 after she went undercover as a Playboy Club waitress to report on the working conditions bunnies actually faced, exposing a reality far removed from the glamorous image the brand projected. Years later, she helped launch New York magazine, where she focused much of her writing on the women’s movement, before going on to co-found Ms. Magazine. In 1971, she was among the founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside figures like Shirley Chisholm, an organization built specifically to grow women’s presence in political life after Congress failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Steinem never shied away from writing about her own life to make a larger point. She spent years publicly reflecting on an illegal abortion she sought at 22, crediting the decision with allowing her to build the life she actually wanted rather than one chosen for her. She was equally candid about facing dismissal early in her journalism career simply for being a woman in a field that treated young men as future stars by default.

She continued showing up for the causes she cared about well into her final years, telling a crowd at the 2017 Women’s March that the fight was ultimately about connection rather than control. Steinem survived a breast cancer diagnosis in 1986 and, after decades of publicly criticizing marriage as an unequal institution, married entrepreneur David Bale in 2000, saying at the time that the legal realities of marriage had changed enough to make the choice her own. Bale died in 2003.

In her final years, those close to her said she remained rooted in community and continued writing, including work on a forthcoming book reflecting on the decades she spent living in the same New York City home.