Gloria Steinem speaks at the 2013 Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in D.C. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Gloria Steinem, writer, activist, and a leading voice of the feminist movement in the 1970s, died on Sept. 2 in Manhattan. Her death was announced on Instagram by her official foundation, Gloria’s Foundation, which shared that Steinem “passed away peacefully at her home, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” She was 92.
A leading figure and spokesperson for the second-wave feminist movement, running from the 1960s through the ’80s — the earlier women’s rights suffrage movement being considered the first — Gloria Steinem campaigned for workplace equality, equality in the home and reproductive freedom, seeing those struggles as inseparable from the wider causes of social and racial equality.
She also championed LGBTQ rights, supporting lesbian visibility within the larger women’s liberation movement, and standing in opposition to the idea that lesbians posed a “lavender menace” to the cause of feminism.
In her vision of the future, marriage equality was a given: “Lesbians or homosexuals will no longer be denied legally binding marriages, complete with mutual-support agreements and inheritance rights.”
GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement following Steinem’s death: “Gloria Steinem was a trailblazing titan of civil rights whose vision for liberation bridged the movements for gender equality, bodily autonomy, and LGBTQ rights. She recognized that feminist progress is incomplete without full inclusion and stood as an ally to transgender people’s fight for equality. Gloria rejected rigid binaries, choosing instead to build bridges of empathy and coalition across all marginalized identities. Gloria’s life was a masterclass in coalition-building, courage, and unconditional empathy.”
Among her many trailblazing milestones, Steinem was widely known for co-founding the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 alongside foundational feminist figures Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, Fannie Lou Hamer, LaDonna Harris, Mildred Jeffrey, and Jill Ruckelshaus.
The mandate: get women into political office and positions of power — “women who are committed to the causes of other women — not women who are going to just imitate the male politics as it has been practiced all these years complete with elitism, racism and prejudice against women,” she said, “but women who really care about their sisters and will work for social reform.”
“This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution.”
Liz Abzug, daughter of Bella Abzug, remembers Steinem as “a lifelong activist and a humanist with lots of love to give,” as well as “a very, very close and dear friend of my mother’s,” as the two “worked side by side to change the American landscape for women.”
“It’s hard for me and all of her other supporters and admirers to imagine a world without Gloria leading the charge and fighting for women’s rights and full gender equality,” Abzug shared.
Indeed, there was much about that American landscape in need of change. Steinem came up during a time when discrimination against women was the legal and societal norm.
A married woman, for instance, often required her husband’s signature to obtain a credit card, a form of gender discrimination remedied in 1974 with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Women were often unable to get jobs. Life turned Steinem down, saying “We don’t want a pretty girl, we want a writer. Get out of here.” If women did land a job, in 1973, they would have likely made 56.6 cents to every dollar that men earned.
The law’s failure to support women’s autonomy was especially visible on the matter of reproductive rights.
For many women in America, legal abortion remained unavailable until 1973, when Roe v. Wade established a constitutional right to abortion nationwide. Steinem spent years speaking out for women’s safety, and promoted the idea that “decision-making power over our own physical selves” was intertwined with equal regard for women as citizens.
“The vast majority of women support safe and legal abortion. My response is if those legislators were half women, this wouldn’t happen,” she said in a 2022 interview with Katie Couric. “If we actually had a democracy, if those legislators looked like the country from a gender, racial, and class perspective, this probably would not be happening…”
Gloria Marie Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Leo and Ruth (Nuneviller) Steinem. Her father was an antiques salesman; her mother had worked for a newspaper before she got married, but suffered what was called at the time a “nervous breakdown” and spent time in an institution. Following a divorce, her mother was left largely in the care of 11-year-old Gloria Steinem in a house that has been described as infested by vermin.
“I didn’t go to school a full year until I was 11 or 12, so I lived in books. I really was an observer of life,” Steinem said in a 2011 interview.
After moving to D.C. to live with her older sister, Susanne, Steinem graduated from Western High School in 1952. She followed Susanne to Smith College where she studied government and wrote for the student newspaper, graduating in 1956.
Upon moving to New York in 1960, she worked for Help! magazine and wrote freelance for publications that included Life, Esquire, and Glamour. According to Smith College Libraries, she co-founded New York magazine in 1968 and served as political columnist until 1972. In the 1960s and ’70s, Steinem was active in causes that included United Farmworkers, Vietnam War Tax Protest, and Committee for the Legal Defense of Angela Davis. She also participated in the political campaigns of Adlai Stevenson, Robert Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm, and others.
Steinem is said to have found her way to the Women’s Movement in 1969, following an abortion “speak-out” meeting of the Redstockings. She was inspired to begin speaking to audiences across the country, alongside activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and later Florynce Kennedy and Margaret Sloan.
Among Steinem’s most enduring legacies, and still in publication today, is Ms. magazine, which she co-founded. Widely considered the first national American feminist magazine (and owned, operated, and written by women!), it first appeared as a preview insert in New York Magazine in December 1971 with a tagline, “The New Magazine for Women.” Ms. earned status as a full-on publication in July 1972 with a cover image depicting a modern pregnant Hindu goddess Kali holding a clock, skillet, typewriter, rake, mirror, telephone, steering wheel, and an iron.
Ms. is credited with raising cultural awareness on policy issues, like the Equal Rights Amendment, taking on taboo topics and putting women’s issues front and center.
Steinem’s long list of published work includes the 1983 bestselling book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, a collection of her Ms. articles and other pieces. The book includes the feminist’s essay on her undercover exposé of the Playboy Club, for which she donned bunny ears, collar, and bow to covertly report on working conditions for women.
In 1986, she published “Marilyn: Norma Jeane,” which explored the life of Marilyn Monroe and the idea of women as vulnerable and at the disposal of society — men in particular.
Steinem also wrote “Revolution from Within” (1992); “Moving Beyond Words” (1994); and “Doing Sixty & Seventy” (2006). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 by President Barack Obama.
Steinem’s relationships over the years included Ted Sorensen, counselor to President John F. Kennedy; Stanley Pottinger, a Justice Department official; and publisher and real-estate businessman Mort Zuckerman. In 2000, she married South African businessman David Bale, who died in 2003.
Steinem was predeceased by her mother and her sister, Susanne Steinem Patch, who died in 2007. On multiple occasions, she spoke of a community that extended beyond birth family — people whom she chose, and who chose her.
“[Feminism is] about friends and sisters and community,” Steinem said in an interview with bell hooks. “The good part and the great part is that it’s about chosen family. We have each other’s backs and that is so precious.
In announcing Steinem’s passing, her foundation offered this reflection: “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. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.
“She spent her recent years doing the two things she loved most: being in community with others and writing … Gloria loved the tradition of lighting signal fires on hills to light the way to the other side of the mountain.”
The National LGBT Media Association represents 13 legacy publications in major markets across the country with a collective readership of more than 400K in print and more than 1 million + online. Learn more here: NationalLGBTMediaAssociation.com.
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