Gloria Steinem, the journalist and organizer who became one of the most recognizable faces of American feminism, has died at her home in New York City. She was 92. Her death was announced Wednesday in an official Instagram post, which said she continued working for equality until the very end and was surrounded by some of the many who loved her at the time of her death.
News of her passing was first reported by ABC7 Bay Area, which described her as a women's liberation icon and journalist whose career spanned decades of activism, writing, and institution-building. The outlet noted the story was still developing as tributes began pouring in from across the country.
From Undercover Reporter to Movement Leader
Steinem's national profile first took shape in 1963, when she spent three weeks working undercover as a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner's New York club to expose the low wages and sexist treatment waitresses endured there, publishing the two-part exposé “I Was a Playboy Bunny” in Show magazine, according to the National Women's History Museum. It was an early sign of the investigative instincts that would define much of her later work.
Her transformation into a leading voice of second-wave feminism accelerated in April 1969, when her New York magazine article “After Black Power, Women's Liberation” argued that sex functioned as a societal caste system comparable to race, per the Jewish Women's Archive. The piece is widely credited with propelling her into the national spotlight as a premier feminist thinker rather than simply a magazine writer.
Testimony, Political Organizing, and Ms. Magazine
Steinem's activism soon moved from the page to the halls of government. In May 1970, she testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, and in July 1971 she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus alongside Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan to train and elect women who supported equality, according to Britannica's biography of her.
She also reshaped American publishing. Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, which launched in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine before its first standalone issue arrived in 1972, creating what Britannica describes as the first national, mainstream periodical written by women from an explicit feminist perspective. The magazine gave feminist writers and readers a mass platform that had not previously existed.
Global Activism and Later Institution-Building
Steinem's commitment to grassroots organizing traced back even further, to the two years she spent in India on a Chester Bowles Fellowship after graduating from Smith College in 1956, participating in nonviolent protests and working with legal clerks, an experience she credited with shaping her activism, according to The Guardian. That same outlet noted her activism extended well beyond U.S. borders in the decades that followed.
In 1984, she was arrested during a civil disobedience protest against South African apartheid outside the embassy in Washington, D.C., part of a career of international rights work that included co-founding groups such as Equality Now. Two decades later, in 2005, she co-founded the Women's Media Center with actress Jane Fonda and author Robin Morgan to increase the representation and decision-making power of women and girls across news and entertainment, according to the Women's Media Center.
Personal Life and National Honors
Steinem's personal life took an unexpected turn in September 2000, when she surprised supporters by marrying environmentalist and animal rights activist David Bale in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma, becoming stepmother to actor Christian Bale until David Bale's death from lymphoma in December 2003, per the Los Angeles Times.
Her body of work also included bestselling memoirs such as “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions” (1983) and “My Life on the Road” (2015), and she won a 1993 Emmy Award for co-producing and narrating the HBO documentary “Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories,” which examined severe child abuse, according to her official website. In November 2013, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, recognizing her lifelong leadership in the women's liberation movement, per the Obama White House Archives.
Steinem remained a visible public speaker well into her nineties. In May 2023, photographer Kevin Mazur captured her speaking onstage at the Ms. Foundation Women of Vision Awards: Celebrating Generations of Progress & Power at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City, one of many appearances that kept her connected to the causes she helped define. Her foundation, Gloria's, has continued to support cultural projects in New York, including a Snoopy fashion exhibit that opened in the Meatpacking District just a day before her death was announced.
