Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and Ms. Magazine co-founder, dies at 92

Gloria Steinem died peacefully at her home in New York City on Thursday, surrounded by people who loved her. She was 92. The co-founder of Ms. Magazine and one of the most consequential figures of the American women's liberation movement, Steinem spent more than five decades pushing feminism from the margins of public discourse into its center—through journalism, through institutions she built, and through the sheer force of her refusal to accept that women's concerns were anything less than serious.

Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, and her early life was marked by instability. Her family moved frequently, living in a house trailer before her parents divorced when she was a teenager. She cared for her mother, who struggled with mental illness, before eventually moving to Washington, D.C., to live with her older sister and finish high school. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in 1956, she traveled to India on a scholarship. In London, on the way there, she obtained an abortion—illegal at the time in both Britain and America—after other methods failed. She would later describe the desperation of that moment: she knew that returning home and marrying, as she would have been expected to do, would mean surrendering a life that was hers.

Her journalism career began in New York City, where she wrote for several publications before making her name with a 1963 exposé in Show magazine. Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club, spending two weeks in a costume deliberately two sizes too small, documenting the sexual harassment on the floor and the mandatory gynecological exams imposed on female employees. The article was a sensation, though it initially derailed her career—she received mostly requests to go undercover in other "semi-sexual" ways. She even returned an advance to prevent the piece from becoming a paperback, borrowing money to do so. But feminism, she later reflected, helped her understand the article's true value: she had identified with the underpaid waitresses in too-tight costumes, and in doing so, had shown that all women were being reduced to their outsides rather than their insides.

In 1968, Steinem helped found New York Magazine with editor Clay Felker, writing about topics the women's magazines would not touch—politics, the Vietnam War, childcare, welfare, women and power. It was there she met Dorothy Pittman Hughes, a childcare advocate on the Upper West Side whom she profiled. The two became collaborators and friends, making public appearances together to discuss the women's movement. Steinem, uncomfortable speaking in public, preferred Hughes's presence. Together they conceived Ms. Magazine—the name itself a statement, a designation for women who did not want to be defined by marital status. A sample issue appeared in New York magazine in 1971. When the full first issue hit newsstands on July 1, 1972, it sold out. The cover featured Wonder Woman. Inside was a petition signed by women of various backgrounds announcing they had had abortions and demanding it become safe and legal—a year before Roe v. Wade would protect that right.

Ms. was the first major publication to be owned, run, and written by women. It became a spearhead for equal rights, raising awareness about inclusion, media representation, and social justice at a moment when politics, mass media, and consumerism were becoming inseparable. Steinem and her team published writers like Barbara Ehrenreich, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Susan Faludi, and Susan Brownmiller. The magazine covered men and marriage and relationships and childrearing and violence against women—issues that would endure long after the 1970s. But it faced resistance. A cover photo depicting sexual harassment on the job was pulled from newsstands. Cosmetics companies refused to advertise because they believed Ms. readers didn't buy makeup. Car manufacturers wouldn't advertise because they didn't believe women bought cars. The magazine was attacked from the right for denigrating family values and from the left for being too conservative. Steinem observed that the word "feminism" itself seemed to threaten people for two reasons: "One, because they didn't understand it, and two, because they did understand it."

Beyond Ms., Steinem co-founded the Ms. Foundation for Women in 1973 with Marlo Thomas, Patricia Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, advancing economic justice, safety, and reproductive freedom. The foundation created Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which later expanded to include sons and would become a global initiative. She helped establish the Women's Action Alliance, which supported battered women's shelters and fought stereotyping; the National Women's Political Caucus, which promoted women in public office; Voters for Choice; and Choice USA. In 2004, she co-founded the Women's Media Center with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan. In 1999, when asked whether technology was responsible for women's advancement, Steinem rejected the notion. "There's nothing automatic about political change, about liberation," she said. "There's no substitute for self-respect, banding together with other people, standing up for ourselves."

In 2000, at 66, Steinem married David Bale, a human rights activist and father of actor Christian Bale. "We shocked ourselves, both of us," she said. "Neither one of us thought that we wanted to get married." But she had become who she was, and no longer feared losing herself. Three years later, Bale died of lymphoma of the brain. The loss taught her the difference between sadness and depression: in sadness, everything matters and becomes poignant; in depression, nothing matters at all. She continued writing and lecturing into her 90s, watching as the issues Ms. had championed—sexual harassment, domestic violence—gained new urgency with the #MeToo movement. She co-produced Emmy-nominated documentaries about violence against women and was herself the subject of multiple films. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She wrote numerous books and edited collections of essays and history. In a 2011 interview, she expressed her deepest regret: wasting time. "Because time is all there is," she said.