Gloria Steinem, Trailblazing Leader of the Feminist Movement, Dies at 92

Gloria Steinem, the writer, activist and icon of the feminist movement, has died. She was 92.

Steinem “passed away peacefully” at her home in New York City, “surrounded by many who loved her,” according to posts on her and her foundation’s Instagram accounts.

Considered by some to be the world’s most famous feminist, the Toledo, Ohio, native began her career as a journalist, penning political columns and features for New York magazine and writing for such other publications as Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.

She also received an Emmy nomination (shared with David Frost, Buck Henry and others) in 1965 for writing on the series That Was the Week That Was.

In one of her early endeavors, Steinem went undercover for 11 days as a Bunny at a Playboy Club for a 1963 exposé in Show magazine and experienced punishing hours for low pay and a side of sexual harassment. Show touted Steinem as “a writer who combines the hidden qualities of a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Smith College with the more obvious ones of an ex-dancer and beauty queen.”

Shortly after the article was published, she said she was unable to land “serious journalistic assignments” because of her Bunny experience. (The story was adapted in 1985 as the ABC telefilm A Bunny’s Tale, starring Kirstie Alley.)

During her career, Steinem demonstrated a keen grasp of the dual levers of power, working in both politics and media to advance her causes. Shortly after graduating from the all-female Smith College in 1956, she served as director of the Independent Research Service, an organization secretly backed by the CIA. Although she denied it at the time, she later defended her interactions with the agency as innocuous.

Steinem also co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 and Ms. magazine a year later, and she produced and hosted HBO’s Emmy-winning 1993 child-abuse documentary Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories and Viceland’s Emmy-nominated 2016 docuseries Woman, which chronicled those who faced violence around the world.”

The first thing I feel whenever I’m in Gloria Steinem’s presence is safe,” Jane Fonda, with whom she co-founded the Women’s Media Center in 2004, said in 2019. “Though she is barraged by demands on her time, she is always willing to stop and listen, wanting to help, to understand. I know there are literally millions of women — I have personally spoken to hundreds of them — whose lives have been changed by Gloria’s words.”

Covering 80 years in the life and work of one of the key figures of the American feminist movement, whose influence has stretched across generations, Julie Taymor’s nontraditional biopic The Glorias certainly can’t be faulted for lack of ambition”]

The year 2020 saw two major narrative projects recognizing Steinem as a fixture of 20th century culture. Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Lulu Wilson, Alicia Vikander and Julianne Moore portrayed her at different stages of her life in The Glorias, Julie Taymor’s feature adaptation of Steinem’s best-selling 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road, while Rose Byrne played her in the FX miniseries Mrs. America, about the fight in the early 1970s to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Steinem also was the subject of Peter W. Kunhardt’s 2011 HBO documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words. While she popularized (but did not coin) the saying, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” she married for the first time at age 66 in 2000, wedding environmental activist David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale.

They met at a fundraiser for the political action committee Voters for Choice, which Steinem co-founded. The elder Bale died of brain lymphoma in 2003.

Steinem’s 85th birthday in March 2019 drew tributes from a host of women across industries, including Lena Dunham, Mariska Hargitay, Ashley Judd, Mellody Hobson, Sheryl Sandberg, Amy Schumer, Meryl Streep and Maxine Waters.

“To my friend Gloria, whose friendship grew out of our meeting at the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas, and whose invitation for me to serve on the board of the Ms. Foundation changed my life,” Waters wrote. “I cherish the times that we have spent together at the Ms. Foundation board meetings and dinners in New York, the marches we have participated in and the moments we have shared throughout our careers.

“Gloria Steinem, you are absolutely the most significant leader who set the women’s movement on the right course in this country … You are at the forefront of the history of the women’s movement, and your contributions are etched in stone to be remembered and to continue to be the inspiration for women and girls for generations to come.”

In a 2016 New York Times profile, Steinem, whose many accolades included the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she received in 2013, reflected on all the work she still wanted to do.

“My funeral,” she told the newspaper, “will be a fundraiser.”