Gloria Steinem, Legendary Activist, Dead at 92

Her mother, Ruth Steinem, suffered from mental health challenges, and seeing the way doctors dismissed her mother’s needs was among the first sparks that set Steinem on her path towards women’s health advocacy. 

It also deterred her from wanting to become a mother herself, as she told People in 1992, “I’d already been the very small parent of a very big child—my mother. I didn’t want to end up taking care of someone else.”

And she held true to that inner knowing. After graduating from Smith College in 1956 with a degree in government, a 22-year-old Steinem living abroad in London got an abortion after realizing she’d become pregnant. The experience also cemented her interest in reproductive rights.

Because receiving an abortion had not been an easy feat.

“After what seemed to be an eternity of confusion and fear,” Steinem recalled on NPR in 2021, “I found a very kind and brave English doctor who was willing to help me.”

She would eventually dedicate her 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road, to the doctor who aided her. 

After returning from abroad to New York, Steinem pursued journalism. The first story that earned her national recognition was a two-part exposé written in 1963 after going undercover at the New York Playboy Club for several weeks as a Bunny. 

In 1968, she became a founding editor of New York magazine, and in 1971 she co-founded Ms. magazine, which began as an insert in New York before becoming a standalone publication just one year later.

After all, it’s 300,000 test copies sold out within eight days and had earned more than 26,000 subscriptions within weeks.

In her personal life, Steinem never married until she was 66. She wed David Bale—father to actor Christian Bale and seven years her junior—in 2000, a union that lasted for only a few short years before he died of lymphoma in 2003.

For Steinem, the decision to marry hadn’t been a rejection of her principals.

“I didn’t change. Marriage changed,” she told The National Geographic in 2019. “We spent 30 years in the United States changing the marriage laws. If I had married when I was supposed to get married, I would have lost my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights.”

As she put it, “That’s not true anymore. It’s possible to make an equal marriage.”

Throughout her career, Steinem—whose life has been adapted for the screen on multiple occasions—was awarded for her advocacy work; she was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at age 79 and was honored for her civil rights work, her poverty and hunger work and for her writing. 

In more recent years, as her loved ones shared in their statement following her death, Steinem remained dedicated to her one true love: writing. Her next book, An Unexpected Life, will be released posthumously on Sept. 22.

“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived,” her loved ones wrote. “And she continued working for equality until the very end.”

But that end was not a scary thought to Steinem. 

"I don't care about getting old,” a 90-year-old Steinem previously told Bobbi Brown, though she added, “Except I love it here. And I don't want to leave.”

But even then, she knew her legacy was in good hands. After all, she’d laid the foundation for countless advocates to come after her. 

And when Brown asked her who she envisioned picking up the torch, Steinem assured her.

“Lots and lots and lots,” Steinem shared, "of people.”