Published : 04 Sep 2026, 01:33 AM
Updated : 16 Sep 2026, 11:47 AM
Gloria Steinem, the journalist and activist who spent decades as the most recognisable face of American feminism, dies at 92.
She passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by loved ones, according to a statement on her Instagram page, reports The Guardian.
"Gloria's greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard," the statement said. "Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves."
Born in Ohio in 1934, Steinem rose from a difficult childhood -- her mother struggled with mental illness, and the family lived in a trailer home.
When her parents separated, she grew up in a rundown house in Toledo, where she began noticing the hostility her mother faced simply for being a working woman.
Those early experiences would shape everything that followed.
After graduating from a women's liberal arts college in 1956, she spent two years in India before returning to the US to begin her journalism career.
Her breakthrough came in 1963 when she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for 11 days to expose the exploitation of glamour models at Hugh Hefner's clubs. Crammed into a tight costume and high heels, she lost 10lbs during the stint.
The resulting two-part exposé made her name -- but also cost her work, as editors dismissed her as just another Bunny.
She fought back. In 1968, writing for New York magazine, she coined the term "reproductive freedom" and began what she described as her life as an "active feminist."
Three years later, she co-founded Ms. magazine, one of the first major feminist publications in the US, and went on to write some of the era's most provocative essays.
Over nine books and a lifetime of public speaking, Steinem campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, and the pornography industry.
She also championed Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and the Times Up movement.
In 1984, she was arrested while protesting apartheid outside the South African embassy in Washington DC.
She credited Black feminists -- including Florynce Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm, and Fannie Lou Hamer -- as pivotal influences.
"It was like finding a family," she said of that period in her life.
Steinem was not without controversy.
She faced sustained criticism for a 1998 piece defending Bill Clinton against sexual harassment allegations -- a position she publicly walked back in 2017, saying: "We have to believe women.
I wouldn't write the same thing now." She also faced accusations that her prominence owed as much to her appearance as her work, a charge she described in her 2015 memoir as "biased and hurtful."
In later years, she remained fiercely active.
She co-chaired the Women's March on Washington the day after Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017, calling the surge in activism "like nothing I have ever seen in my life."
She is survived by her stepson, the actor Christian Bale, whose father, environmental activist David Bale, she married in 2000. David Bale died in 2003.
