Photos: Gloria Steinem’s Life as a Feminist Icon

Steinem arrived in New York City in 1960 as a young freelance journalist eager to report on politics, social issues and culture, but she recalled that most magazine editors wanted her to write about “makeup, babies and celebrities,” topics thought to be more suitable for a “girl reporter.”

In 1963, Steinem took an assignment from Show magazine to go undercover as a cotton-tailed “Bunny” at Hugh Hefner’s New York Playboy Club. The two-part article, “A Bunny’s Tale,” was a sensation and exposed the indignities, sexism and low pay experienced by the women working there. But the article, despite its popularity, wasn’t the big break that Steinem had hoped for. Steinem later said, she realized that if she wanted to be seen as a serious writer, she needed to blaze her own path.

In 1971, while Steinem was a political columnist for New York magazine, she was inspired by a 1970 feminist sit-in at the offices of Ladies Home Journal, a women’s magazine whose editorial leadership was dominated by men. Together with journalists Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Steinem co-founded Ms., a groundbreaking national magazine that covered hot-button issues like abortion, domestic abuse and gender roles from a feminist perspective. A 1977 cover story on sexual harassment in the workplace helped propel the issue into the national spotlight. “When we started, there was not even a term for sexual harassment,” Steinem often said. “It was just called life.”

In 1971, Steinem and other feminist pioneers—including Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm—founded the National Women’s Political Caucus to increase women’s participation in politics, including by electing more women to public office. In her writing and political activism, Steinem advocated for women of different races, sexual orientations and backgrounds—a vision of “sisterhood.”

One of Steinem’s most personal and passionate causes was women’s reproductive rights, shaped in part by her own experience having an abortion at age 22 in England. Steinem celebrated the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, a landmark ruling that recognized a constitutional right to abortion. When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Steinem wrote, “Either our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we’re not living in a democracy.”

While continuing to write articles, essays and bestselling books—including her 1983 essay collection Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions—Steinem remained a fixture at political rallies, marches and on college campuses. With her trademark oversized glasses and witty aphorisms—“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off”—Steinem became a feminist icon. A tireless advocate for women’s rights, Steinem continued writing and speaking out into her 90s.