Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem was born on March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, to Ruth and Leo Steinem. The family spent winters traveling around the country and living out of a house trailer, from which her father sold antiques. As a result, Steinem didn’t attend school regularly until she was 12. In 1944, Steinem’s parents divorced, and she was left in Toledo to care for her mother, who suffered from mental illness.

After Steinem graduated from high school, she was able to attend Smith College with the support of her elder sister, Susanne. She majored in government, graduating magna cum laude in 1956 and earning a fellowship that enabled her to spend the next two years studying and researching in India. The experience inspired her interest in grassroots activism, which would become important in her later work.

Steinem launched her career as a freelance journalist in New York in the late 1950s. As a woman, she fought to write stories about politics and other more serious topics. In 1963, Show magazine hired Steinem to go undercover to report on the subpar working conditions at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. The resulting feature story, “I Was a Playboy Bunny,” earned widespread notice but didn’t help Steinem gain respect in the male-dominated publishing industry.

In 1968, Steinem became a founding editor of New York magazine, for which she wrote about important issues and current events in politics, civil rights and the women’s liberation movement. She first spoke publicly at an event to legalize abortion in 1969, sharing the story of an illegal abortion she had in London, England, at age 22, at a time when the procedure was illegal.

“I just knew that if I went home and married, which I would've had to do, it would be to the wrong person; it would be to a life that wasn't mine, that wasn't mine at all,” Steinem said of the decision in a 2015 interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Steinem soon emerged as a prominent spokeswoman for the growing movement, speaking at many protests and demonstrations.

In 1970, feminists staged a takeover of Ladies Home Journal—a women’s magazine owned and operated largely by men. Inspired, Steinem co-founded the feminist magazine Ms. with journalists Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin. What began as an insert in New York magazine in December 1971, launched as an independent magazine in circulation early the following year. Ms. became the first magazine to cover women’s issues from a feminist perspective, including abortion rights, the campaign for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual harassment and domestic violence. Steinem wrote for and edited the magazine for the next 15 years, and continued in an emeritus capacity beyond that.

Also in 1972, Steinem joined fellow feminists Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and others in founding the National Women’s Political Caucus, a bipartisan organization that aimed to help pro-equality women win election to political office.

Steinem has also co-founded numerous other organizations and initiatives during her career, including the Women’s Action Alliance (1971), a grassroots organization supporting women’s issues; Voters for Choice (1977), a bipartisan committee dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates; the Women’s Media Center (2004), which promotes positive images of women in media; the Ms. Foundation for Women, which raises funds for grassroots projects to empower women and girls; and the Take Our Daughters to Work Day initiative, which began in the 1990s.

In 1986, shortly after turning 50 years old, Steinem was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent successful treatment through surgery and radiation therapy.

Steinem married David Bale, an entrepreneur and activist and the father of actor Christian Bale, in 2000; she was 66 years old. “Though I’ve worked many years to make marriage more equal, I never expected to take advantage of it myself," Steinem said in a statement issued by Voters for Choice at the time. "I hope this proves what feminists have always said—that feminism is about the ability to choose what's right at each time of our lives." Sadly, Bale died of brain cancer (lymphoma) in December 2003.

In 2013, President Barack Obama presented Steinem with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Rutgers University created The Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies in 2017.

Steinem continues her work as a speaker, writer, editor and social justice activist. In 2022, she joined feminist outcry against the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 verdict that established a woman’s legal right to an abortion. She told the Associated Press: “Obviously, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy."

“At 81, Feminist Gloria Steinem Finds Herself Free of the 'Demands of Gender'.” Interview on Fresh Air, NPR, October 26, 2015.

Debra Michals, Ph.D., ed., “Gloria Steinem.” National Women’s History Museum, 2017.

Jocelyn Noveck, “A ‘sucker punch’: Some women fear setback to hard-won rights.” AP, June 26, 2022.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, “Gloria Steinem.” Jewish Women’s Archive.