Per a statement provided by her foundation, feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at her home in New York City on Wednesday, September 2. She was 92 years old. Considered one of the leading voices of second-wave feminism in the United States during the 1960s and ‘70s, Steinem was the co-founder of Ms. magazine, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Action Alliance, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the Women’s Media Center.
Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 25, 1934, to Jewish and Christian parents. Her mother struggled with severe mental health issues, which Steinem felt were exacerbated by sexism, greatly informing her views in later life. She graduated from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1956, and spent two years in India under a fellowship. After returning to the States, she became head of the Independent Research Service, a CIA-backed organization that promoted an alternative view of social revolution to the one Communists offered.
She was hired by Warren Publishing to work as an assistant to editor Harvey Kurtzman on the satirical magazine Help! in 1960, where she played a major role in recruiting the comedians who appeared on the magazine’s covers, and in its photo comic strips. By 1963, she was writing major articles for various magazines, including one where she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for Show, which spurred Hugh Hefner to end invasive health tests for the women employed at his clubs.
Steinem played a surprisingly prominent role in Wonder Woman’s history when Ms. magazine was launched in 1972. The first issue featured a cover story praising the character as a feminist role model, while criticizing DC’s decision to take away her powers and give her an all-white costume in 1968. Steinem intended to write the story herself, but handed the assignment to Joanne Edgar to focus on an article about women voters.
While some at DC have disputed the extent of Steinem’s influence over the subsequent restoration of the character’s classic costume and powers, she was friends with Warner Communications CEO, president and chairman Steve Ross, who was an investor in Ms. magazine, and the story was used to announce Wonder Woman would “rise again as an Amazon, complete with superhuman powers” in 1973.
Steinem’s association with the character continued with an introduction to 1972’s proto-trade paperback Wonder Woman: A Ms. Book; a contribution to 1985’s Fifty Who Made DC Great; a foreword to the 1995 cover artbook Wonder Woman: Tiny Folio; and by launching a lifetime achievement honor from the Women’s Media Center called the Wonder Woman Award in 2017.
She received multiple awards and honors during her life, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, and she has been the subject of multiple books and films, like 2020’s The Glorias. She was married to environmental activist David Bale (the father of actor Christian Bale) from 2000, until his death in 2003. In addition to Bale’s children and grandchildren, she is survived by her distant cousin, comedian Tig Notaro.
Steinem died shortly before the release of her memoir An Unexpected Life, due out from Penguin Random House on September 22. In lieu of flowers, she asked that donations be made to Gloria’s Foundation, or those mourning her to light a candle in line with “the tradition of lighting signal fires on hills to light the way to the other side of the mountain.” You can read a posthumous essay by her at The New Yorker, and watch an interview with her in a newly released episode of Netflix’s Famous Last Words.
