Gloria Steinem, the American feminist and journalist whose activism helped push through greater rights for women around the world has died, aged 92. Steinem “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her”, a statement shared to her Instagram page said. Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves.” Steinem brought a feminist perspective into the mainstream through rigorous journalism, public speaking and activism.
The author of nine books, she campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, the pornography industry and the Vietnam and Gulf wars. She also worked in support of causes including Black Lives Matter, the reunification of Korea, female reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and the Times Up movement. In 1984, she was arrested while protesting against apartheid outside the South African embassy in Washington DC.
Born in Ohio in 1934, Steinem grew up in a trailer home. Her mother’s mental illness left her struggling to hold on to work and in and out of sanatoriums. When she was 10, her parents separated and, while growing up in a rundown home in Toledo with her mother, Steinem began to notice the hostility her mother endured as a working woman.
After graduating from a women’s liberal arts college in 1956, Steinem travelled to India for two years, where she worked as a legal clerk in the country’s supreme court. Returning to the US, she worked as the director of the Independent Research Service, a CIA front that recruited American students to disrupt the Soviet-controlled World Youth Festivals in Vienna and Helsinki. Steinem later revealed she had always known who was bankrolling the operation: “If I had a choice I would do it again.” In 1962, she received her first “serious assignment” in journalism from Esquire magazine editor Clay Felker.
Her feature on contraception, The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed, detailed how women were forced to choose between careers and family. The following year, Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for 11 days, to write her infamous, two-part exposé of how the glamour models were treated while working in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. Forced into tight costumes and high heels, Steinem lost 10lbs – half of them in a single night – during her stint; her manager celebrated by making her costume two inches tighter.
Following the article, she was unable to get work because “because I had now become a Bunny – and it didn’t matter why”. In 1968, Felker hired her to work at New York magazine, in which she would coin the term “reproductive freedom” for an article about an abortion “speakout” in Greenwich Village. Having had an abortion in London when was 22, she later described feeling a “big click” while at the protest and said the day marked the start of her life as an “active feminist”.
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