Gloria Steinem, the journalist and feminist icon who helped define the modern American women’s movement, died September 2 at age 92 at her home in New York City, Gloria’s Foundation announced. She died “peacefully … surrounded by some of the many who loved her,” the foundation said. No cause of death and no specific time of death had been publicly disclosed as of September 3.
There was, however, something remarkably close to a final message. Steinem’s last recorded interview, made in February 2025 for Netflix’s “Famous Last Words” and deliberately held for release until after her death, found her still resisting the idea that she alone represented feminism. “I hope I wasn’t the face of the feminist movement,” she said. “It’s not right. It’s a diverse movement.” She added that her prominence had more to do with “endurance” because she had “stayed at it longer.”
Her final direct address was even more characteristic. “Please tell your own story,” Steinem told viewers, calling storytelling a way “to know each other.” She expressed hope that people would be able “to do what you love” while remaining “the unique person you are.” In the interview, she also said, “I don’t lose all hope in the future,” adding, “We have no shortage of things we need to do in order to be compassionate toward each other.”
Steinem’s feminism increasingly embraced LGBTQ+ rights. In a 2013 clarification of earlier controversial writings about transgender people, she wrote that transgender people, “including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives. Those lives should be celebrated, not questioned.” In 2021, she signed a GLAAD letter declaring that feminism must be “unapologetically expansive” and oppose barriers imposed on transgender women and girls.
Steinem married South African businessman and activist David Bale in 2000, when she was 66. Explaining why she had finally married after decades of criticizing traditional marriage, she said, “marriage changed,” noting that women no longer necessarily surrendered their names, credit or legal independence. Bale, father of actor Christian Bale, died of brain cancer in 2003.
Steinem also remained a recognizable cultural figure. She appeared as herself in “And Just Like That…” in 2023. She was interviewed for the 2022 Netflix documentary series “Live to Lead” and appeared in HBO’s 2025 documentary “Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print,” about the magazine she helped create. She also participated in the 2020 promotion of “The Glorias,” the film based on her memoir “My Life on the Road.”
Born Gloria Marie Steinem on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, she grew up traveling with her father, an itinerant antiques dealer, and caring for her mother after her parents separated. She graduated from Smith College in 1956 and spent two years in India on a fellowship. She later recalled that she had “almost never seen a woman journalist” and had no reason to believe she could make a living as a writer.
Journalism became her doorway into activism. Her 1963 undercover investigation of New York’s Playboy Club exposed the low pay and degrading treatment of its waitresses. After publicly discussing her own abortion at a 1969 New York abortion-rights event, she increasingly devoted herself to feminism. “Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life,” she later said.
In 1971, Steinem helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus and began building Ms., which debuted as a stand-alone publication in 1972. Its willingness to put abortion, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, race, sexuality and domestic life on the cover helped move subjects once considered private into mainstream political conversation.
Her books included “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” “Revolution From Within,” “Moving Beyond Words” and the memoir “My Life on the Road.” She also co-founded the Women’s Media Center, the Ms. Foundation for Women and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2013.
Even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Steinem refused to concede defeat. “Women have always taken power over our own bodies, and we will keep right on,” she said. “An unjust court can’t stop abortion.”
Her passing closes the life of perhaps the most recognizable face of American feminism. But her own final words suggest that she would have preferred the movement to be remembered not through one woman, but through millions of people continuing to tell their own stories, organize and act.
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