‘SINGULAR JOURNEY’: Feminist activist Gloria Steinem dies at 92

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> The pioneering American feminist, writer, organiser and co-founder of Ms. Magazine will be remembered for decades-long advocacy for women’s civil, reproductive and political rights.

Gloria Steinem, the American writer, lecturer, activist and organiser who fought for gender equality and women’s civil and reproductive rights for more than five decades, has died, her foundation said. She was 92.

The co-founder and consulting editor of Ms. Magazine championed the feminist movement from the late 1960s onwards and inspired generations of women.

She died on Wednesday, her foundation said in ​an Instagram post on Thursday.

“From reluctant spokesperson to a beacon of positive change, hers is a singular journey – an American leader who can speak to us all,” film and theater ‌director Julie Taymor said of Steinem in a 2017 New York Times interview.

Taymor directed the 2020 film The Glorias, depicting Steinem’s life across the years and based on her 2015 bestselling autobiography, My Life on the Road. She was also the subject of a 2018 play, Gloria: A Life, and a 2011 HBO documentary, Gloria: In Her Own Words.

Steinem said she considered herself “an entrepreneur of social change”.

“I want to do justice to the women I meet, to tell their stories,” she told the New Yorker magazine in 2015. “It’s ​making connections, and using myself to listen, because we can’t empower women without listening to their stories.”

Steinem founded the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971 with former US Representatives Bella Abzug and ​Shirley Chisholm and writer Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique ushered in the second wave of feminism.

Among other groups, she also created the Coalition of Labor ⁠Union Women, the Women’s Media Center, Voters for Choice, and the Ms. Foundation for Women.

In 2013 the then president, Barack Obama, awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honour.

With her signature long, blonde-streaked, centre-parted ​hair and aviator glasses, Steinem was the glamorous, hip symbol of the feminist movement, which she emphasised should embrace women of every race.

“If you’ve suffered discrimination, you’re sensitive to it on every level. I learned feminism ​largely from Black women. Women of colour basically invented feminism,” she told the New Yorker.

Steinem was born on 25 March 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, the younger of two daughters. Her father was a travelling antique dealer. Because the family moved frequently she did not attend school regularly until about seventh grade.