Gloria Steinem, Icon of Women's Liberation, Dies at 92

She taught a generation of American women to say Ms. with pride, then asked them to excuse a president they believed had preyed on women. Gloria Steinem died September 2 at her home in New York City at age 92, mourned as the journalist who mainstreamed second-wave feminism and challenged, even in the obituaries, for the 1998 argument that nearly broke her standing with younger feminists. ^{5 6} Her representatives said she died peacefully, surrounded by some of the many who loved her, and released no cause of death. ⁶ She had been in declining health and more physically frail, with friend Abigail Disney visiting roughly a week earlier. ⁶

Born March 25, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Steinem arrived at the women's movement as a reporter with a taste for infiltration. ⁵ In 1963 she went undercover as a Bunny at the New York Playboy Club and wrote A Bunny's Tale for Show magazine, documenting low pay and poor working conditions. ^{5 12} By 1970 she had shifted to full-time activism, testifying for the Equal Rights Amendment and speaking nationally. ^{5 10} In 1971 she co-founded Ms. Magazine, the newsstand publication around which a generation organized, with its first standalone issue appearing in 1972. ^{10 12} That July she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus alongside Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm. ⁵ She appeared on Meet the Press on September 10, 1972, and in 2013 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. ⁵

Her institutions outlived her: Ms. magazine, the Ms. Foundation, and the Women's Media Center she co-founded with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan. ^{5 12} In the post-Dobbs era, the fight over abortion rights she pursued her whole life is again national and acute. ⁵ But the most consequential tension in her legacy is a single 1998 op-ed. ⁵ On March 22, 1998, The New York Times published Feminists and the Clinton Question, in which she argued that even if the Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey allegations were true, they were passes, not sexual harassment, because Bill Clinton took no for an answer, and that the Monica Lewinsky relationship was welcome. ⁵ Feminists, she wrote, should not demand his resignation or impeachment while he remained essential on reproductive rights. ⁵ Critics later called this the one free grope theory. ⁵

That position was re-litigated in the Me Too era, when younger activists argued the piece subordinated the women involved, including Lewinsky, Jones, Willey and Juanita Broaddrick, to partisan and policy goals. ⁵ In their telling it embodied a vision of second-wave feminism that was too white, middle-class and celebrity-centered, and that failed to grasp how power can compromise consent even without force. ⁵ Lewinsky herself later wrote she was beginning to entertain the notion that the idea of consent might well be rendered moot. ⁵ Steinem often said she learned feminism largely from Black women. ³ In an interview published November 30, 2017 in The Guardian, she said she would not write the same piece now, but was glad she wrote it then, arguing the peril in 1998 was stretching sexual-harassment law to cover consensual extramarital sex and thereby weakening it. ³

Tributes came from across the political and cultural spectrum. ¹⁰ Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called her one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality, said she was heartsick, described her activism as rooted in optimism and called her an eternal signal fire. ^{5 10} Barack and Michelle Obama called her larger than life and said generations of women are walking a little taller and aiming a little higher. ¹⁰ Me Too founder Tarana Burke mourned her as a giant and credited her as an institution-builder. ¹⁰ Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan issued the Women's Media Center memorial statement on September 3, 2026, and Emily Ramshaw, co-founder and CEO of The 19th, the women-focused newsroom launched in 2020, also paid tribute. ^{5 10} One detail circulated in initial coverage does not hold up: Burke was reported citing 50,000 young women at a Los Angeles festival as proof of Steinem's influence. ¹ That festival was Olivia Rodrigo's Daisy Chain Fields, held August 29, 2026 at Great Park in Irvine, California, with about 45,000 attendees and roughly $20 million raised for women's organizations. ¹

She had no biological children and was survived by a chosen family. ⁵ Her final work is still arriving: a memoir, An Unexpected Life, is scheduled for September 22, 2026, weeks after her death. ¹⁰ The institutions she built, and the movement they anchor, now continue without her, carrying both her achievements and the questions a younger generation left unresolved about them. ⁵