Gloria Steinem: The life and legacy of a feminist icon

Gloria Steinem was a powerful icon of America's feminist movement, and her career spanned a myriad of roles that changed the lives of generations of women.

With her iconic aviator sunglasses and long, blonde-streaked hair - which she considered rebellious in the 1970s - Steinem was an internationally recognised activist in the fight for women's equality.

She spoke out for the legalisation of abortion, same-sex marriage, and equal rights and pay for women, and protested against the death penalty and female genital mutilation.

Her activism was not without a backlash - from both men and women - and harassment that could be as vulgar as it was intimidating.

Born on 25 March 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Steinem did not have an easy childhood.

Her father Leo Steinem was a travelling salesman and, together with her mother Ruth and older sister Susanne, they lived in a caravan, crisscrossing the country.

Leo abandoned the family and moved to California when Steinem was 10 years old, leaving her to care for Ruth who had long suffered with mental illness and had terrifying hallucinations.

As a result, Steinem did not go to school full-time until she was 12 years old.

She would later remark that she had never wanted children because she had already had one - her mother.

In the late 1950s she went to India on a research scholarship, and spent two years in a variety of roles, including helping village women organise non-violent protests against government policies, which sparked her interest in grassroots activism.

Steinem left India and moved to New York City in the early 1960s to start her career as a freelance writer. It was a time when male-dominated newsrooms made it difficult for women to get hard-hitting stories.

Using the fake name Marie, she lied about her age - telling Playboy she was 24 years old when she was actually four years older.

Steinem lifted the lid on the underpaid life of a Bunny, and the physical pain of wearing the high-heels and tight corsets for hours.

Despite the fame - and infamy - that followed, she still found herself struggling to be taken seriously by editors.

Though the Playboy exposé helped land her assignments for the New York Times and New York Magazine, often they were about ladies' stockings and the latest hairstyles.

"To this day when people don't like me they introduce me as a former Bunny, as a put-down," she told the New York Times in 2016. "On the other hand, I did improve the working conditions for those women."

Undaunted, by 1968 Steinem was a columnist for New York Magazine, focusing on progressive social issues and women's rights.

Her article, After Black Power, Women's Liberation, brought her national fame, making her the face of the US feminist movement in the 1970s.

"I was the only woman, and after I wrote an abortion article, my [male] friends there said to me: 'Don't get involved with these crazy women. You've worked hard to be taken seriously,'" she told Rachel Cooke for The Guardian in 2011.

So she took matters into her own hands.

In 1972, she launched Ms. magazine with a group of feminist activists. It was the first all-female founded and operated periodical, designed to be an alternative to other women's magazines that typically focused on housekeeping and fashion.

Critics - mainly men - were quick to write it off. News presenter Harry Reasoner said he gave it six months "before they run out of things to say".

The first issue sold out within a week and generated 26,000 subscribers. The magazine is still going today.

In 1978, Steinem wrote one of Ms. magazine's most infamous and widely read essays - If Men Could Menstruate.

Her satirical reflection on how different power, political and economic structures might be if men had menstrual cycles is still referred to in discussions about gender roles.

By the end of her career, Steinem had become a prolific and award-winning writer, penning numerous books including her own memoirs, a biography on Marilyn Monroe and a collection of her own famous quotes in the wryly titled, The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off.

Though still considered one of the world's best-known feminist activists, Steinem came to advocacy rather late in life - in her thirties.

At an abortion awareness rally in 1969 where women were sharing their experiences of having abortions, Steinem was encouraged to share her own story about terminating a pregnancy. It had taken place years earlier in London when she was 22 years old, just before going to India.

Abortion was illegal in the UK at the time, unless the woman's mental or physical health was in danger. The doctor took a great risk for Steinem, telling her: "You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life."

Nearly 60 years later, Steinem broke one of those promises, when she dedicated her memoir, My Life On The Road, to Dr John Sharpe.

She described that abortion speak-out event as a "light bulb moment" - when she realised the US needed a bigger women's rights movement.

Almost overnight, Steinem became a crusader for abortion rights, calling it "reproductive freedom". The phrase she coined is credited with making the subject more approachable for political discussion and continues to be used in abortion debates.

Steinem organised marches and quickly became a draw at demonstrations, although she admitted later that she found talking to the huge crowds "utterly terrifying".

After Congress failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1970 - legislation granting women equal rights to men - Steinem co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus with fellow feminist leaders and more than 300 women across the US. The group worked to include women in all aspects of political and public life.

The same year she testified at Senate hearings for the ERA, telling the predominantly male audience: "I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places and turned away from apartment rentals all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman."

Second-wave feminism continued to gain momentum, and Steinem was one of its most famous figureheads.

Critics, however, came from the left as well as right, targeting Steinem for everything from her looks to her motives. Some claimed she was too glamorous to be a true feminist, while others said she was successful only because of her appearance.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, the book credited with launching second-wave feminism, was annoyed that Steinem became the face of the movement, accusing her of "ripping off the movement for private profit" when she launched Ms.

The media were trying "to make her a celebrity," fumed Friedan, "but no one should mistake her for a leader."

US President Richard Nixon was recorded during a secret conversation furiously ranting about Steinem, to which she responded: "There is some opinion that Richard Nixon is the most sexually insecure chief of state since Napoleon".

Al Goldstein, the notorious pornographer and publisher of Screw magazine, launched a campaign of attacks that included publishing her phone number next to fake advertisements for oral sex.

He also printed a graphic centrefold image of a Steinem look-alike, and hung it open on display at the newsstand outside Ms. magazine's office building. She had to look at it every day.

As she got older, harassment to this degree became less common. However, given she was a recognisable figure in New York City, it was not uncommon for Steinem to be stopped on the street by strangers wanting to debate - sometimes with an edge of hostility.

But she welcomed the continued debate. In 2020, she was among a cross-section of public figures who signed an open letter denouncing cancel culture, saying it weakens open debate by shutting people down.

"If you care about having the conversation, surely you want to try in a humane way to convince the other person, not do away with them," she told the New York Times.

Gloria Steinem once quipped: "I can't mate in captivity" - a reference to her disinterest in marriage. But she publicly enjoyed a healthy dating life with a number of rich and famous bachelors, giving critics more ammunition to use against her.

They included Frank Thomas who was head of the Ford Foundation; film director Mike Nichols and Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson (who helped tackle the man who assassinated Robert F Kennedy in 1968).

"I was the one always accused of using men, of being too sexual. Someone once sent me a cartoon of a tombstone that said 'at last she sleeps alone'," she wrote.

But in 2000, aged 66, she wed David Bale, a South African-born entrepreneur-environmentalist, and father of actor Christian Bale.

At the time, the union drew gasps of surprise and even disappointment from some feminists, who had spent years following Steinem's heated debates surrounding marriage laws.

But she said those laws had finally changed. "If I had married when I was supposed to get married, I would have lost my name, my legal residence, my credit rating, many of my civil rights. That's not true anymore. It's possible to make an equal marriage," she explained years later.

Steinem also confessed to it being a "green card marriage" because Bale's US visa was running out - but said that they loved each other and were going to be together regardless.

Gloria Steinem once said she wanted to live to 100 because "there's so much to do".

In her near-century of life, she even became a talented tap dancer.

She was given America's highest civilian honour - the Presidential Medal of Freedom - in 2013 by President Barack Obama, who credited her work with giving more women "the respect and opportunities that they deserve".

In 2024, she reached the age of 90. She lived alone in New York, content in the knowledge that Ms. Magazine was still publishing.

Steinem seized the occasion to tell the BBC that she hoped her legacy "might help individual people... to become more the unique, valuable, loved and lovable person that they want to be."

She will be remembered for amplifying the voices of women in a way that mainstream media at the time either could not, or would not.

And, in so doing, she altered the landscape and language of women's rights in America.