San Francisco Frontiers - US feminist icon Gloria Steinem dies aged 92

"Yesterday, Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her," Gloria's Foundation said in a statement on Instagram. It did specify the cause of death.

Before becoming a leading figure in the women's rights movement, Steinem cut her teeth in journalism in the 1960s, denouncing the inequalities women endured at a time when many in the US still needed their husband's approval to open a bank account.

She came to prominence in 1963 with an expose of the pervasive sexism faced by cocktail waitresses at New York's Playboy Club.

But she credited her awakening to activism in 1969, at a meeting where women described the ordeal of having an abortion.

"It made some sense of my own experience. I had had an abortion and had never told anyone," she later recounted in an article in New York Magazine.

The London doctor who gave her an abortion in 1957, when it was still illegal, made her promise two things: "First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life."

In the 1970s, she founded Ms Magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus, and organized the first National Women's Conference in Houston.

For decades, Steinem travelled across the United States and the world, attending conferences and protests, and remained an outspoken defender of women's rights well into old age.

When in 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision of 1973, which had enshrined the right to abortion, she pointed out: "Banning abortions does not stop the need for them. It just bans their safety.

"Don't agonize. Organize," she urged fellow American women on Twitter.

After a lifetime battling injustices, she told AFP in 2019: "I think the role of older people like me is to have hope, because we remember when it was worse."

- Public scrutiny -

Born in Ohio on March 25, 1934, Steinem followed the nomadic life of her traveling salesman father.

Her parents divorced when she was 10, forcing her to care for her depressive mother.

As a frontline feminist, she came under intense public scrutiny.

Her good looks, her miniskirts and her brief experience as a Playboy Bunny were used against her in an attempt to undermine her credibility.

The fact that she remained single and childless was also weaponized.

At 66, she married businessman David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale.

Asked by a reporter why she had changed her position on single life, she said: "I didn't change. Marriage changed."

Bale died three years later of brain cancer, aged 62. Steinem herself underwent surgery for breast cancer in the 1980s.

- 'Have hope' -

Some younger activists saw her as a representative of an outdated type of feminism.

She was criticized for defending Bill Clinton in 1989 when the then-governor of Arkansas was accused of sexual harassment.

In 2016, when Clinton's wife Hillary was vying to become the first female president in US history but struggling to garner support among women voters, Steinem suggested that young women preferred her rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, because young men liked him.

"When you're young, you're thinking: 'Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,'" she told TV talk-show host Bill Maher. She later apologized.

Steinem was given numerous awards and honors for her work, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

"Gloria's near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end," her foundation said.

"Gloria's greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard."

She "lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor."

J.Scott--SFF