Remembering Gloria Steinem and her trailblazing fight for women's rights

Geoff Bennett:

Welcome to the "News Hour."

Gloria Steinem, the pioneering journalist and fierce activist who was an icon of the women's liberation movement, has died at the age of 92.

Amna Nawaz:

For more than half-a-century, Steinem challenged entrenched ideas about gender and power, helping bring the fight for women's equality from the margins of American life into the mainstream.

Jeffrey Brown has this remembrance.

Jeffrey Brown:

For more than five decades, Gloria Steinem was one of the most prominent faces of American feminism. A trailblazing journalist, political activist, and public intellectual, she helped lead a movement that revolutionized both the professional and personal lives of women across the country.

Gloria Steinem, Journalist and Activist: We have marched for every other movement that exists, and we worked for everything else except ourselves. And now to see women supporting other women and standing up for their own rights is really very, very moving and gratifying.

Jeffrey Brown:

Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, Steinem overcame a tumultuous childhood, which included her parents' divorce and taking care of her mother for many years. She graduated from Smith College in the late 1950s and soon moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance journalist.

As a young writer, she famously went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for "Show" magazine, exposing exploitation and sexual harassment.

Gloria Steinem:

You had to have an internal physical exam, which they told us was a requirement of the food servers in New York state.

Jeffrey Brown:

She became a columnist for "New York" magazine and established herself as a leader of so-called second-wave feminism with thoughtful and often pointed commentary. She also covered the fight for abortion rights, a topic that hit close to home, as she told the "News Hour" in 2019.

Gloria Steinem:

I would have had a profoundly different life if I had been responsible for rearing a child. I had had an abortion in England. It allowed me to live my own life, not to marry someone for whom I would have been the wrong wife and he would have been the wrong husband.

Jeffrey Brown:

She also said the fight for reproductive rights was a catalyst for her own career in activism.

Gloria Steinem:

And I began to see what, of course, the radical feminists were saying in the first place, which was that it is a caste problem and that women are an oppressed group. And then, finally, I understood that, even though I was not married living in the suburbs, that it was a problem that affected absolutely every woman.

Jeffrey Brown:

In the early '70s, Steinem co-founded "Ms." magazine, a radical break from traditional women's publications. With a masthead made up entirely of women, it tackled topics like sexism, harassment, and equal pay, and became a clearinghouse for some of the biggest names of the women's liberation movement.

Gloria Steinem:

It started, in desperation, I think, because there were just a great many women writers and editors who didn't feel that they were working on magazines that they read and that they had the opportunity to really be honest about their own experiences in a magazine.

Shirley Chisholm has not got the depth and breadth of the coverage she deserves.

Jeffrey Brown:

As a political activist, she worked to elect women to office and was a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, traveling the country, speaking out against sexism and economic exploitation.

Gloria Steinem:

It's the kind of blue-collar working woman who needs these reforms the most, I think, and also poor women and welfare women. But it's -- I think it really is going forward on all on all levels at once, and it's an important bridge between black women and white women.

Jeffrey Brown:

She remained a prolific writer, a bestselling author, and prominent public speaker for much of her long life, advocating for women's rights internationally, opposing apartheid, and campaigning prominently for Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Along with others in the movement, she helped solidify gains that many these days may take for granted. Still, when she spoke with Judy Woodruff in 2020, she said she felt it much remained unfinished.

Gloria Steinem:

We have the right to vote. We still don't fully have the right to our own bodies. Many women are still subject to bodily invasion at a rate far exceeding that of men. I think we have yet to understand the rights that the female half of the human race need as females.

Jeffrey Brown:

She condemned the Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned abortion rights.

Gloria Steinem:

I'm old enough to remember before there were any real abortion rights. Nonetheless, about one in three American women had had an abortion at some time in her life even when it was maybe not legal.

Jeffrey Brown:

And as she told Amna in 2020, she felt each person could be part of the fight for equality.

Gloria Steinem:

I just want to say that we should stop asking passive questions. I mean, it's not what will happen, what should happen, what -- it's, what am I going to -- what are we going to do? And that means tomorrow morning what are we going to do?

Jeffrey Brown:

Steinem, who in her trademark aviator glasses became nearly synonymous with women's liberation in the media, was not without her critics.

In the late '80s, black feminist Alice Walker resigned as a contributor from "Ms." Magazine, citing a lack of diversity on staff and in its pages. And Steinem had a major falling out with Betty Friedan, herself a towering figure in the movement and an erstwhile ally.

They battled over many issues, including Steinem's critiques of men and traditional marriage, which Friedan could be counterproductive. Through it all, Steinem emphasized she was just one part of a much larger struggle, as she said before receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Gloria Steinem:

I'm grateful to have the opportunity to say here that I would be crazy if I didn't understand that this was a medal for the entire women's movement.

Jeffrey Brown:

Over the years, Steinem dated a number of prominent men, including director Mike Nichols. She married briefly later in life but had no children.

Today, tributes poured in from across the globe, including from Oprah Winfrey, Jill Biden, and Hillary Clinton, who called her one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality.

In a 2015 interview for her memoir, I asked what advice she'd give young women today.

Gloria Steinem:

Here's my advice. Do not listen to me, really.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown:

Do not.

Gloria Steinem:

No. I want to support their listening to themselves. Each of them has things that they love, things that they do that they love so much. They know their own life and situations. I'm here to support that and say, you're not -- OK, you're not more important than somebody else, but you're not less important either.

Jeffrey Brown:

Gloria Steinem was 92 years old.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.