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Gloria Steinem’s Many-Splendored Feminist Life

The feminist icon lived the struggle for gender equality, and always found time to lend support and solidarity to other women leaders, even in her final days.

Gloria Steinem attending a 1975 International Women’s Day March in midtown Manhattan

There is no way to do justice to the 92 astonishing years of the incomparable feminist Gloria Steinem, who died at home, surrounded by friends, Wednesday night. I knew she had been weakening, and yet I still regularly heard of her meeting with women leaders and helping anyplace and anytime  she could.

Most recently, I got invited to a small New York reception with Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan and actor-activist Jane Fonda, that I hoped might include Steinem. Flanagan slipped over to Steinem’s home early for a private meeting with the Ms. founder and Fonda. That was Steinem, I thought: always making time for new women leaders, in this case the 46-year-old progressive who will become the first Native senator if she is elected in November.

Today, social media has been full of women, young and old, of every race, posting photos with Steinem taken over the last few years. She had not been well; I hadn’t seen her in a little while. But if you had a feminist book out, a documentary, a cause, or if you were a woman running for a major office, Steinem made time for you.

The author, organizer, feminist and friend to so many grew up, struggling, in East Toledo, Ohio, caring for her ill mother. It made her a many-splendored feminist, a gorgeous woman who traveled in  elite circles but championed the working class, the vulnerable, women who weren’t white, and women who weren’t straight. (Her AOL email name was EastToledo; whenever that address graced my inbox, I felt........

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