Gloria Steinem, who died last week at the age of 92, was the face of modern feminism who labored for decades to garner rights, protections, and opportunities for women.

The author, organizer, and role model was born on March 25, 1934, to an economically challenged family in East Toledo, Ohio. Steinem grew up caring for her ill mother, who suffered from mental illness, making it difficult to be a regular child and have a normal childhood. Due to such intense responsibilities, she didn’t complete an entire year of school until she reached the sixth grade.

Nonetheless, she embodied a rabid intellectual curiosity and read incessantly. Such traits allowed her to follow in her older sister’s footsteps and attend Smith College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

She had already been writing about women’s status. Her famous article “A Bunny’s Tale” for the long-defunct Show magazine, in which she went undercover at the Playboy Club, ears and all, had been published in June 1963. Nonetheless, that breakthrough represented the first effort in a long career spent exposing exploitative working conditions for women and would be a pivotal factor of her agenda for the duration of her life.

The column appeared just as the women’s movement, ignited........

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