US women’s rights leader Gloria Steinem dies at 92

Gloria Steinem, the journalist and campaigner who became one of the most prominent leaders of the US women's liberation movement, has died at 92.

Steinem died Wednesday at her home in New York City, Gloria's Foundation announced in an Instagram post Thursday.

The foundation said she "passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her." No cause of death was disclosed.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, Steinem studied at Smith College before spending two years in India, where her exposure to grassroots organizing helped shape her later activism.

She moved to New York in the early 1960s and gained national attention with a 1963 undercover investigation into the working conditions of women employed as Playboy Club "Bunnies."

In 1968, she helped establish New York Magazine, serving as a political columnist and writing about elections, social movements and women's rights.

Steinem later co-founded Ms. magazine, which first appeared as an insert in New York Magazine in 1971 before becoming an independent publication in 1972.

At a time when publications aimed at women largely concentrated on beauty, cooking and domestic life, Ms. addressed issues including abortion, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and equal pay.

Steinem also helped establish the Women's Action Alliance in 1971. The organization promoted non-sexist, multiracial education and coordinated resources for groups involved in the women's movement.

She was also among the founders of the National Women's Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Women's Media Center.

Steinem became a leading advocate for reproductive rights during the 1970s. She had an abortion in London when she was 22, at a time when the procedure was illegal, and later publicly discussed the experience.

She welcomed the US Supreme Court's landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which recognized a constitutional right to abortion. Nearly five decades later, she witnessed the court overturn that precedent in its 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

Her campaigning extended beyond reproductive rights to equal pay, same-sex marriage and opposition to the death penalty and female genital mutilation.

In 2013, then-President Barack Obama awarded Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor, citing her leadership in the women's liberation movement and her work advancing civil rights.

Gloria's Foundation said Steinem continued working for equality until the end of her life, spending her later years writing and hosting gatherings at her New York home for activists and social justice advocates.