Gloria Steinem: An icon of American feminism

Gloria Steinem was a powerful icon of America's feminist movement, and her career spanned a myriad of roles that changed the lives of generations of women.

Key points

• Born on 25 March 1934 in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Steinem did not have an straightforward childhood.
• Her article, After Black Power, Women's Liberation, external brought her national fame, making her the face of the US feminist movement in the 1970s.
• Steinem left India and moved to New York City in the early 1960s to start her career as a freelance writer.
• Undaunted, by 1968 Steinem was a columnist for New York Magazine, focusing on progressive social problems and women's rights.
• When she dedicated her memoir, My Life On The Road, to Dr John Sharpe, almost 60 years afterwards, Steinem broke one of those promises.

With her iconic aviator sunglasses and long, blonde streaked hair – which she considered rebellious in the 1970s – Steinem was an internationally recognised activist in the fight for women's equality.

She spoke out for the legalisation of abortion, same-sex marriage, and equal rights and pay for women, and protested against the death penalty and female genital mutilation.

Her activism was not without a backlash – from both men and women – and harassment that could be as vulgar as it was intimidating.

Her father Leo Steinem was a travelling salesman and, together with her mother Ruth and older sister Susanne, they lived in a caravan, crisscrossing the country.

Leo abandoned the family and moved to California when Steinem was 10 years old, leaving her to care for Ruth who had long suffered with mental illness and had terrifying hallucinations.

Consequently, Steinem did not go to school full-time until she was 12 years old.

She would afterwards remark that she had never wanted children as she had already had one – her mother.

In the late 1950s she went to India on a research scholarship, and spent two years in a variety of roles, including helping village women organise non-violent protests against administration policies. It sparked her interest in grassroots activism.

Steinem left India and moved to New York City in the early 1960s to start her career as a freelance writer. It was a time when male-dominated newsrooms created it challenging for women to obtain hard-hitting stories.

When Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny cocktail waitress and wrote A Bunny's Tale, an exposé for Show magazine detailing the seedy and sexist reality of Hugh Hefner's empire, her major break came in 1963.

As shortly as she arrived for the interview, a security guard called out, "Here bunny, bunny, bunny."

Using the fake name Marie, she lied regarding her age – telling Playboy she was 24 years old when she was actually four years older.

Steinem lifted the lid on the underpaid life of a Bunny, and the physical pain of wearing the high-heels and tight corsets for hours.

Despite the fame – and infamy – that followed, she still discovered herself struggling to be taken seriously by editors.

Though the Playboy exposé supported land her assignments for the New York Times and New York Magazine, often they were concerning ladies' stockings and the latest hairstyles.

"To this day when people don't like me they introduce me as a former Bunny, as a put-down, " she informed the New York Times in 2016. "On the other hand, I did improve the working conditions for those women."

"I was the only woman, and after I wrote an abortion article, my friends there remarked to me: 'Don't secure involved with these crazy women. You've worked hard to be taken seriously, '" she informed Rachel Cooke for The Guardian in 2011. So she took matters into her own hands.

In 1972, she introduced Ms. Magazine with a group of feminist activists. It was the first all-female founded and operated periodical, designed to be an alternative to other women's magazines that typically focused on housekeeping and fashion.

Critics – mainly men – were quick to write it off. News presenter Harry Reasoner remarked he provided it six months "before they run out of things to say".

For context, the first matter sold out within a week and generated 26, 000 subscribers. The magazine is still going today.

In 1978, Steinem wrote one of Ms. Magazine's most infamous and widely read essays – If Men Could Menstruate.

Her satirical reflection on how different power, political and economic structures might be if men had menstrual cycles is still referred to in discussions regarding gender roles.

By the end of her career, Steinem had become a prolific and award-winning writer, penning numerous books including her own memoirs, a biography on Marilyn Monroe and a collection of her own famous quotes in the wryly titled, ‪The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off.

Though still considered one of the world's best-known feminist activists, Steinem came to advocacy rather late in life – in her thirties.

At an abortion awareness rally in 1969 where women were sharing their experiences of having abortions, Steinem was encouraged to share her own story regarding terminating a pregnancy. It had taken place years earlier in London when she was 22 years old, just before going to India.

Abortion was illegal in the UK at the time, unless the woman's mental or physical health was in danger. The doctor took a great risk for Steinem, telling her: "You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life."

She described that abortion speak-out event as a "light bulb moment" – when she realised the US needed a bigger women's rights movement.

Almost overnight, Steinem became a crusader for abortion rights, calling it "reproductive freedom". The phrase she coined is credited with making the subject more approachable for political discussion and continues to be applied in abortion debates.

Although she admitted afterwards that she discovered talking to the enormous crowds "utterly terrifying", steinem organised marches and rapidly became a draw at demonstrations.

After Congress failed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1970 – legislation granting women equal rights to men – Steinem co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus with fellow feminist leaders and more than 300 women throughout the US. The group worked to include women in all aspects of political and public life.

Meanwhile, the same year she testified at Senate hearings for the ERA, telling the predominantly male audience: "I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places and turned away from apartment rentals all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman."

Second-wave feminism continued to gain momentum, and Steinem was one of its most famous figureheads.

Critics, nevertheless, came from the left as well as right, targeting Steinem for everything from her looks to her motives. While others stated she was successful only since of her appearance, some asserted she was too glamorous to be a true feminist.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, the book credited with launching second-wave feminism, was annoyed that Steinem became the face of the movement, accusing her of "ripping off the movement for private profit" when she introduced Ms.

For context, the media were trying "to make her a celebrity, " fumed Friedan, "but no one should mistake her for a leader."

In short, gloria Steinem: An icon of American feminism is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.