Culture News

Gloria Steinem dies at 92: undercover reporter, Ms. co-founder, and a life shaped by India

Gloria Steinem, the American journalist and feminist campaigner, has died at her home in New York City aged 92, according to a statement on her Instagram page, The Guardian reported on September 3. Passers-by left flowers outside her Upper East Side townhouse.

The Guardian recalled her 1963 exposé written after 11 days undercover as a Playboy Bunny, her 1968 coinage of “reproductive freedom” in New York magazine, nine books and campaigns from domestic violence to apartheid. Prothom Alo in Bangladesh, carrying AFP, listed her co-founding of Ms. magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus, and her 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom. AFP also recorded criticism, including her 2016 remark about young women backing Bernie Sanders, for which she apologised.

“Banning abortions does not stop the need for them. It just bans their safety.” — Gloria Steinem in 2022, via Prothom Alo (AFP)

On September 5 The Guardian published a look at her years in India, which she called a “life-dividing event”. She arrived in 1957, aged 22, on a Chester Bowles fellowship, lived at Miranda House at Delhi University, wore saris and wrote for Indian newspapers. Travelling in a women-only third-class carriage from Calcutta to Kerala, she watched women share intimate experiences years before American “consciousness-raising” groups.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — the journalism and the campaigns, then the Indian roots of her methods.
• Prothom Alo (AFP) — a balanced ledger of honours, quotes and controversies.

What we don't know yet: No cause of death was given. AFP's report suggests she died on September 2, the day before the announcement.