Gloria Steinem Photos That Changed Women's History

Feminist activist Gloria Steinem , whose name is synonymous with the U.S. women's movement, died on Wednesday, aged 92. Steinem was a journalist, author, activist, campaigner and organizer, known for her trailblazing work in women's rights and gender equality.

Condolences poured in from every corner of the world—from other activists to political figures, Steinem was remembered fondly for her immense contribution to the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

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To say that Gloria Steinem had a lasting impact on a generation of women is an understatement. Steinem didn't start the fight for equality, nor did she fight it alone. But over the next several decades, she became one of its loudest and most visible voices.

Starting out as a journalist—which was largely a male-dominated field—Steinem broke barriers by writing about subjects that were reserved for men. In 1963, she famously went undercover to write an expose on the workings of Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club. By the end of the decade, she was writing about politics and women's liberation, eventually becoming a part of it herself. From fighting for reproductive freedom and the Equal Rights Amendment to helping create Ms. magazine and organizations designed to put more women in positions of political power, Steinem spent much of her life challenging ideas about what women could—and should—be allowed to do.

To honor her memory, here are some of Gloria Steinem's most significant moments from the fight she fought for nearly seven decades.

1. Very few people know that Gloria Steinem spent two years in India after graduating from Smith College, after she received the Chester Bowles Fellowship that brought her to the country in 1956. Her experiences there, including exposure to grassroots organizing inspired by Gandhian methods, later became important to the way she thought about social movements and organizing.

She said about her experience: "Being in that country shattered Western romantic illusions with little ceremony, but it replaced them with new impressions far more real and less easily forgotten. As I learned once I was there, many Americans seem to have skipped from a sketchy knowledge of ancient India to a misunderstanding of its diversity. The teachings of Gandhi introduced me to nonhierarchical thinking, which I came to learn was the most common way of thinking in much of the rest of the world, too."

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2. Steinem gained national attention in 1963 when she went undercover for three weeks to report on the working conditions at the New York Playboy Club for Show magazine. Her expose revealed the humiliations of being a Playboy Bunny, including low pay and enduring sexism.

As a result, an investigation was launched into the Playboy Club's employment practices. Steinem was later subpoenaed in connection with the case, and authorities ultimately ordered the club to stop subjecting prospective Bunnies to mandatory blood tests and gynecological examinations—all practices Steinem had exposed in her report.

3. In 1968, Gloria Steinem helped found New York magazine alongside editor Clay Felker, who hired Steinem to write a political column, The City Politic. She became the magazine's contributing editor and political columnist. By 1970, Steinem was bringing conversations about women's liberation into American households. Here, she appeared alongside fellow New York magazine contributing editor Gail Sheehy on the CBS current-affairs program The Urbanites , where the two discussed "Love in the City" and the changing expectations surrounding love, sex and relationships.

4. It was in 1971 that she started running Ms. as an insert in New York magazine. The event that galvanized the idea in her mind was an event she attended in 1969, called Speak Out , organized by the feminist group Redstockings, where women spoke about their illegal abortions. Having had an illegal abortion herself at the age of 22, Steinem felt "a big click" and had her feminist awakening, which was the start of a lifelong fight for equal sexual and reproductive rights.

5. In 1972, Steinem started Ms . magazine as an independent unit, along with editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Pat Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock. It sold 300,000 copies, and sold out nationwide in a week. A few weeks in, Ms. had received over 25,000 subscription orders, and more than 20,000 letters from readers.

This is what the first edition of Ms. looked like:

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In 1972, Ms. published the names of 53 women who publicly acknowledged having had abortions at a time when the procedure was still illegal in most of the country. The magazine also included a tear-out petition that readers could sign and send back, giving more women the opportunity to publicly add their names to the fight for abortion rights. The petition read: "The attitudes and laws against abortion in this country are causing untold suffering. Approximately one million American women had "illegal" abortions in 1971—many of them self-induced or performed by the unqualified, some of them fatal. I have had an abortion. I publicly join millions of other American women in demanding a repeal of all laws that restrict our reproductive freedom."

6. The 1970s were truly a golden decade for Steinem. While Ms. magazine was taking off, she helped establish the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC), alongside Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan and Fannie Lou Hamer. She, along with her co-founders, saw the need for more women getting into political power, especially with the Congress' failure to pass the Equal Rights Amendment—and thus, NWPC was born. Its aim was to train women to run for office, increase women's political participation, and lobby for feminist legislation among other things. More than 300 women from 26 states gathered in Washington D.C. to establish the NWPC.

Here is Steinem speaking at the July, 1971 organizing conference that launched the NWPC. The call to action was "against sexism, racism, institutional violence and poverty".

7. In 1971, Gloria Steinem and fellow activist Dorothy Pitman Hughes posed for what would go on to become one of the most iconic images of the feminist movement. Photographed by Dan Wynn for Esquire , the two women stood together in a shared skirt, raising their fists in a gesture associated with the Black Power and civil rights movements. The photograph became a striking symbol of that partnership—and of the idea that the fight for women's equality couldn't be separated from other fights for civil rights.

8. In 1972, Steinem became one of the first woman to speak at the National Press Club. The club had only voted to admit women as members in 1971—which made her presence in the institution a landmark one. It emphasized something significant: the women's movement was forcing its way into institutions that had historically shut women out.

9. In 1972, after decades of campaigning, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) finally passed both houses of Congress, but that was only the first step. For it to actually become part of the Constitution, three-fourths of the country—38 states—also needed to ratify it before a 1979 deadline. Initially, things moved quickly: 30 states ratified the ERA within its first year. In the picture below, you can see Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem sign telegrams asking President Carter to support the Equal Rights Amendment.

By 1977, 35 states had ratified the amendment, leaving it just three states short. On July 9, 1978, tens of thousands of people marched down Washington D.C. to demand that Congress extend the ERA's approaching ratification deadline. Many participants deliberately dressed in white, invoking the suffragists. The front of the march included Steinem, civil-rights activist Dick Gregory, Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Holtzman, Barbara Mikulski and Margaret Heckler. Their efforts eventually paid off when Congress voted to extend the ratification deadline until 1982.

10. By 1975, Steinem had become a regular presence at demonstrations demanding equality for women. Here, she joined around 2,000 people marching through Manhattan on International Women's Day, calling for full economic, political, legal, sexual and racial equality, as well as women's right to control their own lives and bodies.

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11. Steinem's activism also extended to women's portrayal and sexual exploitation in the media. In 1979, she joined more than 5,000 feminists, students, and activists marching through New York's Times Square in a demonstration organized by Women Against Pornography. Protesters paraded in the bright sunlight past dimly lighted sex shops, peep shows, and pornographic movie houses along 42nd Street, and argued that the pornography industry exploited women's bodies and contributed to violence against women. Steinem and fellow feminist Bella Abzug were among those who addressed the crowd when the march ended with a rally in Bryant Park.

12. It goes without saying that Steinem was as outspoken about racial discrimination as she was about sexism. In 1984, Steinem participated in an anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. She was arrested alongside D.C. health commissioner Andrew McBride and Rev. Rollins Lambert. Beginning in November 1984, activists staged repeated demonstrations outside the embassy protesting South Africa's apartheid regime and calling for the release of political prisoners and an end to racial minority rule.

13. Steinem was one of the leading figures of the Pro-Choice March for Women's Lives in 1986. The front line included Senator Patsy Mink, Bella Abzug, Elenor Holmes Norton, Eleanor Smeal, president of National Organization of Women, and Kate Michelman at the first national pro-choice march in Washington D.C. Roe v. Wade had been law for 13 years, but the political fight over abortion had intensified enormously. The Reagan administration was hostile to abortion rights, and reproductive rights organizations were increasingly worried about attempts to restrict access and ultimately overturn Roe.

14. Continuing to fight the good fight for reproductive rights, In 1989, Steinem joined hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C., where protesters demanded that abortion and birth control remain safe and legal. While Roe v. Wade had protected the right to abortion since 1973, there were growing fears that those protections could soon be weakened. At the time, the Supreme Court was preparing to hear Webster v. Reproductive Health Services , a case challenging abortion restrictions in Missouri. Steinem marched alongside Bella Abzug, Jane Fonda , Whoopi Goldberg , Glenn Close, and several other activists and celebrities. Those fears weren't unfounded: later that year, the Supreme Court upheld several of Missouri's restrictions, giving states more freedom to restrict access to abortion.

15. In1995, Steinem took to the streets alongside National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League leader Kelli Conlin, actress Olympia Dukakis and other protestors in New York City. The rally protested the arrival of Pope John Paul II, whose conservative doctrine on issues such as abortion, sex, and homosexuality contradicted the ideology of many women's rights groups.

Steinem continued fighting for women's rights for decades after she first became one of the most recognizable faces of the feminist movement. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the US, for her work towards equality. And while a LOT has changed since Steinem first began speaking about women's rights in the '60s, many of the things she spent her life fighting for—reproductive freedom, equal rights, political representation, and women having control over their own lives—are still being debated today. Her work was a huge part of pushing those conversations forward, but if anything, her life also shows us just how much work there is still left to do.

Rest in power, Gloria. It's our turn to carry the torch.

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