2026-09-03T06:19:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
作者：大卫·摩根
更新于：2026年9月3日 / 美国东部时间上午7:35 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
《女士》杂志联合创始人、20世纪后半叶女权解放运动先驱格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆已逝世，享年92岁。
格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆基金会周四在社交媒体发帖称，她“在纽约家中平静离世，身边环绕着众多爱她的人”。报道未提及死因。
“她是构建女性平等整个体系的设计师之一，我是说，她扫清了障碍，让年轻女性能够凭借自身才华和努力实现发展，”美国前国务卿希拉里·克林顿周四在《CBS早间节目》中表示。
“格洛丽亚本质上是一名乐观主义者，”克林顿说道，“她的行动主义植根于乐观主义，这是一种道德选择，她每天都在践行这一点。”
1971年，《新闻周刊》将斯泰纳姆誉为“新女性”。她联合创办了《女士》杂志，这是第一家由女性所有、运营和撰稿的主流出版物。在政治、大众媒体和消费主义前所未有地交织在一起的时代，《女士》杂志是推动平等权利的先锋，有助于提高人们对影响妇女和女童的包容、媒体代表性和社会正义等问题的认识。
作为一名记者，斯泰纳姆打破了“女性议题”仅局限于女性，或女性声音不应出现在政治或战争讨论中的观念。斯泰纳姆不知疲倦地倡导女性在政治领域的声音——在投票箱前，在权力大厅中——为投票权而斗争，并推动女性候选人参选。
![2013年1月15日，格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆在加利福尼亚州帕萨迪纳。理查德·肖特韦尔/Invision/美联社摄]
她推动了妇女和女童的经济与社会正义事业，包括生殖自由和免受家庭暴力的安全保障，并致力于提升女性在媒体领域的地位。由妇女基金会发起的“带女儿上班日”这一简单理念，旨在提升职场机会，后来发展成为一项全球性活动，覆盖数百万女儿（和儿子），致力于打破性别刻板印象。
《女士》杂志的诞生
20世纪60年代末，在担任《纽约》杂志记者的早期阶段，斯泰纳姆参加了一场女性集会，她们讲述了自己非法堕胎的经历。她在2006年接受《星期日晨报》采访时表示：“我听到女性们站出来，公开且认真地谈论一件只影响女性的事情。在此之前，我从未听过这种事。如果这件事不影响男性，那它就不能算是‘严肃’的事。一件非法、可耻的事，理论上是这样。（堕胎的女性）不得不进入犯罪地下世界。突然间我想：‘等等，你知道吗？如果我们中有三分之一或四分之一的人，包括我自己，都有过这种经历，那为什么它是非法的？’而这就是觉醒的开始。”
这种“觉醒”最终催生了《女士》杂志。她与活动家多萝西·皮特曼·休斯联合创办了该杂志，第一期完整刊物于1972年7月1日在报亭上架。除了封面刊登神奇女侠的形象外，该期刊还刊登了一份请愿书，由不同背景的女性签署，宣布她们曾堕胎，并要求堕胎安全合法化。（一年后，最高法院作出罗伊诉韦德案裁决，保护堕胎权，该裁决一直持续到2022年。）
《女士》杂志执行主编凯瑟琳·斯皮拉尔在2023年编纂了《〈女士〉杂志50年：点燃革命的先锋杂志精选》，她在接受《星期日晨报》采访时表示，该杂志开启并放大了诸多趋势，包括“大量关于男性、婚姻、人际关系、育儿、政治和针对女性的暴力行为的文章——这些议题反复出现。这展示了这场运动的持久力，也展示了我们对手的持久力。”
![1978年，女权主义者兼活动家格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆在纽约市联合国外的集会上发表演讲。贝蒂·莱恩/历史照片研究者/盖蒂图片社摄]
当然，杂志也引发了争议。一期关于职场性骚扰的报道封面照片展示了一名男子抚摸玩偶的画面，导致该杂志被撤下报摊。广告销售也面临挑战；一家大型化妆品公司的负责人告诉斯泰纳姆，阅读《女士》杂志的女性不买化妆品，而汽车制造商则不愿投放广告，因为他们认为女性不会买车。
尽管如此，杂志仍坚持出版，并获得了诸多奖项，刊登过芭芭拉·埃伦赖希、安吉拉·戴维斯、艾丽斯·沃克、苏珊·法卢迪、苏珊·布朗米勒、埃莉诺·霍姆斯·诺顿和简·瓦格纳等作家的文章。随着女权主义本身开辟新的道路，杂志也持续发展。尽管遭到右翼评论员的攻击，他们声称该杂志贬低“家庭价值观”，《女士》杂志也遭到左翼一些人士的批评，他们认为该杂志过于保守，缺乏观点多样性。
斯泰纳姆表示，随着女权解放运动势头渐盛，“女权主义”这个词似乎因为两个原因威胁到人们：“其一，因为他们不理解它；其二，因为他们确实理解它！”
《女士》杂志在20世纪80年代经历了多次易主（包括由斯泰纳姆本人领导的女性投资者财团），并经历了一段无广告出版时期，之后转型为季刊。随着美国女性地位的变化，杂志也持续发展。1972年，女性仅占医生群体的10%、律师群体的4%和工程师群体的1%。五十年后，这些比例分别增长到38%、41%和16%。
但斯泰纳姆表示，女性平等的革命仍在进行中。“障碍已经移动，但仍然存在障碍，”斯泰纳姆在2006年接受《星期日晨报》采访时表示，“过去你找不到工作，现在你工作几年后就会遇到瓶颈。过去婚姻不平等，现在生孩子后依然不平等。谢天谢地，障碍已经移动了。这里有了更多获得解放的空间。但障碍仍然存在，需要我们去推动。”
![2017年1月21日，格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆在华盛顿特区华盛顿妇女大游行的集会上发表演讲。凯文·马祖尔/WireImage/盖蒂图片社摄]
自20世纪60年代以来，一些人一直在贬低“女权主义”一词本身，斯泰纳姆在2015年接受哥伦比亚广播公司新闻采访时表示，她认为女权主义的核心原则在当今已大体获得认可：“如果人们去查字典，就会发现（女权主义者）指的是一个人——无论男女——相信男女完全平等，那么他们确实会认同这一点。现在大多数人都这样，而过去并非如此。”
将女权主义推向主流
格洛丽亚·玛丽·斯泰纳姆于1934年3月25日出生在俄亥俄州托莱多市。由于家庭频繁搬迁，她童年居无定所，一家住在拖车里，直到十几岁时父母分居并离婚。斯泰纳姆和母亲定居托莱多，格洛丽亚后来开始照顾患有精神疾病的母亲。随后她搬到华盛顿特区，与姐姐苏珊一起生活并完成高中学业。
1956年，斯泰纳姆以优等生身份从史密斯学院毕业，并获得奖学金前往印度。途中在伦敦时，她接受了医生的帮助进行堕胎，而当时堕胎在英国（和美国）都是非法的。她在2015年接受美国国家公共广播电台采访时表示，她曾尝试过其他方法终止妊娠，但都失败了：“我当时真的很绝望。我只知道，如果我回家结婚，那是必然的，我会嫁给错误的人；那将不是属于我的人生，完全不是我的人生。”
斯泰纳姆的记者生涯始于纽约市，她为多家刊物撰稿。（1965年的一篇《纽约时报》文章标题为《编辑部里的尼龙丝袜》。）她的首个重要任务是1962年为《君子》杂志撰写一篇关于避孕和婚前性行为的文章。
1963年，她在《Show》杂志发表的两篇卧底报道引起轰动，她伪装成花花公子兔女郎，在休·海夫纳的花花公子俱乐部工作了两周。她穿着高跟鞋，被迫穿上特意小两号的兔女郎服装，以凸显女服务员的曲线。她写道：“腰部的束腰会让斯嘉丽·奥哈拉都望而却步。（整个）设计倾向于把所有可见的赘肉都推到胸部。我确定弯腰会很危险。”
这篇文章揭露了俱乐部内的性骚扰以及幕后对女性员工的剥削（包括强制验血和妇科检查），引发了巨大反响。但斯泰纳姆对报道的结果有着复杂的感受。正如她在2011年接受《Interview》杂志采访时解释的那样：
“起初，从职业角度来看，这是一个巨大的错误，我真的很后悔。我刚开始被认真当作自由撰稿人对待，但在那篇花花公子文章发表后，我收到的大多是邀请我以其他半露骨方式卧底的请求。情况糟糕到我甚至退还了将该文章改编成平装书的预付款，尽管我不得不借钱来还钱。……但女权主义让我意识到，我很高兴自己做了这件事——因为我认同所有最终沦为薪水微薄的女服务员的女性，她们穿着过高的高跟鞋，穿着太紧以至于无法呼吸的制服。她们中的大多数人只是想谋生，别无他法。……从某种意义上说，我们都过于被外在形象定义，而不是内在品质，而且大多从事薪水微薄的服务行业，我意识到我们都是兔女郎。”
1968年，《君子》杂志特写编辑克莱·费尔克邀请斯泰纳姆参与创办《纽约》杂志，这是一份新闻、流行文化和时尚刊物。该杂志的作者阵容包括汤姆·沃尔夫、吉米·布雷斯林和彼得·马斯等知名人士，格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆被宣传为“撰写女性杂志不允许她写的那种题材”。这些题材包括地方和国家政治、越南战争、“新婚姻”、育儿、福利以及女性与权力。作为她知名度的标志，她受邀参加《今夜秀》。
斯泰纳姆结识了多萝西·皮特曼·休斯，一位在纽约上西区的育儿倡导者，她曾为《纽约》杂志报道过休斯，两人一同公开露面讨论女权运动。（斯泰纳姆不喜欢公开演讲，更喜欢休斯陪伴在侧。）两人构思了一本旨在将女权主义推向主流的杂志，名为《女士》——这是一个新兴的称谓，用于指代不愿被“夫人”或“小姐”这些婚姻身份头衔束缚的女性。
费尔克自愿于1971年在《纽约》杂志的版面中刊登一期试刊号。随后斯泰纳姆和《女士》杂志团队展开宣传巡演：“当我到达加利福尼亚时，有人打电话给我参加的电台节目说，‘你知道吗，我们找不到这期杂志’，”斯泰纳姆在2023年接受《星期日晨报》采访时回忆道，“我惊慌失措地打电话给克莱·费尔克，我说，‘这里没有货’。结果发现，杂志已经售罄了！那一刻我意识到，你知道的，它拥有受众。”
超越《女士》杂志
1973年，斯泰纳姆与玛洛·托马斯、帕特里夏·卡宾和莱蒂·科廷·波格雷宾共同创立了妇女基金会，致力于推进妇女和女童事业，支持基层行动并倡导经济正义、安全保障和生殖自由。该基金会还发起了“带女儿上班日”活动，后来将其扩展到包括儿子在内的所有儿童。
斯泰纳姆参与扶持了其他致力于推进民权的团体和出版物。她帮助创立了妇女行动联盟，倡导平等、支持受虐妇女收容所并反对刻板印象；以及全国妇女政治核心小组，推动女性担任公职。
她曾是“支持选择选民”组织的主席和联合创始人（该组织后来与计划生育行动基金合并），也是生殖权利组织“选择美国”（现为URGE）的联合创始人。2004年，她与简·方达和罗宾·摩根共同创立了妇女媒体中心，这是一家非营利性进步女性媒体组织。
1999年，斯泰纳姆在接受《CBS晚间新闻》采访时被问及技术进步是否推动了女性地位的提升。斯泰纳姆对此表示否定。“政治变革、解放都不是自动发生的，”她说，“自尊、与他人团结起来、为自己挺身而出，这些都无可替代。解放不会从外部降临。权力不会被赋予给你。获取权力的过程本身就是赋权的一部分。”
2000年，曾认为婚姻是贬低人格的斯泰纳姆与大卫·贝尔结婚，他是一名人权活动家，也是演员克里斯蒂安·贝尔的父亲。“我们都惊呆了，”斯泰纳姆说，“我们俩都从没想过自己会结婚。”
那他们为什么结婚了？“我想这和我有关。首先，我当时66岁。我就是我自己。我不再觉得自己需要在任何方面牺牲自我。”
![2003年3月4日，格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆和她的丈夫大卫·贝尔在洛杉矶。美联社照片/丹·斯坦伯格摄]
但他们的共同生活在三年后结束，贝尔因脑淋巴瘤去世。“也许你永远无法释怀，”她说，“但这教会了我很多。即使我知道会发生什么，我也会选择和他一起经历这一切。”
她表示，失去丈夫让她明白了悲伤和抑郁的区别。“是的，因为人们会问我，‘你不抑郁吗？’我意识到，抑郁时一切都无关紧要。而悲伤时，一切都很重要。它让一切都变得真切动人。”
斯泰纳姆在90多岁时仍坚持写作和演讲，《女士》杂志很久以前提出的一些议题，如职场性骚扰和家庭暴力，随着#MeToo运动的兴起重新受到关注。
她为Viceland制作了一系列获得艾美奖提名的纪录片，主题是全球范围内针对女性的暴力行为，并联合制作并旁白了一部艾美奖获奖的HBO纪录片《多重人格：寻找致命记忆》。她也成为多部纪录片的主角，包括《格洛丽亚：她的自述》和《格洛丽亚们》。
2013年，斯泰纳姆获得奥巴马总统颁发的总统自由勋章，2019年，她获得国家民权博物馆颁发的自由奖。
![2013年11月20日，在白宫举行的仪式上，巴拉克·奥巴马总统向《女士》杂志联合创始人格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆颁发总统自由勋章。巴勃罗·马丁内斯·蒙塔涅斯/美联社摄]
斯泰纳姆撰写了多部著作，包括《意外人生》、《离谱行为与日常反抗》、《来自内部的革命：自尊之书》、《玛丽莲：诺玛·琼》和《走过六十与七十》。2014年的散文集题为《仿佛女性 mattered》（《仿佛女性重要》）。她还是霍顿·米夫林出版社《美国妇女历史读者伴侣》的编辑。
在2011年接受《Interview》杂志采访时，斯泰纳姆表示，她后悔浪费了一些时间：“我花了太长时间做自己已经得心应手的事情，或者写别人指派给我的报道，而不是争取那些我无法轻易获得的重要题材，或者自己动手做我认为重要的事。最让我担心的就是浪费时间。因为时间就是我们拥有的一切。”
Gloria Steinem, trailblazing figure in women’s liberation movement, dies at age 92
2026-09-03T06:19:00-0400 / CBS News
By David Morgan
Updated on: September 3, 2026 / 7:35 AM EDT / CBS News
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women’s liberation movement in the latter half of the 20th century, has died. She was 92.
The Gloria Steinem Foundation said in a social media post Thursday that she “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” The cause of death was not given.
“She was one of the architects of the entire structure of women’s equality, I mean tearing down those obstacles to young women being able to participate where their talents and hard work took them,” former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told “CBS Mornings” on Thursday.
“Gloria was at heart an optimist,” Clinton said. “Her activism was rooted in optimism, and that’s a moral choice, and she made it every day.”
Heralded by Newsweek magazine in 1971 as “The New Woman,” Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, the first major publication to be owned, run and written by women. Ms. was a spearhead for the promotion of equal rights, helping to raise awareness about issues of inclusion, media representation and social justice affecting women and girls, at a time when politics, mass media and consumerism were becoming conflated as never before.
As a journalist, Steinem exploded the notions that “women’s issues” were confined to women, or that female voices did not belong in discussions of politics or war. Steinem was a tireless advocate for women’s voices in politics — at the ballot box, and in the halls of power — by fighting for voting rights and promoting female candidates for office.
Gloria Steinem on Jan. 15, 2013, in Pasadena, Calif. Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
She advanced the cause of economic and social justice for women and girls, including reproductive freedom and safety from domestic violence, and worked to advance women in media. And a simple idea, Take Our Daughters to Work Day, begun by the Ms. Foundation for Women to advance opportunities in the workplace, would become a global endeavor encompassing millions of daughters (and sons) as it fought gender stereotypes.
The birth of Ms.
In her early years as a reporter for New York magazine in the late 1960s, Steinem attended a gathering of women speaking out about their experiences obtaining an illegal abortion. She told “Sunday Morning” in 2006, “I heard women standing up and saying in public and taking seriously something that only affected women. Up until then, I’d never heard that. If it didn’t also affect men, it couldn’t be ‘serious.’ Something that was illegal, shameful, theoretically. (Women who had abortions) had to enter a criminal underground. And suddenly I thought, ‘Wait a minute: You know, if one and three or four of us, and I too, had had that experience, why is it illegal?’ And that was the beginning of the unraveling.”
That “unraveling” of consciousness would lead to Ms. Magazine. Co-founded with activist Dorothy Pittman Hughes, the publication’s first full issue appeared on newsstands on July 1, 1972. In addition to having Wonder Woman on its cover, the issue featured a petition signed by women of various backgrounds announcing that they had had an abortion and were demanding that it become safe and legal. (It would be another year before the Supreme Court’s decision to protect abortion rights with Roe v. Wade, which stood until 2022.)
Katherine Spillar, an executive editor of Ms., who compiled a 2023 anthology titled “50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution,”told “Sunday Morning” that the magazine started and amplified trends, including “a lot of articles about men and marriage and relationships and childrearing and politics and violence against women — (issues) that keep coming back. And it shows the endurance of this movement, but also the endurance of our opponents.”
Feminist and activist Gloria Steinem speaks at a rally outside the United Nations in New York City in 1978. Bettye Lane/Photo Researchers History via Getty Images
And of course there was controversy. A cover photo advertising a story about sexual harassment on the job, depicting a man fondling a doll, got the magazine pulled off newsstands. And selling ads was a challenge; the head of a major cosmetics company told Steinem that women who read Ms. don’t buy makeup, while car manufacturers didn’t want to advertise because they didn’t believe women bought cars.
Still, the magazine persisted, and won awards while publishing articles by such writers as Barbara Ehrenreich, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Susan Faludi, Susan Brownmiller, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Jane Wagner. It continued as feminism itself charted new courses. While coming under attack from commentators on the right, who claimed the magazine denigrated “family values,” Ms. was also attacked by some on the left, who claimed the magazine was too conservative and lacked a diversity of opinion.
Steinem said that, as the women’s liberation movement picked up steam, the very word “feminism” seemed to threaten people for two reasons: “One, because they didn’t understand it, and two, because they did understand it!”
Ms. underwent several owners beginning in the 1980s (including a female-driven consortium of investors led by Steinem herself), and a period of ad-free publication, before transitioning to a quarterly. And it continued as the status of women in America changed. In 1972, only 10% of doctors, 4% of lawyers and 1% of engineers were women. Five decades later, those figures had grown to 38%, 41%and 16%, respectively.
But Steinem said the revolution about equality for women is still being fought. “There’s a barrier that has moved, but there’s still a barrier,” Steinem told “Sunday Morning” in 2006. “So, what used to be you couldn’t get a job, now you hit a ceiling after a few years. What used to be unequal marriage, is now unequal after children are born. The barrier has moved, thank goodness. So, there’s more room back here that’s liberated. But the barrier is still there to be pushed.”
Gloria Steinem speaks at a rally during the Women’s March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Kevin Mazur/WireImage via Getty Images
While some were denigrating the term “feminism” itself since the 1960s, Steinem told CBS News in 2015 that she believed the core tenets of feminism are by and large approved of today: “If people just go to the dictionary and discover that [feminist] means a person — male or female —who believes in the full equality of women and men, then they do subscribe to it. And it is a majority now, which it didn’t used to be.”
Pushing feminism into the mainstream
Born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Marie Steinem lived an itinerant life as her family moved about, residing in a house trailer, until her parents’ separation and divorce when she was a teenager. Steinem and her mother settled in Toledo, where Gloria ended up caring for her mom, who suffered from mental illness. She then moved to Washington, D.C., to live with her older sister, Susanne, and complete high school.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in 1956, Steinem traveled to India on a scholarship. On her way, while in London, she received a doctor’s assistance in obtaining an abortion, something that was illegal in Britain (and America) at the time. She told NPR in 2015 that she’d tried other methods to terminate her pregnancy but failed: “I really was desperate. I just knew that if I went home and married, which I would’ve had to do, it would be to the wrong person; it would be to a life that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t mine at all.”
Steinem’s career as a journalist began in New York City, where she contributed as a writer to several publications. (One 1965 New York Times article was titled “Nylons in the Newsroom”.) Her first major assignment was a 1962 Esquire article on contraception and premarital sex.
She made a splash with her two-part 1963 exposé in Show magazine for which she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. She spent two weeks in high heels, forced to wear a Bunny costume that was purposely two sizes too small in order to accentuate the female servers’ curves. She wrote, “The boning in the waist would have made Scarlett O’Hara blanch. [The] entire construction tended to push all available flesh up to the bosom. I was sure it would be perilous to bend over.”
The article, which exposed sexual harassment on the club’s floor and the toll on female employees behind the scenes (including mandatory blood tests and gynecological exams), was a sensation. But Steinem had mixed feelings regarding the outcome. As she explained in a 2011 conversation with Interview magazine:
“At first, it was such a gigantic mistake from a career point of view that I really regretted it. I’d just begun to be taken seriously as a freelance writer, but after the Playboy article, I mostly got requests to go underground in some other semi-sexual way. It was so bad that I returned an advance to turn the Playboy article into a paperback, even though I had to borrow the money. … But feminism did make me realize that I was glad I did it – because I identified with all the women who ended up an underpaid waitress in too-high heels and a costume that was too tight to breathe in. Most were just trying to make a living and had no other way of doing it. … In the sense that we’re all identified too much by our outsides instead of our insides and are mostly in underpaid service jobs, I realized we’re all Bunnies.”
In 1968 Esquire features editor Clay Felker invited Steinem to help found New York Magazine, a news, pop culture and style publication. With a writer’s rostrum that included such names as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Peter Maas, Gloria Steinem was advertised as “writing about the kind of things the ladies magazines don’t let her write about.” Those topics included local and national politics, the Vietnam War, the “New Marriage,” childcare, welfare, and women and power. As a sign of her celebrity, she was invited onto “The Tonight Show.”
Steinem befriended Dorothy Pittman Hughes, a childcare advocate on New York’s Upper West Side whom she profiled for New York, and the two made public appearances together to discuss the women’s movement. (Steinem was uncomfortable speaking in public, and preferred to have Hughes with her.) The two devised a magazine that aimed to push feminism into the mainstream, called Ms. — a newly emerging designation for women who did not want to be bound by the titles Mrs. or Miss, identifiers of marital status.
Felker volunteered to publish a sample issue within the pages of New York magazine in 1971. Steinem and the Ms. team then hit the publicity circuit: “And when I got to California, somebody called the radio show I was on and said, ‘You know, we can’t find it,’” Steinem recalled to “Sunday Morning” in 2023. “And I called Clay Felker in a panic and I said, ‘It didn’t get here.’ And it turned out, it had sold out! That was a moment of recognition that, you know, it had an audience.”
Beyond Ms.
In 1973, Steinem — along with Marlo Thomas, Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin — created the Ms. Foundation for Women to advance the cause of women and girls, supporting grassroots efforts and advocating for economic justice, safety and reproductive freedom. The foundation also created the Take Our Daughters to Work Day initiative, which was later expanded to sons and daughters.
Steinem was involved in helping nurture other groups and publications dedicated to advancing civil rights. She helped found the Women’s Action Alliance, which advocated for equality, supported battered women’s shelters, and fought stereotyping; and the National Women’s Political Caucus, which promoted women in public office.
She was president and co-founder of Voters for Choice (which later merged with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund), and was co-founder of the reproductive rights organization Choice USA (now URGE). In 2004, she co-founded (along with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan) the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit progressive women’s media organization.
In 1999 Steinem was asked by the “CBS Evening News” whether technological advances were responsible for the advancement of women. Steinem discounted that. “There’s nothing automatic about political change, about liberation,” she said. “There’s no substitute for self-respect, banding together with other people, standing up for ourselves. Liberation does not come from outside. Power can’t be given to you. The process of taking it is part of the empowerment.”
In 2000, Steinem — who once thought marriage was demeaning — married David Bale, a human rights activist and the father of actor Christian Bale. “We shocked ourselves, both of us,” Steinem said. “Neither one of us thought that we wanted to get married.”
So, why did they? “It was something about me, I think. First of all, I was 66 years old. I was who I was. I no longer felt that I would have to give myself up in any way.”
Gloria Steinem and her husband David Bale in Los Angeles on March 4, 2003. AP Photo/Dan Steinberg
But their life together ended three years later, when Bale died of lymphoma of the brain. “Maybe you never make peace with it,” she said. “But it taught me an enormous amount. Even if I knew what was going to happen, I would have chosen to go through it with him.”
She said that losing her husband made her understand the difference between sadness and depression. “Yes, because people would say to me, ‘Aren’t you depressed?’ And I realized that in depression, nothing matters. And in sadness, everything matters. It makes everything poignant.”
Steinem continued writing and lecturing into her 90s, as some of the topics introduced long ago by Ms. Magazine, such as sexual harassment in the workplace and domestic violence, took on new force with the rise of the #MeToo movement.
She co-produced a series of Emmy-nominated documentaries about violence against women around the world for Viceland, and co-produced and narrated an Emmy-winning HBO documentary, “Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories.” She was also the subject of documentaries, including “Gloria: In Her Own Words,” and “The Glorias.”
In 2013, Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and in 2019, she received the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.
President Barack Obama awards Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. magazine, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on Nov. 20, 2013, during a ceremony at the White House. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Steinem wrote numerous books, including “An Unexpected Life,” “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem,” “Marilyn: Norma Jean,” and “Doing Sixty and Seventy.” A 2014 collection of her essays was titled “As If Women Matter.” She was an editor of Houghton Mifflin’s “The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History.”
In her 2011 talk with Interview magazine, Steinem said that she felt regret for having wasted any time: “I continued for too long to do things that I already knew how to do, or to write stories that I was assigned instead of fighting for stories that I couldn’t get, or doing ones that I thought were important on my own. The wasting of time is the thing I worry about the most. Because time is all there is.”