The Things Women Can Do Today That Gloria Steinem Had to Fight For

There are things women do today without necessarily thinking of them as feminist acts. They keep their surname after marriage, decide not to marry, talk about their salary, write publicly about abortion, call out sexism at work, say they do not want children, or question why the mother is automatically expected to step back from her career when a baby arrives.

None of these choices appeared overnight. For decades, women argued for the right to make decisions about their own lives without having to justify every one of them, and Gloria Steinem was one of the most visible voices in that fight.

The American journalist, writer and feminist activist died at her home in New York on September 2, 2026, at the age of 92. For more than six decades, Steinem was one of the best-known figures of the women’s movement in the United States.

Her legacy is easier to understand when you look at the things that feel ordinary now.

When women’s lives were treated as a side subject

Before Steinem became famous as a feminist activist, she was a journalist trying to get serious assignments. In 1963, she went undercover at New York’s Playboy Club for 11 days, and her two-part investigation showed what working as a Playboy Bunny actually involved behind the glamorous image, including low pay, uncomfortable costumes and difficult working conditions.

The story made her famous, but it also followed her around. Editors began seeing her as “the Bunny” rather than the reporter who had produced the investigation, which showed how easily a woman could expose sexism and still be reduced to an image.

Newsrooms at the time also had fairly rigid ideas about what women should write about. Politics and public affairs were largely treated as serious subjects, while women were more often pushed towards stories around marriage, beauty, homes and family life.

In 1971, Steinem helped co-found Ms. magazine, which treated reproductive rights, work, domestic violence, politics and discrimination as subjects worthy of serious coverage.

Today, stories about unequal housework, sexual harassment or reproductive rights do not need to explain why they belong in mainstream media. That was not always the case.

Choosing your own life was once the controversial part

Steinem spoke often about marriage, motherhood and the narrow choices available to women. Women had always worked, travelled, remained unmarried and built independent lives, but what changed was the insistence that these should be valid choices rather than decisions that needed defending.

Steinem herself did not marry until she was 66 and did not have children.

In her writing and speeches, she kept returning to the idea that women should be able to decide what shape their own lives would take.

That idea still feels unfinished in many ways. Single women are asked when they plan to settle down, married women are still often expected to adjust their careers after having children, and women who do not want children are routinely told they may change their minds.

There are more choices now, but the judgement around them has not disappeared.

Saying abortion out loud

Steinem had an abortion when she was 22, at a time when abortion was illegal in much of the United States. Years later, while reporting on an abortion speakout in New York, she listened to women describe their experiences publicly and later said that moment played an important role in her becoming active in the feminist movement.

For generations, experiences central to women’s lives were kept private. Menstruation, miscarriage, abortion, contraception and sexual violence affected millions of women, but respectable public conversation often avoided them.

Steinem helped bring many of those subjects into the open. The fact that reproductive rights can now be discussed openly does not mean those rights are secure, especially when abortion access in the United States has moved backwards in recent years and access across the world still depends heavily on law, geography and money.

Progress does not stay put simply because it was won once.

Naming sexism changed the conversation

One of the biggest changes brought by the feminist movement was language. Women gained words for experiences that had often been dismissed as personal problems, including sexism, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, unpaid care work and reproductive freedom.

Before sexual harassment was widely recognised as a workplace issue, women still faced unwanted advances, coercion and inappropriate comments. What was missing was a commonly understood way of saying that these were not isolated incidents.

Steinem’s writing often took something women had been taught to keep private and placed it in a larger social context, and that way of thinking still shapes conversations around gender today.

Gloria Steinem was never the whole movement

There is always a temptation to tidy up someone’s legacy after they die, but Steinem’s was not without criticism. Her prominence within second-wave feminism was questioned by women who felt the media preferred an attractive, white, educated woman as the face of a movement that was much broader and more diverse.

Her 1998 defence of Bill Clinton during sexual harassment allegations drew criticism for years, and Steinem later said she would not write the same piece again. Her earlier writing about transgender people was also criticised, while she later publicly supported trans people living authentic lives.

She also credited Black women activists including Florynce Kennedy, Shirley Chisholm, Evelyn Cunningham and Fannie Lou Hamer with shaping her understanding of activism.

Her place in feminist history is important, but it was never a one-woman story.

The legacy is in the things that no longer look radical

A young woman can apply for a job her grandmother may never have been considered for. A wife can keep her surname, a woman can decide marriage is not for her, and someone who reports harassment can reasonably expect the workplace to have a policy for dealing with it.

A girl can also grow up assuming she can become a journalist, politician, scientist, athlete or CEO without first asking whether women are allowed into that space.

None of this means equality has been achieved. It means some things that once needed defending have become normal enough that younger women may not realise how recently they were contested.

When Steinem’s death was announced, her family and foundation remembered her not only for what she said, but for her ability to listen and make people feel seen and heard.

Her death is a reminder that many freedoms women now consider ordinary had to be fought for, and some of those fights are still unfinished.