Gloria Steinem Lit a Revolution. The Torch Is Ours Now.
This week, Gloria Steinem died at the age of 92, peacefully at her home in New York City and surrounded by people who loved her.
We will miss her at Ms. I will miss her personally.
There were parts of Gloria’s childhood that mirrored my own. For a period of time, Gloria did not attend school because she was tending to her mother. She later said that she chose not to have children because she had already had a mother to take care of.
We do not talk enough about stories like that: the sensitivity that came from her own childhood. Pronatalism in the United States still insists that all women should want children, care for those children, stay home and find satisfaction within the narrow boundaries others have drawn for them. Even education has historically been framed not as a path toward women’s intellectual or economic freedom, but as a place to find a husband.
To want something more—and to care about something larger than the life prescribed for you—has always carried challenging consequences for women. Gloria understood that deeply. She also understood that the freedom to shape one’s life begins with the ability to govern one’s own body.
In 2017, standing before the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., Gloria called for “a deep democracy” in which people would refuse to be quiet or controlled. “We are at one with each other,” she said. “We are looking at each other, not up. No more asking Daddy.”
Those words carry a special weight today. Democracy has never been a gift delivered from above. Equality has never arrived because people in power suddenly found it convenient. Both are built by people who recognize one another, tell the truth about their lives and refuse to accept that injustice is inevitable.
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Rest in Power, Robin Morgan—Ms. Editor, Poet, Feminist and Architect of the Women’s Movement
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Rest in Power: Gloria Steinem, Ms. Cofounder and Feminist Visionary
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Fall 2026 Cover Reveal: Gloria Steinem Changed the Story, and Taught Us to Keep Telling It
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Gloria Steinem in Her Own Words: On Trump, Roe v. Wade, and the Birth of the Modern Women’s Rights Movement
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Gloria Steinem: The People’s Feminist
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‘At Last, We Know We Are Not Alone’: Gloria Steinem on Ms., the Feminist Movement and the Work Still Ahead
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Justices Sotomayor and Jackson Sound the Alarm on SCOTUS’ Dangerous Deference to Trump on Mail-In Voting
In this episode, Dr. Goodwin breaks down what the latest Supreme Court ruling on voting rights actually says and what it doesn’t. (Of course, it means everyone’s hair is on fire.) Given that this Supreme Court has tried in every way possible to make it more difficult for people to vote, dismantling the Voting Rights Act—an act that had been supported over the years by both Republicans and also Democrats—what hot mess is next?
The 1965 Voting Rights Act was one that had been embraced over the years strongly by Republicans and Democrats. As Dr. Goodwin discusses, this Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has unraveled it, knowingly pulling the thread in order to disintegrate of one of the most essential pieces of legislation in American history, which protected all Americans. She reminds us that the very first suffragists in the United States were white men who had been dispossessed from the right to vote because they were not wealthy. Sit back and take a listen.
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- Statement of the Feminist Majority Foundation on the Death of Gloria Steinem
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Fall 2026 Cover Reveal: Gloria Steinem Changed the Story, and Taught Us to Keep Telling It
In our Fall 2026 issue, we remember Gloria not only for the words she wrote, the organizations she helped build or the barriers she broke, but for the connections she made.
Perhaps her greatest gift was her ability to listen, to make people feel capable of changing the world, and to build relationships across generations and movements. She knew that the work would outlast any one of us. The responsibility was to keep telling the story—and to make room for those who would tell it next.
Join today to get our newest issue delivered straight to your mailbox—and help sustain the independent feminist journalism Gloria worked to make possible.
Photo by Jenny Warburg
‘Everybody Needs Somebody’: A Single Mother on Guaranteed Income, Community and Making It Work
Front & Center, a series from Ms. magazine and Springboard to Opportunities, puts the voices of Black women most affected by today’s policy debates at the center of the conversation. The series highlights the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which provides Black mothers living in federally subsidized housing with $1,000 per month for one year.
Candace, a 33-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., received one year of guaranteed income through the trust. She is working toward her life insurance license and dreams of starting a business helping people with cancer find high-quality wigs—all while building a more secure future for her children.
“Motherhood is hardest when you’re doing it by yourself, period,” Candace writes. “I want people to understand that the only way this works is if we help each other. There is no way around it. Everybody needs a community. Everybody needs somebody.
“Everything I do is based around my kids. Don’t invite me if my kids can’t come.
“The help that is supposed to be available for working mothers through government programs can be iffy. Unless you are completely unemployed, it can feel like you do not receive anything. But we are still struggling. We still live paycheck to paycheck, and people expect us to provide food out of that too. It is not realistic.”
