1. She co-founded Ms. magazine
2. She said, “A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.”
3. She used her skill has a journalist to explain and fight for women’s rights.
4. She went undercover as a Playboy Bunny not to write a sexy story but to expose harsh, exploitative working conditions.
5. She said of her own choice to have an abortion, “No matter how hard I tried to feel guilty … I couldn’t.”
6. She insisted on sharing her speaking engagements with women of color.
7. She has always embraced each younger generation’s feminist movement.
8. She has long advocated for affordable and available childcare in the U.S.
9. She said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
10. She can still tap dance, and when she was young she dreamed of becoming a Rockette.
11. She wrote the much-reprinted article, “If Men Could Menstruate.”
12. She said, “Someone asked me why women don’t gamble as much as men do … women’s total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.”
13. She said of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, “Catwoman is a feminist superhero with a story line and transformation of her own—plus class consciousness, a girl buddy, equal skills with the Batman equipment and an apartment of her own in Old Town.”
14. She protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
15. “She helped change the way the world the world thinks about women, and changed the way women think of themselves”—Marie Leonard (via Twitter)
16. She cofounded the Women’s Media Center
17. She helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus
18. Every Passover, she takes part in a women’s seder with her friends in New York City.
19. She said, “A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men.”
20. She also said, “Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.”
21. She wrote about female genital mutilation in 1980, long before it became commonly recognized.
22. She weighed in on Miley Cyrus and gave us all a lesson.
23. She makes her points with “good humor and verve,” which “may not be political qualities, per se, but they sure help change hearts and minds.”—Patricia Stokes, women and gender studies professor, Ohio University (via Twitter)
24. She has said, “I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much—and I’m using it to light the torches of others.”
25. She has yet to retire from the feminist fight. And she never will.
Photo of Gloria Steinem by Flickr user Jewish Women’s Archive under license from Creative Commons 2.0
