Tributes to Gloria Steinem

There have been many important and heartfelt tributes to Gloria since her passing. Her life was an inspiration for the unfinished journey toward full equality for women and girls. But she was also a gift for men.

A few months before she passed, I had the chance to participate in one of her salon events – one focusing on men.  It was a somewhat predictable fiasco: some 25 powerful (i.e. celebrity, wealthy for the most part) women and a few men who study or talk about manhood. The women were not particularly inclined toward any generosity to men (understandably, as several mentioned difficult divorces they were going through or had recently gone through). They complained about men not doing their share of the care work, not knowing how to buy a birthday present, the unfair mental load. One asked: Does anyone know a man who even knows how to buy you a present? I sheepishly offered that I thought I was sometimes good at it, but that it took some practice and learning. Maybe, I suggested, we should take the moments to talk to our daughters and sons about the important skill of present-buying.

The few men in the salon were respectfully mostly listening, save for a celebrity divorce attorney man who was mostly selling his services and repeating: get a prenup. Laughter and nods.

It was a classic and somewhat tired example of men’s and women’s interactions playing out before the mostly quiet Gloria. Her energy level, at the age of 92, was understandably much lower than when I had seen her on stage some years before.

But her wit and intellect were very much there. When one of the men in the group said that he participated in martial arts and found that men had no problem touching and showing affection in the context of competitive and contact sport, Gloria quickly jabbed: “That sounds more like repressed homophobia than a true expression of affection.” Touche.

“We badly need to raise our boys more like girls,” she said once. I have quoted her on that a few times in talks I have given or when talking with friends or colleagues. I know more than a few fathers (and mothers) of sons who get nervous about that or bristle when I have reported that to them. Our ideas about gender are so deeply wired in the U.S. (and in most societies) that for a boy to be seen like a girl it is considered emasculating and castrating. In surveys we have carried out with parents in the U.S. the majority worry how their sons will be treated in school if they are not seen as manly. And the consequences are real: physical and verbal bullying, mostly of the homophobic kind.

It seems ridiculous that in 2026 we would have to worry about this. The things Gloria meant by raising our sons to be more like our daughters are fairly normal, and most of us agree with them. That we would teach our sons to listen, to seek help when they need it, to be authentic in their voice and expressing their emotions, to care for others, to do the care work at home (of children and the elderly), to care about our planet. Conservatives and liberals and the rest in the middle can agree with those basic ideas – except when we put the gender labels on them.

Gloria cited research by my organization and others who work in the masculinity space: the research finding that men who hold more rigid, traditionalist views about manhood are more likely to be depressed, to think about suicide, to not seek help when they need it, and to binge drink and harm others. These “man box” ideas that we and many others have studied and discussed are a key reason men die on average nearly five years earlier than women.

The other gift Gloria offered to men is found in something else she said: “We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.” That quote contains multitudes. Equimundo’s research has found how much this generation of young men is striving to get rich before 30, how much the economy feels precarious to them (it is, for all of us) and how much they feel their manhood is associated with their financial success. In a moment when a majority of young men in the U.S. think home ownership is increasingly out of reach (it is), their manhood is one of trying to achieve a wealth or prosperity that is increasingly out of research for men, as it has historically been out of reach for too many women (not to mention lower income men and men of color).

There is much discussion about a crisis of masculinity at the moment. I think Gloria would have agreed with me that masculinity is always about crisis: It’s an idea that can never be achieved and even if you can, it may kill you in the process. It is more often power without heart than heartful power. Our current economic model and model of manhood is leading to no shortage of male insecurity, men’s harm toward others and plenty of male self-harm, not to mention making a whole cadre of online influencers rich as the peddle dubious self-help and protein supplements to men.

Ultimately Gloria saw feminism as humanism. Her simple truth was that if we believe in the innate and undeniable humanity of women and girls, we believe in the innate and undeniable humanity of all of us. And in the process boys and men get to be more caring, more connected, more grounded, and perhaps live longer and love better. In creating a world where women are free of violence and harassment, men and boys live free of violence as well.

I feel glad and lucky that I got to meet her in her living room, to see her wit and generosity. To witness her belief that men are also harmed and constricted by the real and amorphous thing we call manhood. To see her avoiding any simple man-critiquing or point-scoring.

Thank you for your many gifts to women, Gloria, and your gifts to men. I count myself lucky as a man to have raised an empowered daughter in a world where gender equality seems the default, even if there is much to do. Gloria’s voice was part of making that possible. She inspires me as a man, and a human. This part especially: “Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”

Ms. Magazine, designed to be a profit-making and mass-market magazine promoting the cause of women’s equality, was a great achievement. It was not Steinem’s alone; it was a group effort. But it was hugely significant: A friend in North Carolina, when I was teaching at Duke, told me that she’d first encountered the women’s movement when she glanced at a copy of Ms. in a doctor’s waiting room in the late 1970s. Oh, women’s liberation, she thought. What a neat idea!

The Magazine continues and has generated msmagazine.com, for which I love to write, and which covers everything under the feminist sun — including Reproductive Justice, transgender feminisms, contemporary threats to democracy and what misogyny and “gender ideology” have to do with them, etc.

Something nobody knows about Gloria Steinem: My current book project lies at the corner of LGBTQ+ and disability, as well as feminist and legal, history. While researching in the papers of Corbett OToole, a signally important disabled lesbian activist for whom the Jewish feminist who mattered most was wheelchair-using advocate Judith Heumann, rather than Steinem, I found the photo below of a group of wheelchair-using feminists, including Heumann (in glasses), sitting with Steinem in an impromptu meeting during the National Women’s Conference of 1977. (On this, see Marjorie Spruill’s great book, Divided We Stand.)

Photo by Corbett OToole, from the 1977 Women’s Conference, Houston, TX, OToole papers, Hormel Collection, San Francisco Public Library. Image: A woman, recognizably Gloria Steinem (glasses, hair), sits crosslegged on the floor. In a circle around her are 5 women in wheelchairs, one identifiably Center for Independent Living and Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund leader Judith Heumann. They are speaking and writing. She is listening.

I love this photo because Steinem is on the floor, in a gesture of humility, listening closely, apparently totally ready to learn from the disabled women around her, who are apparently making demands, thinking things through, and insisting on the importance of their perspectives. (I have other documentary evidence of the disabled women’s push for recognition at that conference.) This is how she operated. The ability to listen and learn was essential to her ability to stay in the fight for so many years.

(https://feliciakornbluh.substack.com/p/history-teaches-gloria-they-havent?r=1826og&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true)

I was a 24-year-old divorced mother of a two-year-old child when I first heard Gloria speak about the very challenges I was facing: I couldn’t get a credit card or a bank loan or even car insurance without a husband’s signature. I was a full-time college instructor with graduate degrees, and I was being paid less than my male colleagues with the same education and experience. I had known since girlhood in the rural South that life wasn’t a level playing field, but with a strong grandmother and a teacher who encouraged me, I had defied some of the limitations, but there were reminders of the differences for women at nearly every step of the journey. Gloria was speaking out about these barriers to our aspirations as well as legal and economic barriers based on our gender and not on our qualifications, education, experience or ambitions. For many in my generation of women, she was speaking our truth and we were ready for change. Gloria Steinem would write later about this moment of realization:

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

I was both — freed by acknowledging what I was experiencing and frustrated that I, alone, wasn’t able to break through the limitations and angry enough to quit my underpaid teaching position and take a big risk–move to New York to pursue my dream to write and to somehow get involved in this new women’s movement for greater equality.

1971 was the year that the media made Gloria the name and face of the women’s movement in the US by putting her on the cover of “Newsweek”. There were many leaders and writers at the forefront of the movement, but Gloria could articulate the cause in ways that got attention — and yes, she was also attractive in her signature aviator glasses, long hair parted in the middle, hip belts and short shirt (later black pants). Media‘s elevation gave Gloria a bigger sphere of influence, but Gloria was always the first to acknowledge she didn’t lead alone. She brought Florynce Kennedy, Dorothy Pittman, Robin Morgan, Pat Carbine and many others into the spotlight that the media was giving her, but the media tried to create a narrative of competitiveness among the leaders; in part to divide and weaken the impact. We all know this narrative that gives voice to the detractors, the cynics, the competitors for attention; a narrative that, in my opinion, impeded the movement’s progress and one that has held women back for generations. Essentially, the narrative rises from a mindset of scarcity–perpetuating the fear that if one light shines too brightly, others get dimmed, and if the jobs for women are scarce–and they were and are in many places– then women would have to be competitive to get the limited places.

For me, then and now, I reject that narrative–not because I haven’t witnessed it or felt it–but because I have also seen what happens when we shift the story from scarcity and women competing to women connecting, supporting each other, dropping down the ladders for those coming behind us. I’ve seen the abundance of opportunities that emerge when women become each other’s allies as well as mentors. For so many women, Gloria was a role model, a mentor, and an ally, but I understand how challenging it can be for women with power and influence to shift the narrative and to change the very nature of how power is gained or attributed or shared. Gloria often quoted someone whose words also had a profound impact on me: Congresswoman Bella Abzug, who challenged us to change the nature of power rather than allowing power to change the nature of us. I will never stop reminding myself and others of what will change when we do just that.

I knew Gloria as a woman who knew her power and influence and used it intentionally…and in my experience, most often for others. We may not have agreed on every agenda item or policy or action, but I admired her clarity about purpose and acknowledge her impact. From what she said, what she wrote, what she fought for and against, even her choices about what she wore and how she looked—everything about Gloria was purposeful, and influenced millions of other women.

(https://mailchi.mp/patmitchellmedia/reflections-on-a-dangerous-woman?e=9e957d807e)

I can’t stop thinking about Gloria Steinem’s living room. For years, Steinem gathered people in her New York City brownstone and asked them to sit together, without a head of the table, without hierarchy. She called them “Talking Circles.”

She said the practice was inspired in part by Indigenous traditions of gathering in a circle, something Steinem wrote about in her 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road.” As a journalist and author focused on human connection and social health, that part of the book always stayed with me.

“I was struck by how open and accessible she was,” Ann Shoket, CEO of a community of women and nonbinary leaders called TheLi.st, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday after finding out the feminist icon had died at 92. “She was also deeply real,” said Shoket, who tells me she mingled in Steinem’s living room twice at events held in recent months. “She made us all dream bigger.”

The conversations that took place in those circles would change lives in ways large and small. It’s where plans for Ms. Magazine and the nonprofit Women’s Media Center started to take shape. And frequently, it was the space Steinem offered to organizations like Third Wave, Equality Now and Direct Impact Africa to plan their next steps, marking “turning points” in their work, according to Gloria’s Foundation.

Much of the power of Steinem’s living room was that it cracked open opportunities to lend support, let ideas flow and build trust face-to-face. It fostered moments of welcome connection for decades, most recently in an era when nearly three-quarters of adults spend time with people they care about only twice a month or less, and about two-thirds say they never participate in clubs or organizations.

“Gloria was very interested in intergenerational connection,” Soraya Chemaly, author of “All We Want is Everything” and board member of the Women’s Media Center, tells me. “She listened to young women who sat in her living room, never talking down to them, always validating,” says Chemaly, who estimates that she was a guest in Steinem’s living room nearly a dozen times. “She built community and solidarity in a low-key and comfortable space.”

Gloria’s Foundation has announced that Steinem’s home will continue to be a site for individuals and organizations to gather.

(https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/04/how-to-gather-and-connect-like-gloria-steinem-says-expert.html)

All this time, I’ve been standing on Gloria Steinem’s shoulders without giving her a thought.

Of course, I knew she was the great feminist writer and activist who fought hard for women’s rights, and looked damn good doing it.

But it wasn’t until I read the brilliant obituary in the New York Times by Katharine Q. Seelye last week that I did the math.

The year that Ms. Magazine, which she co-founded, was first published (1971) was the year I graduated from grade school. As a high school journalist, therefore, there was never a world for me without Ms.

That’s not just Ms. the magazine, but also Ms. the title — the “honorific” that made it clear that women needn’t be defined by their marital status, as in Miss or Mrs. (Steinem didn’t invent the title, but she certainly helped bring it into the mainstream.)

That went hand in hand, I realize now, with my ingrained impression that I could reach for the stars, that there was nothing I couldn’t do.

Despite a traditional upbringing in which my two older brothers had a kind of primacy in the family that I lacked, I never entertained the thought that I couldn’t do something with my life because I was a girl. Or a woman.

And so, when it came time in my journalism career to break a glass ceiling or two, I didn’t agonize. I pushed hard, sometimes through sexist barriers, but not with any lack of self-confidence.

I became the first woman managing editor, and then the first woman editor in chief, of my hometown daily newspaper, The Buffalo News. After that second appointment, I got a big arrangement of flowers from an organization of women lawyers in Buffalo with a card reading, “We hear the sound of shattering glass.”

Later, in 2012, I became the first woman public editor, or ombudswoman, of the New York Times, at a moment when the Times had its first woman executive editor in Jill Abramson.

The progress toward equality for women, much of it led by Steinem and her allies, was fast and inexorable, though not without setbacks.

Before 1974, a single woman in the United States could not reliably get a credit card in her own name. A male relative (maybe a father or brother) would have to co-sign for a single, divorced or widowed woman. That went for getting a bank loan, too.

In 1973 came the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on abortion rights, Roe v. Wade.

And amid that era of great change, I was an impressionable teen, and a student journalist who was named the editor in chief of my high school newspaper. I was hired as a staff reporter in Buffalo in 1980.

The progress that others fought for was simply the water I swam in, rather thoughtlessly. I took a lot for granted.

I was talking about all of this with my friend Annette who knew Steinem well for many years. She asked a pointed question when I observed that, for me, there was never a world without nearly every option available

“Are they available to all now?” she asked. And she’s right. I had the advantage of a middle-class, rather bookish, upbringing, an outstanding education and attentive parents. I had the huge advantage of playing team sports — especially basketball — throughout my girlhood. I always knew that I would go to college.

For women without those advantages — especially for those in poverty or in non-supportive (or abusive) environments — the story is a far less rosy one.

There remains a lot of work to do. There’s still a big pay gap, for example, between men and women. And in this dangerously regressive era for reproductive rights, a great deal to be undone. That’s for all of us to take on.

Still, I’m so grateful to be Steinem’s beneficiary, to stand on her shoulders.

I was moved to tears by the end of the Times obituary, in which Ms. Seelye makes a deft, if subtle, allusion to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren:

(The feminist) movement was repeatedly declared passé during Ms. Steinem’s lifetime. Nevertheless, she persisted.

“At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m ‘passing the torch’” she wrote in “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.” “I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much — and I’m using it to light the torches of others.”

Words to live by.

(https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/thank-you-gloria-steinem)

The first and only time I met the late and great Gloria Steinem in person, I was at the annual conference of the National Women’s Studies Association.

It was in November of 2017. Steinem was already in her 80s, and I had settled into a keynote presentation by another feminist icon, the postcolonial feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty. She gave me the critical tools I needed to decenter Western culture and to position the rest of the world in the interests of feminisms. It was the kind of work that built on the feminist foundations laid by women like Steinem.

While engrossed in Mohanty’s lecture, I suddenly received a text pinging from my smart phone. One of the editors at Ms. Magazine with whom I regularly worked as a contributing writer, messaged me in excitement: “Gloria Steinem is at our Ms. Magazine Booth!”

Talk about a real dilemma. Do I walk out of a great lecture by one of my feminist scholar heroes, or do I meet another great feminist icon, one who was already in her elderly years? I weighed the circumstances. Mohanty would continue to attend this annual conference and have other opportunities to lecture, to convene, to even intermingle with the rest of us (and sure enough, it was not long before I had that opportunity to meet with Mohanty in a special group meeting years later). Would I ever get to meet Gloria Steinem outside of this moment?

Quietly and hurriedly, I skipped out on the keynote and made my way to the Ms. Magazine booth at the conference’s Exhibit Hall. I even had one of my magazine issues with me (the one with my cover story on “Beyoncé’s Fierce Feminism” for the spring 2013 issue).

What a moment that was! As I rushed to that booth, there was Gloria Steinem, quite diminutive but even in her 80s her recognizable features and long hair were undeniable. I shyly introduced myself, and she graciously greeted me and even made me feel at ease. Before long, I rediscovered my boldness and asked for her signature on my cover story. I remember our conversation quite well:

“Oh, Beyoncé’s feminism,” she noted approvingly. “I attended her Chime for Change concert. And when she addressed the women and girls in the audience and told us, ‘You are safe here.’ Well, she had me at hello.”

We then continued our conversation about Beyoncé, the significance of her bringing feminism into the mainstream, standing in front of that “feminist” sign at MTV’s Video Music Awards show in 2014. If nothing else, that moment—and my own in writing and naming the pop star’s efforts at women-centered messaging around gender equality—proved the lasting impact of Gloria Steinem and her popularization of feminism, as well as the overall influence of feminist-based media such as Ms. Magazine and its platforms used to champion gender liberation.

I was born in the 1970s, the same decade that Steinem did so much of her impactful work to galvanize the feminist movement: from helping to launch the magazine that featured my cover story, to championing reproductive rights and women’s independence. Because of women like Steinem, I was able to walk on pathways already paved by their bold and courageous fight that made it easier for my generation to matriculate to colleges that offered fields like women’s, gender and sexuality studies where I developed my doctoral scholarship and currently teach as a tenured professor. Because of women like Steinem, I can independently own my own credit cards and bank accounts, and I can also regulate my own reproductive choices (at least until 2022).

For a woman who for much of her time, opted out of marriage until age 66 and chose to remain childfree, Steinem married on her own timetable and demonstrated the independence and autonomy of a woman, beginning with the title “Ms.” that did away with announcing a woman’s single or marital status. And she did all that while maintaining important ties with progressive movements and demonstrating alliances with feminists of all stripes—from defending Black feminists like Angela Davis to befriending Alice Walker and bell hooks, to showing up wherever feminist work was being done.

Gloria Steinem leaves us just at the moment when the pushback against feminism threatens not just women and girls, but all genders and all communities that believe in social justice and equality. So, we grieve, we remember, we evaluate our heroes for their strengths (and sometimes their flaws), but we also move forward with past knowledges and struggles as we learn the necessary lessons their exemplary lives have taught us. The baton has been passed, and we owe it to those coming after us to keep the flame light burning, to persist, to fight, and to live this life for ourselves and for each other.

(https://www.wamc.org/commentary-opinion/2026-09-14/commentary-memories-of-gloria-steinem)

Gloria was bold, beautiful and feminine. She was my Wonder Woman.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Gloria Steinem didn’t just change the conversation, she changed what we believed was possible. She gave generations of women the language for their lives and the courage to claim them. And she reminds me of the spirit behind Bread and Roses: that we fight not only for survival, but for dignity: for a life with both the bread we need and the roses we deserve.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

I had the honor of meeting Gloria Steinem when working on a film (The Glorias) about her extraordinary life. Gloria rushed into the meeting wearing her signature silver belt and black tunic. She apologized, with humility, for being late; she was coming from a meeting at the United Nations where she was speaking about the powerful connection between countries being peaceful and equal rights for women. I couldn’t believe she’d been apologetic about being late to a film meeting when she’d been busy addressing an international body about subjects of deep import. But that was Gloria: humble, charming, funny, insightful and concerned about everyone else.

Every time I met with Gloria, she was the most present person in the room. When I say present, I do not mean the kind of charisma that demands attention for the self; I mean that she activated the entire room with the unique quality of her listening. I bonded with her over shared feminist values (which I’d inherited, in part, from her), but also over the act of writing. Many first associate the image of Gloria with her fist raised at a podium, speaking out and marching; what fascinated me as I dove into her history was how she managed to overcome a fear of public speaking because she had more latitude to speak freely at demonstrations than in print.

First and foremost, she began as a writer. She came to speaking later, when the journalistic constraints of the 60s (pre-Ms magazine) barred her from writing about feminist concerns like abortion. This is one of her many enduring lessons: that great leaders are not born with every quality they need, but are created through incredible acts of bravery, shaped by their profound sense of mission. Thank God that we still have her writing and her example as a road map. We need her legacy now more than ever, and though we won’t have her robust and encouraging laughter in the room, we will always have her powerful words.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Gloria Steinem has left us, but countless of her sayings are at hand for us to learn from: “We shall overcome” and “The truth will set you free, but first you will be pissed off” come to mind. But as I comb through her speeches, one from this year feels most urgent. “We only experience real empathy when we are flooded with oxytocin, and it only happens when we’re together,” she said while sitting in her living room, hosting a feminist salon in her 90s. The importance of coming together in person used to be a given, but not now in the age of digitized divide. May we gather in each other’s living rooms and activate empathy salons, united and empowered in honor of Gloria and all the women who have gathered before us.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, just a few hours away from my hometown of Canton, Ohio. Like so many of us, Steinem’s ambitions brought her to New York City, and it was there that her groundbreaking work as an investigative journalist, a second-wave feminist and a brave cultural critic laid the foundation for a generation of women after her. She died on Sept. 2, at the age of 92.

Looking at her life and her work through a Black feminist lens, Steinem’s legacy is a blueprint for giving credit where credit is due. She used her visibility to uplift Black women, and she was vocal about the ways that Black women shaped her politics. She toured with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, famously posing next to her, fist proudly raised in a 1971 issue of Esquire magazine.

She organized alongside civil rights activist Flo Kennedy, and she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus, with Shirley Chisholm and Fannie Lou Hamer. As founder and longtime editor of Ms. magazine, Steinem created a national platform that published the work of Black literary geniuses like Johnny Tillman, Alice Walker, Angela Davis and many others. Steinem’s understanding that Black women were central to feminist organizing was in tune with a broader political reality.

Research on Black women’s political attitudes found that in 1970, 60 percent of Black women supported efforts to strengthen women’s status, compared with 37 percent of white women. In 1972, 67 percent of Black women expressed sympathy with women’s liberation aspirations, compared with 35 percent of white women. Yet despite Black women’s leadership in this regard, media and institutions around it continued to distribute visibility and authority unevenly.

Steinem rose to prominence in an ecosystem where only a white woman would ever be cast as the movement’s face. Steinem, alongside Black feminists, including Alice Walker, challenged these exclusions even as they persisted within institutions, such as Ms. magazine itself. Her record shows what coalitions can accomplish and the importance of confronting moments when those coalitions fall short.

(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intersectionality-matters/id1441348908?i=1000787947344&r=3892)

Gloria Steinem made news when she turned 40 and a reporter remarked: “You don’t look 40!” She responded: “This is what 40 looks like.” I was 27 years old at the time. When I began to get this same comment when mentioning my age, I used Gloria’s exact words. By then her comment was part of the mantra women used to call forth a radical redefinition of women and aging that the on-going Women’s Liberation Movement continues to keep front and center. Just a few months ago I had a birthday and announced my age to a room full of people. Someone called out: “You don’t look 79!” To which I conjured Gloria and answered: “This is what 79 looks like.” Let us channel the force field that is Gloria Steinem.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Sex and the City wouldn’t exist without Gloria Steinem. She gave me and so many other women the courage to question societal norms – and the patriarchy – around what women could do, be and, most of all, think.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Gloria was very generous with her time and her energy, right up until the end. Every time I spoke to her, I heard about another event or trip or cause or organizing event. It’s been said many times and she’s spoken about it herself: she really loved getting people together.

I want people to know that she had a wicked sense of humor. That she was always willing to listen. That she was a joy to be with and didn’t take herself very seriously, but took the world incredibly seriously. And in spite of all of the recent setbacks that we’ve had in America as it relates to women, she was hopeful. She was not deterred.

I see her towering legacy as someone who really lit our way. Someone who told us that words matter – yes, she was such a tall figure in civic service and community organizing and in the women’s movement, but she was first and foremost a writer, and to me her words are what will outlive her for generations. She was intrepid. She made you feel motivated and fired up and made you feel powerful, too. She was not interested in just holding forth. She was interested in listening, as I think all great people are. She cast a long shadow, and I’ll miss her very, very much. It’s a big hole, not only in the world, but in my heart. A very tall tree has fallen in our forest.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Losing Gloria Steinem feels like losing a lighthouse in dark times. But her legacy will live on through the torches she lit inside women of every generation. I am humbled to consider myself one of millions of those torches, shining proudly in her honor. Gloria showed us what it means to use your voice, challenge the systems that diminish women, radically reimagine a more just world – and then have the courage to build it. Her life is a blueprint for the work still ahead of us.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

You came along
With a fresh vision
Of what women could do
And why they should do it.
For your courage,
Tenacity,
Vision,
Work with and for
All women
May you rest peacefully.
Thank you, Gloria

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

Gloria taught a generation how to live with a sense of purpose and justice. She found the good fights and fought them, even in unexpected corners; I discovered only after knowing her for years that she’d once intervened in a case involving my family, advocating for a child-welfare investigator who lost his job after finding a controversial allegation of abuse to be credible. But more than her great fights, Gloria was an example of how to be the best we can be. She was a riot. She was cool. She was sexy. She was a badass. She made no pretense of perfection, and reckoned with mistakes openly. Like a lot of people, I hoped to grow up to be Gloria. I still do.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)

I am one of countless people who can say that it’s impossible to imagine my life without the activism, vision, and courage of Gloria Steinem. There would have been no Rookie without Ms magazine and its lineage. I am grateful beyond words for her example and encouragement.

(https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/05/gloria-steinem-tributes-dua-lipa-margaret-atwood-lynda-carter)