Gloria Steinem Biography: Age, Height, Death, Cause of Death, Husband David Bale, Ms. Magazine Career, Net Worth & Facts (2026)

Gloria Marie Steinem (March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026) was an American journalist, editor, author and social movement activist who became the most visible symbol of second-wave feminism in the United States. She co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, wrote the 1969 New York magazine cover story that made her a household name, and spent more than five decades organizing for gender equality, reproductive rights and women’s political representation.

Steinem died at the age of 92 at her home in Manhattan on September 2, 2026, and her foundation announced her death the following day. In the weeks that followed, tributes poured in from The New York Times, CNN, the BBC and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her posthumous memoir An Unexpected Life was published by Random House on September 22, and a Santa Monica tribute raised more than $80,000 to advance the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Here is everything to know about Gloria Steinem’s life, career, family, cause of death, net worth and legacy.

Quick Facts

Related Names: David Bale, Christian Bale, Wilma Mankiller, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, Alice Walker, Leymah Gbowee, Susanne Steinem Patch.

Early Life & Education

Gloria Marie Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, to Leo Steinem, a Jewish antiques dealer of German and Polish descent, and Ruth (née Nuneviller) Steinem, a nurse. Her paternal grandmother, Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, chaired the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, was a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and became the first woman elected to the Toledo Board of Education. During the rise of Nazism, Pauline also used the family’s money to help relatives escape the Holocaust — a story Steinem cited as an early example of women leading in public life.

The family lived and traveled in a trailer while Leo worked as a roaming antiques dealer. Steinem’s mother struggled with serious mental illness that worsened as the marriage collapsed, and her parents divorced in 1944. Steinem later said she understood and never blamed her father for the breakup, and that her mother’s difficulty holding a job reflected a broader hostility toward working women — a conclusion that shaped her lifelong argument for economic equality.

Steinem attended Waite High School in Toledo and graduated from Western High School in Washington, D.C., in 1952, living with her older sister, Susanne Steinem Patch. She then studied government at Smith College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with an A.B. in 1956. In 1957 she traveled to England, where physician Dr. John Sharpe referred her for an abortion before her trip to India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow. Two years in India — where she met with activists and journalists and began meditating — deepened her interest in social movements. She later dedicated her 2015 memoir My Life on the Road to Dr. Sharpe, writing: “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”

Back in New York City, Steinem built a freelance career that would soon put her at the center of American journalism and the women’s movement.

Career Journey

Journalism Beginnings (1956–1967)

Esquire features editor Clay Felker gave Steinem what she called her first “serious assignment,” a piece on contraception. Her 1962 article about how women were forced to choose between a career and marriage ran a full year before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

In 1963, while working on an article for Huntington Hartford’s Show magazine, Steinem went undercover as a waitress at the New York Playboy Club. The resulting piece, “A Bunny’s Tale,” published with a photograph of Steinem in a Bunny uniform, documented the low pay, gynecological exam requirements and sexual demands placed on the women who worked there. Hugh Hefner responded by announcing he would drop the exam requirements. For a time Steinem struggled to get other assignments — in her words, because she had “now become a Bunny, and it didn’t matter why.”

She interviewed John Lennon for Cosmopolitan in 1964, contributed a regular television segment for NBC’s That Was the Week That Was in 1965, and in 1968 joined Clay Felker’s newly launched New York magazine as a political columnist.

New York Magazine & National Rise (1968–1971)

Steinem’s New York magazine column, “The City Politic,” covered city hall and national politics. In April 1969 she published “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” the article that gave her a national voice on feminism. Later that year she covered an abortion speak-out held in a Greenwich Village church basement — an experience she described as a “big click” that pushed her from reporter to organizer. She has said she never felt guilt about her own abortion at 22: “It was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life.”

The same period connected her to a generation of political journalists whose work still shapes the beat, including contemporary reporters such as Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, whose profiles of power Steinem’s own columns helped make possible.

Co-founding Ms. Magazine (1972)

In 1972 Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine with founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Pat Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Mary Peacock. It began as a special edition of New York magazine, funded by Clay Felker. Within weeks Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and more than 20,000 reader letters — instant proof of an underserved audience. On January 24, 1972, Steinem spoke at the National Press Club, and in 1974 Ms. partnered with public television to reach a wider audience.

Books & Writing

• The Thousand Indias (1957) — her first book, written after her fellowship in India.
• The Beach Book (1963) — Viking Press.
• Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983) — essay collections that became touchstones of the movement.
• Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (1992) — reportedly earned a $700,000 advance.
• Moving Beyond Words (1993) and Doing Sixty & Seventy (2006).
• My Life on the Road (2015) — a New York Times bestselling memoir about decades of travel and organizing.
• The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off! (2015) — illustrated collection of quotations.
• An Unexpected Life (September 22, 2026) — her posthumous memoir, published by Random House three weeks after her death.

Steinem also wrote for television and film, and her life has been depicted in documentaries, the 2019 documentary Gloria’s Voice, the 2020 feature film The Glorias, the stage play Gloria: A Life, and the Broadway musical The Glorias adaptations of her story. Journalists who profiled her across six decades include the generation of writers now covered on this site, from Jessica Bennett at The New York Times to broadcast reporters such as Chanley Painter.

Activism & Organizations

National Women’s Political Caucus (1971)

In 1971 Steinem co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with former U.S. Representatives Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm and writer Betty Friedan. The organization was created to train and support women seeking elected and appointed office — a direct response to the fact that women held a tiny share of political power at the time.

Women’s Action Alliance (1971–1997)

The same year she co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance, which until 1997 supported a national network of feminist activists and worked to advance feminist causes and legislation, including childcare, credit access and anti-discrimination measures. In 1992 Steinem helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an occasion created so young girls could learn about future career opportunities alongside their parents.

Women’s Media Center (2005)

In 2005 Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that works “to make women visible and powerful in the media.” Its defining slogan, borrowed by Steinem from a colleague, still sums up her theory of change: “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” She also remained involved with the Ms. Foundation for Women, which has presented the Gloria Awards annually since 1988.

International & Cultural Work

Steinem spoke at the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston alongside Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug and Barbara Jordan. In 2015 she traveled from Pyongyang to Seoul across the Korean Demilitarized Zone with Nobel Peace laureates Mairead Maguire and Leymah Gbowee and other women peace activists. At 91, in February 2026, she co-authored the picture book Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All with Gbowee, aimed at inspiring young people to change the world.

Involvement in Political Campaigns

• 1968 election: Steinem covered Senator Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, then declared on late-night radio that “George McGovern is the real Eugene McCarthy,” helping redirect liberal support.
• 1972 election: She worked again for McGovern but publicly criticized him after the Democratic platform dropped the abortion plank, writing that the consensus among women delegates had been to fight for reproductive rights language.
• 2004 election: Steinem called the George W. Bush administration the most hostile in history “to women’s equality, to reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right,” and campaigned for John Kerry.
• 2008 election: In a New York Times op-ed she praised both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as “civil rights advocates, feminists, environmentalists, and critics of the war in Iraq.”
• 2016 election: She campaigned nationally for Clinton and drew heavy criticism for remarks about young women supporting Bernie Sanders, which she later said were misheard as a scolding.

Personal Life

Relationships & Marriage to David Bale

In the mid-1970s Steinem had a nine-year relationship with Stanley Pottinger, a U.S. Justice Department civil rights official she met while consulting on discrimination issues. In the late 1980s and early 1990s she dated publisher Mortimer Zuckerman for four years.

On September 3, 2000, at age 66, Steinem married entrepreneur David Bale — the father of actor Christian Bale — in a ceremony at the home of her friend Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Steinem became stepmother to Bale’s four adult children. The marriage lasted just over three years: David Bale died of brain lymphoma on December 30, 2003, at the age of 62, leaving Steinem widowed. She never had biological children and often described her friends as her chosen family.

Home & Health

Steinem lived on New York’s Upper East Side from 1966, owning the first three floors of a historic brownstone. On her 87th birthday, Google Arts & Culture launched a virtual tour of the apartment, which had served as a gathering place for organizers for decades. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986 and trigeminal neuralgia in 1994, and spoke openly about both. In recent years she hosted talking circles for hundreds of people in her home.

How Did Gloria Steinem Die?

Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, at her home in Manhattan, New York City. She was 92 years old. Her death was announced the next day, September 3, in a statement posted by the Gloria Steinem Foundation on Instagram: “Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.”

A cause of death was not disclosed. The foundation’s announcement did not give one, and no cause was subsequently confirmed by her family or representatives, who asked that attention remain on her work rather than on the circumstances of her death. Steinem had undergone treatment for breast cancer in 1986 and lived with trigeminal neuralgia, a condition she was diagnosed with in 1994, but neither was reported as a cause.

Her death came just three weeks before the scheduled September 22 publication of her memoir An Unexpected Life and weeks after she had given preview readings of the book to large audiences. Friends said she gave no indication she believed the memoir would be her last; in it she wrote that she planned to live to 100.

2026 Tributes & Reactions

The announcement prompted an immediate wave of obituaries and remembrances around the world:

• The New York Times called Steinem the “personification of the women’s movement” and a “feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement.”
• CNN described her as the “face” of second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, and the BBC called her the leader of the women’s liberation movement in the United States.
• The Associated Press counted her among the “most visible symbols and potent voices of the U.S. women’s movement,” and NPR said she “devoted her life to fighting for women’s rights.”
• Hillary Clinton said Steinem “pushed open doors not just for herself, but for literally millions of women behind her.”
• Entertainment Weekly remembered her as both a feminist icon and a “pop culture shaper.”

Santa Monica ERA Tribute Raises $80,000 (October 6, 2026)

On October 6, 2026 — Constitution Day — more than 130 people gathered in Santa Monica for Unfinished: Cocktails & Conversation for Gender Equality, among the first major Los Angeles gatherings for the Equal Rights Amendment since Steinem died. The tribute raised more than $80,000 for ERA Coalition Forward, a 501(c)(3) organization where Steinem was a co-founding board member, in its campaign to have the ERA recognized as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Gloria spent her life on this amendment and did not live to see it recognized. That is the work we carry now. The people in that room understood that this is not a commemoration. It’s a campaign for our rights, and it continues.” — Zakiya Thomas, president and CEO of ERA Coalition Forward

Posthumous Memoir: An Unexpected Life

An Unexpected Life: A Memoir was published by Random House on September 22, 2026, three weeks after Steinem’s death. The 256-page book — her ninth book and third memoir — covers her Ohio childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, her political awakening, her rise in the second-wave feminist movement and her belief that the fight was far from over.

“People often ask me how I stay hopeful. I always explain that hope is a form of planning. I think about twenty, thirty, even fifty years ago and the leaps of consciousness I’ve experienced because of the women’s movement.” — An Unexpected Life (2026)

Reviewers noted that the book reads in the present tense throughout. In one passage she wrote: “As I write this, I’m both older than I ever imagined I would become and happier than I ever imagined I could be.” She dedicated it to her late friend Wilma Mankiller and closed on a note she had used for decades: “Being remembered with love is the best form of immortality.”

Legacy

Steinem remained active as a writer, lecturer, fundraiser and organizer well into her 90s, and institutions have moved quickly to preserve her work. The Gloria Steinem Papers are held in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College (collection MS 237). Rutgers University established the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in 2014 to fund teaching and research in equal representation in the media, and the Ms. Foundation for Women has given the Gloria Awards annually since 1988.

Her brownstone has been placed in a trust connected to Gloria’s Foundation, a nonprofit created to preserve the residence and her archives and to continue using the property as a gathering and organizing space; the foundation separately acquired another floor of the building.

Asked about the legacy she hoped for, Steinem said she wanted her work “to help individual people to become more the unique, valuable, loved and lovable person that they want to be.” In an essay released in 2026, asked what advice she would give to Donald Trump, she replied in a single word: “Resign.”

Awards & Achievements

• Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013), awarded by President Barack Obama for her civil rights work
• National Women’s Hall of Fame inductee (1993)
• Humanist of the Year, American Humanist Association (2012)
• BBC 100 Women list of the world’s most inspiring and influential women (2023)
• DVF Lifetime Leadership Award (2014) and New York Women’s Foundation Century Award (2014)
• Emmy Citation for excellence in television writing; multiple National Magazine Awards
• FAO CERES Medal and the United Nations Society of Writers Award
• Library Lion award (2015) from the New York Public Library
• Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (2015)
• Ban Ki-moon Award for Women’s Empowerment (2017)
• Listed by Esquire among the 75 greatest women of all time (2010) and by Glamour among the 75 most important women of the past 75 years (2014)

Physical Statistics

• Height: 5 ft 7 in (170 cm)
• Hair Color: Blonde, worn in her trademark long style with blunt bangs
• Eye Color: Blue
• Build: Slim
• Distinctive Features: Round glasses, long straight hair, layered necklaces
• Style: Known for the trademark glasses and ankle-length coats she wore on the lecture circuit for five decades

Quotes

“Hope is a form of planning.” — from her final memoir, An Unexpected Life (2026)

“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” — on women’s representation in media

“This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution.” — from her Address to the Women of America (1971)

“Please tell your own story. This is the most important thing we can do for each other — to know each other through stories. And I hope so much that whoever you are, listening right now, you are able to do what you love — and to be, also, the unique person you are.” — her last words in the Famous Last Words interview, filmed in February 2025 and aired the day after her death

Salary & Net Worth

Gloria Steinem had an estimated net worth of $10 million at the time of her death in 2026, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Her income over six decades came from:

• Book royalties and advances, including a reported $700,000 advance for Revolution from Within (1992) and bestseller earnings from My Life on the Road (2015)
• Lecture and speaking fees from universities, corporations and conferences worldwide
• Magazine work, from New York magazine columns to decades as a contributing editor and publisher of Ms.
• Documentary and screen adaptations of her life story, including the 2020 film The Glorias
• Her Upper East Side brownstone, the first three floors of which she owned from 1966

Property and assets held by Gloria’s Foundation — including the brownstone placed in trust to preserve her home and archives — are charitable assets rather than Steinem’s personal property, and are therefore not counted in her personal net worth.

Interesting Facts

• Steinem went undercover as a New York Playboy Club waitress in 1963; her expose “A Bunny’s Tale” led Hugh Hefner to drop gynecological exam requirements for the women who worked there.
• Her first abortion, in London in 1957, was arranged by Dr. John Sharpe, whom she later dedicated My Life on the Road to with the instruction: “Do what you want to do with your life.”
• She spent two years in India as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow and wrote her first book, The Thousand Indias, about the trip.
• Steinem was the stepmother of actor Christian Bale, whose father David Bale she married in 2000.
• Comedian Tig Notaro discovered on PBS’s Finding Your Roots that she and Steinem are distant cousins.
• Within weeks of the first Ms. issue in 1972, the magazine had 26,000 subscription orders and 20,000 reader letters.
• She crossed the Korean Demilitarized Zone with two Nobel Peace laureates in 2015 at age 81.
• At 91 she co-wrote a children’s book with Leymah Gbowee, Rise, Girl, Rise, published in February 2026.
• Her home was toured virtually by Google Arts & Culture on her 87th birthday; she had lived there since 1966.

Social Media Links

• Instagram: Gloria Steinem (@gloriasteinem)
• Facebook: Gloria Steinem (official page)
• Official website: gloriasteinem.com
• Ms. Magazine: msmagazine.com
• Women’s Media Center: womensmediacenter.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Gloria Steinem’s life ran from a trailer in Ohio to the National Press Club, from an undercover night in a Playboy Bunny uniform to the cover of a magazine that sold out its first issue in weeks. She spent seventy years making the case that women’s equality was not a specialty issue but the central question of American democracy, and she kept writing, traveling and organizing until weeks before her death.

In 2026 her obituaries, her final memoir and the Santa Monica tribute all pointed to the same unfinished business: the Equal Rights Amendment that she campaigned for and did not live to see recognized. As she put it in her last book, hope is a form of planning — and the planning she started is still underway.

If this biography helped you understand the journalist and activist behind the movement, please share it — and keep an eye on the ERA Coalition’s campaign, which is carrying Steinem’s work into the constitutional history books.