The statement continued, “She spent her recent years doing the two things she loved most: being in community with others and writing. She has welcomed hundreds of guests into her living room for Talking Circles, a tradition she insisted will continue long after she is no longer with us. As Gloria wrote in her forthcoming book, An Unexpected Life, ‘I have now lived for more than fifty years in this brownstone, in rooms that have witnessed lives before mine, and will know others after I am gone.’ This book, along with her commitment to her home becoming a center for social justice movements, are among the many gifts Gloria has given the world with the hope they have ripple effects for generations to come. Gloria often quoted the adage: ‘The flap of a butterfly’s wing can change the weather hundreds of miles away.’
“Gloria loved the tradition of lighting signal fires on hills to light the way to the other side of the mountain. Lighting your own candle for Gloria makes you part of this global and celestial community circle.”
Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio on March 25, 1934 and rose to national prominence as a journalist in 1963 following her undercover exposé, “I Was a Playboy Bunny.” The piece, published in Show magazine, revealed the sexist working conditions waitresses endured at New York City’s Playboy Club.
Steinem used her newfound spotlight to advocate for female equality, becoming a face of the feminist movement for over half a century. During that time, Steinem co-launched Ms. magazine in 1972 and was involved with multiple organizations that championed women, including the National Women’s Political Caucus, Voters for Choice, and the Women’s Media Center. “I’m not sure I saw any of it coming,” she told VF earlier this year. “I grew up in the 1950s in post-war conservatism. It was supposed to be that women married and had more children to replenish the population, and we were probably going to live where we were born. None of those things turned out to be true for my life.”
Speaking to Vanity Fair back in 1992, Steinem admitted she had actually been slow to embrace feminism. “Until I was into my thirties I was stoutly maintaining I had not been discriminated against,” she said “with regret,” as reported by Leslie Bennetts. “There was a well of anger so deep I just did not want to talk about it. I had difficulty renting an apartment, because if I was a single woman I wasn’t financially reliable and if I was financially reliable I must be a call girl. I was having an almost impossible time getting serious journalistic assignments. I was certainly dealing with what we now call sexual harassment—but it was all so bad I just displaced it. I identified with every other group that was being discriminated against—the farm workers, the civil-rights movement—rather than other women in my situation.”
