If Gloria Steinem Had Never Been Here
Gloria Steinem, photographed by Gia McKenna for Gloria’s Foundation. Steinem, the pioneering journalist, Ms. Magazine co-founder, and lifelong advocate for women’s equality, died Sept. 2 at her New York City home at age 92, according to a statement shared by her foundation.
She did not pass the torch. She helped women light their own.
Gloria Steinem did not create the women’s movement. Women had been fighting for equality long before she became one of its most recognizable voices, and women will continue fighting long after her death.
But it is fair to ask what life might look like today if she had never been here.
Women would still have fought. They had been fighting long before Gloria Steinem became a household name, and no one person can claim credit for the rights and opportunities women have won.
But the fight would have been less visible, less connected, and easier for those in power to ignore.
Without Steinem’s voice, and the platform she helped create through Ms. Magazine, more women might have lacked the language to name what was happening to them. Sexual harassment could have remained an uncomfortable fact of life rather than misconduct. Domestic violence could have remained a private shame rather than a public crisis. Unequal pay, workplace discrimination, reproductive freedom, and the relentless expectation that women carry the work of home and family could have been dismissed as individual problems instead of political ones.
Women would still have become doctors, teachers, artists, business owners, athletes, mothers, lawmakers, reporters, and leaders. But more might have been told they were exceptions. More might have had to prove they belonged. More might have felt pressure to choose between ambition and family, intelligence and likability, independence and acceptance.
And the country might have taken longer to understand that women’s equality is not a niche concern or a favor granted by those in power. It is a measure of whether a democracy is living up to its own promises.
That was Steinem’s gift. Through her writing, organizing, and work helping launch Ms. Magazine, she gave women language for experiences they had been expected to endure silently: being dismissed at work, being treated as less capable, being expected to carry the invisible labor of home and family, being harassed, or being told their ambitions were selfish. She helped women understand that these were not personal failures or private inconveniences. They were part of a larger system that needed to change.
One powerful example was the August 1976 issue of Ms., which put the crisis facing battered wives on its cover. At a time when domestic violence was widely hidden and rarely treated as a public concern, the magazine helped name the abuse and insist that it deserved attention, protection, and action. The issue became a landmark in bringing domestic violence into the national conversation.
That recognition matters even now.
Today, women are more likely to enter any profession, run for office, demand fair pay, report harassment, delay or reject marriage, choose motherhood on their own terms, or openly call themselves feminists. Yet many still know the familiar pressure to be competent but not intimidating, attractive but not vain, ambitious but not demanding, nurturing but not overwhelmed, outspoken but never “too much.”
The details have changed. The double standards have not disappeared.
Women still face workplace inequities, online misogyny, attacks on reproductive autonomy, discrimination tied to pregnancy and caregiving, violence, and the expectation that they should handle all of it with a smile. Progress is real, but it is not permanent. Rights are not self-enforcing. Equality is not something a society achieves once and then gets to take for granted.
That is why Steinem’s view of leadership is worth remembering.
People often asked whether she was ready to “pass the torch” to younger women. But she did not accept the idea that one person should surrender her light so another person could carry it. “I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much,” she said, “and I’m using it to light the torches of others.”
Steinem did not want women to wait for permission. She did not want them to wait for an anointed successor, a perfect candidate, or a single person brave enough to speak first. She wanted women to have their own torches: their own voices, their own confidence, their own authority to see injustice clearly and act on it.
Her death leaves an obvious question, but it is not, “Who will replace Gloria Steinem?”
No one should have to.
The better question is, “Will we use the light she helped create?”
That can mean speaking up when a woman is interrupted or ignored. It can mean believing and advocating for survivors. It can mean raising girls who do not apologize for taking up space. It can mean supporting women candidates, defending bodily autonomy, sharing credit at work, challenging sexist jokes, and refusing to treat equality as a fringe concern.
Gloria Steinem helped illuminate a world where women were too often expected to stay quiet, stay grateful, and stay in their place.
The most fitting tribute is not to wait for another Gloria Steinem.
It is to light our own torches and use them to help the next generation see the way.
What do you feel about this post?
Like
Love
Happy
Haha
Sad
