Journalist Gloria Steinem, a benchmark of feminism, dies
She was an essential figure in the feminist revolution since the 60s
BarcelonaThe American journalist Gloria Steinem has died at 92 in New York, according to her foundation. Steinem's contribution is fundamental to understanding the feminist revolution in the United States since the 1960s.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, she has been an essential iconic reference for the women's rights movement. She was educated at Smith College in Massachusetts, and began her career as a journalist in the early 60s, when the editor of the magazine Esquire commissioned her an article on contraception and contraceptive methods. The piece was a work that highlighted how women were forced to choose between motherhood and a professional career. At that same stage she also worked for the magazine Help!, a publication for which she posed as a Playboy bunny to investigate what the working conditions were for women who worked at the Playboy Club.
The article After black power, women's liberation (After black power, women's liberation), published in 1969, made her a leader of the feminist movement and one of the visible faces of the campaign to pass the equal rights amendment.
Feminist consciousness and practice led her to create the magazine Ms. in 1972, a publication created by women and for women. One of Steinem's goals was for the magazine to address the issues that really concerned readers and to set aside questions like fashion and home care, which until then were the dominant themes in publications directed at the female audience. "As a journalist I realized that there was no publication for women that was controlled by women, and that made me, together with many colleagues, start the magazine Ms.", explained Steinem. Among the colleagues were Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Mary Peacock and Margaret Sloan-Hunter. Steinem was for fifteen years editor of the magazine, which in 2001 was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Among Steinem's books, Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions (1983) stand out; the essay Marilyn: Norma Jean (1988), about the actress Marilyn Monroe, and Revolution from whithin (1992).
