Feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday at age 92, a post on her official Instagram page stated.
She "passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her," the post read.
Steinem was a symbol and perhaps the most recognizable icon of second-wave feminism, when feminism grew from women's suffrage into a broader campaign for equality in all spheres. Notably, she had patrilineal Jewish heritage.
She also worked to include all women in the feminist movement, regardless of race.
"If you've suffered discrimination, you're sensitive to it on every level. I learned feminism largely from Black women. Women of color basically invented feminism," she told the New Yorker.
Steinem gains attention from Playboy expose
She first gained notice as a journalist when she went undercover as a Playboy bunny in 1963 to write an expose on the working conditions within Hugh Hefner's Playboy clubs.
Steinem later stated that she worried the article damaged her career, causing editors to see her as a Playboy bunny first and a writer second. She had already been described as "this year's pretty girl," who "pretends to be a writer" by renowned writers Gay Talese and Saul Bellow.
But after covering a group of women who had begun to discuss the indignity and physical danger they encountered while seeking abortions, feminism became a larger part of Steinem's life, ultimately causing her to decide the article had been worth it.
Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1971, a groundbreaking magazine written for women by women which tackled abortion and other issues such as sexism, equal pay, and domestic violence - a far cry from the diet of beauty, cookery, and supporting-your-husband topics that were the staple of magazines aimed at women.
One of its early features listed prominent women who publicly declared that they had received abortions, including Steinem herself.
Steinem's work founding information center, political groups
Steinem also helped to found the Women's Action Alliance, a national information center that specialized in nonsexist, multiracial children's education; the National Women's Political Caucus, a group that works to advance numbers of pro-equality women in elected and appointed office at the national and state level; and the Women's Media Center.
She was president and co-founder of Voters for Choice, a pro-choice political action committee, and co-founder and board member of Choice USA, a national organization that supports young pro-choice leadership and works to preserve comprehensive sex education in schools.
She was also the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-racial, multi-issue fund supporting grassroots projects to empower women and girls. She was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a three-year effort in which activists and experts from South Africa, Brazil, and the US compared the racial patterns of those three countries and learned cross-nationally.
Steinem received multiple awards for her activism, writing, and production of documentaries on violence against women and children.
She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2019.