Born in Toledo, Ohio. As a child, the family lived in a trailer, so that her father could travel and trade antiques, until she was 10 years old and her parents got divorced, probably because of her mother’s mental illness. Steinem stayed with her mother and witnessed her struggles to hold a job due to hostility towards working women. Those experiences made her aware of women’s social and political equality. Later on, she moved to Washington, DC, to live with her older sister.
After graduating from Smith College, Steinem granted a scholarship in India, where she worked as a Law Clerk at the Supreme Court of India and participated in protests against government policy. When she returned to the US, she worked in an organization that sent American students to a Soviet-backed youth festival, for that she was later accused of cooperation with the CIA.
At 26, Steinem was hired as the first employee of “Help!” magazine, and her first major assignment as a journalist was an article she wrote about women’s forced choice between a career and marriage. In 1963, Steinem worked undercover as a Playboy Bunny at a Playboy Club for an article about the way women were treated in those clubs, detailing her experiences of exploitative working conditions and sexual demands. After the article was published, she was marked as a “Bunny” and struggled to find a steady job, so for the next few years, she worked as a freelance writer until she got hired by the new New York Magazine.
At the age of 35, Steinem became a known feminist leader after publishing the article “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation.” Two years later, she co-founded, alongside 300 women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, and in 1972, together with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, she co-founded the feminist-themed magazine “Ms.” In that same year, Steinem became the first woman ever to speak at the National Press Club.
Throughout the years, Steinem co-founded various non-profit organizations relating to human and women’s rights, among them are the Women’s Action Alliance, Choice USA, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the Women’s Media Center. Her lifelong activism had a significant influence on women of all over the world, and eventually, her writings and ideas, which were once considered radical, are now mainstream.
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