US feminist icon Gloria Steinem dies aged 92

Gloria Steinem, the American journalist, author and activist who was one of the most recognizable and enduring faces of the feminist movement, has died aged 92, her foundation announced Thursday.

"Yesterday, Gloria Steinem passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her," Gloria's Foundation said in a statement. It did not specify the cause of death.

The announcement sparked an outpouring of tributes to her decades of boundary-pushing activism.

"Gloria Steinem pushed open doors not just for herself, but for literally millions of women behind her," said Hillary Clinton, the first woman to serve as US secretary of state and the first female presidential nominee of a major political party.

Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be US House speaker, called Steinem "a fearless trailblazer who transformed the fight for equality in America and inspired generations of women to know their power."

"She lit a torch many years ago. It is now our responsibility to keep it lifted into the future," said tennis champion Billie Jean King, winner of the famed 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" match.

Before becoming a leading figure in the women's rights movement, Steinem cut her teeth in journalism in the 1960s, denouncing the inequalities American women endured at a time when many needed their husband's approval to open a bank account.

She came to prominence in 1963 with an expose of the pervasive sexism faced by cocktail waitresses at New York's Playboy Club.

But she credited her awakening to activism to a 1969 meeting where women described the ordeal of having an abortion.

"It made some sense of my own experience. I had had an abortion and had never told anyone," she later recounted in an article in New York Magazine.

The London doctor who gave her an abortion in 1957, when it was still illegal, made her promise two things: "First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life."

In the 1970s, she founded Ms Magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus and organized the first National Women's Conference in Houston.

Donning her trademark aviator glasses, Steinem headlined conferences and protests in the United States and around the world for decades. She remained an outspoken defender of women's rights well into her later years.

When in 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade decision of 1973, which had enshrined the right to abortion, she pointed out: "Banning abortions does not stop the need for them. It just bans their safety.

"Don't agonize. Organize," she urged.

After a lifetime battling injustice, she told AFP in 2019: "I think the role of older people like me is to have hope, because we remember when it was worse."

Born in Ohio on March 25, 1934, Steinem had a nomadic early life with a traveling salesman father.

Her parents divorced when she was 10, forcing her to care for her mother who had mental health issues.

As a frontline feminist, she came under intense scrutiny from both sides of the political spectrum.

Her good looks, miniskirts and brief experience as a Playboy Bunny were used against her in attempts to undermine her credibility.

The fact that she remained single and childless was also weaponized.

At 66, she married businessman David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale.

Asked by a reporter why she had changed her position on single life, she said: "I didn't change. Marriage changed."

Bale died three years later of brain cancer, aged 62. Steinem herself underwent surgery for breast cancer in the 1980s.

Some younger activists saw Steinem as representing an outdated type of feminism.

She was criticized for defending Bill Clinton in 1989 when the then-governor of Arkansas was accused of sexual harassment.

In 2016, when Clinton's wife Hillary was vying to become the first female president in US history but struggling to garner support among women, Steinem suggested young women preferred her rival Bernie Sanders because young men liked him.

"When you're young, you're thinking: 'Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,'" she told talk show host Bill Maher. She later apologized.

Steinem was given numerous awards and honors, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Supporters stopped outside Steinem's Manhattan apartment on Thursday to pay respects.

"I'm just feeling very inspired and grateful for the life that she led," said Makenna Lorange, 31, who was visiting from Boston.

"We've lost a little bit of light in the world... (I'm) feeling renewed inspiration to carry on the torch in my own small ways going forward."