Gloria Steinem Legacy Debated After Death
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Right 50%
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What happened
Gloria Steinem, an American feminist journalist, activist, and co-founder of Ms. magazine, died at age 92. After her death, actor Jane Fonda and Women's Media Center president Julie Burton issued tributes crediting her with expanding women's political and social equality through decades of writing, travel, and organizing, including work with Black activists Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Florynce Kennedy. Penny Young Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, published a contrasting assessment that Steinem's positions on abortion and marriage had been misguided. Those statements became the basis for a public debate over Steinem's legacy.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
The two accounts of Steinem's death do not describe the same life. Left-leaning coverage never mentions the 63 million abortions that right-leaning coverage ties to her worldview. Right-leaning coverage never mentions the magazine she co-founded or her tours with Black activists, even while granting she fought workplace harassment and unequal pay. A reader of Mother Jones would not encounter Daily Wire's case at all. A reader of Daily Wire would not know she was credited with building a movement from small gatherings.
Left-leaning coverage says what made her "so dangerous" was being funny and attractive. Right-leaning coverage calls that record "largely anti-woman."
How much of either the abortion tally or the workplace gains can be traced to Steinem's own work rather than to courts, markets, and a wider movement?
Bottom line
You cannot tell why Steinem's death is a fight from Mother Jones, because the 63 million abortions never show up. You cannot tell why she was an icon from Daily Wire, because Ms. magazine never shows up.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- 63 million abortions from Roe v. Wade through 2022
- NIH finding that 60% of women who had abortions would have preferred to carry to term with greater support
- Steinem founded the Women's Media Center in 2005 with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan
- Steinem popularized the phrase that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle
- 1978 Ms. essay If Men Could Menstruate
- Steinem said of her own abortion that it gave me my life
The Left View
Left-leaning coverage in Mother Jones, by David Corn, argued that what made Steinem "so dangerous" was that she was "sassy, charismatic, fierce, funny, and attractive" and thereby "blew apart the right-wing trope that feminists were ugly, humorless, bitter man-haters," citing remarks by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, and JD Vance as examples of that assault on women's rights. Jane Fonda said Steinem, "in her graceful, kind, and deeply intelligent way, changed the world we live in" by speaking to groups of any size and by insisting she be joined by Hughes and later Florynce Kennedy so the movement "addressed race as well as gender." Julie Burton said one could say of Steinem, as Steinem once wrote of Justice Harry Blackmun, that she saved more women's lives than anyone in U.S. history, and that she was "at the forefront of the struggle for political and social equality and justice for women." Corn highlighted her 1978 Ms. essay "If Men Could Menstruate" and her "role-reversal principle" as tools for exposing double standards, and quoted her view that activism should include fun because "the means are the ends."
The Right View
Penny Young Nance in The Daily Wire argued that Steinem's "legacy was largely anti-woman" because, while she fought sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, and for equal pay, she was "greatly misguided on the matter of abortion" and "tragically misled women into believing that their unique capacity to bear life is something to be feared, not celebrated." Nance quoted Steinem saying of her own abortion, "It gave me my life," and said that worldview "helped to enable 63 million abortions from Roe v. Wade through 2022." She cited a National Institutes of Health study finding that "60% of women who had abortions would have preferred to carry their pregnancies to term if they had received greater support, resources, or assistance," and named women such as Justice Amy Coney Barrett as evidence that motherhood and career need not be opposed. On marriage, Nance said Steinem popularized "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," which "led women to needlessly choose between career and marriage," though Steinem later married David Bale. Nance cited a study that "only 12% of leftist women describe themselves as 'completely satisfied with life'" while conservative peers were "three times more likely to be happy," concluding that Steinem's definition of equality "trampled on the unique role of women to bear life."
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is that Steinem's public style and organizing made feminism usable: Corn and Fonda point to her charisma undermining anti-feminist caricatures, her travel with Hughes and Kennedy, devices such as "If Men Could Menstruate," and accounts of women who left bad marriages or started businesses after encountering her work. The right's strongest argument is that treating abortion as liberation and marriage as optional produced costs Steinem understated: Nance cites Steinem's line that abortion "gave me my life," the post-Roe abortion total, the NIH finding on preferred support, and lower reported life satisfaction among leftist women versus conservative women. The central unresolved tension is whether women's freedom is primarily the expansion of independence from traditional family roles, or whether those roles—especially motherhood—are a distinctive good that the movement Steinem led taught women to fear.
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