Gloria Steinem dies at age ninety-two

Gloria Steinem, the American feminist writer and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, has died aged ninety-two. The Independent and BBC News both report her death, with tributes describing her as a pioneering voice of modern feminism.

Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine and became one of the most recognisable faces of the women's liberation movement in the United States. The magazine launched in the early seventies and became a platform for feminist journalism at a time when mainstream American media largely ignored or trivialised women's issues. Her journalism and activism spanned six decades, covering reproductive rights, workplace equality, and opposition to violence against women.

The title "Ms." itself was a political choice - a neutral form of address that did not signal marital status, unlike "Miss" or "Mrs." Its adoption by the magazine helped normalise the term in American English and gave the publication instant symbolic weight. The word had existed since the seventeenth century but gained widespread currency only in the nineteen-seventies as second-wave feminism challenged the linguistic sorting of women by their relationship to men.

Steinem's death comes as debates over sex, gender and identity have fractured the feminist movement she helped build. The generational divide over these questions will shape how her legacy is remembered and contested in the years ahead.