She, born March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, has spent more than six decades shaping the modern feminist movement as a journalist, activist, and organizer.
Her early life was marked by family instability after her parents’ divorce, and she spent much of her childhood caring for her mother, who struggled with chronic depression, while attending school irregularly.
Steinem’s father worked as a traveling salesman, and the family moved frequently before her mother returned to settle with her. These experiences shaped Gloria’s understanding of social challenges early on.
Even as a child, Steinem was curious and intellectually engaged; she read often, wrote stories, and displayed a strong desire to understand the world beyond her immediate surroundings.
After graduating from high school, she enrolled at Smith College, a prestigious women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts, where she studied government and graduated magna cum laude in 1956.
Upon graduating, Steinem won a Chester Bowles Fellowship that took her to India for two years, where she studied grassroots activism and nonviolent protest movements — an experience that influenced her later work deeply.
While abroad, she wrote for Indian publications and observed social movements, gaining firsthand insight into collective action and resistance that would later inform her feminist activism.
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