Gloria Steinem, the writer and organizer whose work helped shape the American women’s movement and sustained its fight for equality for more than six decades, has died at 92.

Steinem died Wednesday at her New York City home after a period of declining health, according to an announcement on her social media page. She had recently finished a memoir scheduled for publication this fall. The Associated Press confirmed the announcement.

Recognizable by her center-parted, streaked hair and oversized aviator glasses, Steinem became one of feminism’s most familiar public figures. Yet much of her work happened through personal encounters: conversations at community centers, appearances on college campuses, and gatherings where women could speak openly about their lives.

She believed those meetings were essential to building understanding. In a 2015 interview with the Associated Press, she said lasting connections required people to share a room and experience one another’s presence.

The announcement of her death emphasized that same quality.

“Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” the post said. “Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves.”

Her friend and fellow activist Abigail Disney visited Steinem’s Manhattan home a little more than a week before her death, as those close to her gathered nearby. Although Steinem had grown physically weaker, Disney said, her humor, intelligence and generosity remained.

“She was just as funny and just as sharp as I have ever known her,” Disney said.

Steinem’s early life offered little indication that she would become a celebrated public speaker. Born Gloria Marie Steinem on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, she spent much of her childhood traveling with her parents while her father sold antiques. Without regular schooling during those years, she educated herself partly through whatever books she could find.

Her parents divorced in 1944. At 10, she took on the responsibility of caring for her mother, a former journalist whose ambitions had been constrained by domestic responsibilities and whose mental health had deteriorated.

For a time, Steinem imagined tap dancing would provide a way out of Toledo. Instead, she attended Smith College during the 1950s, when she felt women’s education was still largely directed toward preparing them for marriage and motherhood.

She was engaged but reluctant to marry. A modest fellowship gave her the opportunity to travel to India, and she later moved to Manhattan to pursue journalism.

There, the restrictions placed on unmarried women quickly became apparent. Landlords questioned how a single woman could afford an apartment. Editors steered her toward food and fashion stories when she wanted to cover politics.

One assignment about textured stockings became a favorite example of her professional frustration. Another encounter was more troubling: An editor, she recalled, offered her a choice between spending the afternoon with him at a hotel or taking his letters to the mailbox as she left.

She mailed the letters.

“There was no word for sexual harassment then,” she later said. “It was just life.”

In 1963, Steinem accepted an undercover assignment for Show magazine, posing as a Playboy Bunny to investigate working conditions within Hugh Hefner’s business. She expected to be rejected at the audition but was hired and spent about a month on the job.

The resulting exposé brought attention to the treatment of the women working there. For Steinem, however, the assignment carried lasting professional costs. She said it made serious reporting work harder to obtain and gave critics material they used to belittle her for years.

“I could not have made a bigger mistake,” she told the AP in 2011. “It was personally and professionally a disaster.”

Her writing became increasingly political after she joined the editorial board of New York magazine in her 30s. A defining moment came in 1969, when she covered a gathering at which women spoke publicly about abortion.

Steinem had undergone an illegal abortion in London at 22 and had kept the experience secret. Listening to other women helped her understand it as part of a broader struggle over who controlled women’s lives.

“That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,” she told the AP in 2022, reflecting on the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

She argued that equal control over one’s own body, regardless of sex or race, was fundamental to democracy.

In 1971, Steinem helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. But becoming a public advocate required her to confront an intense fear of speaking before audiences.

She later explained that she might have remained primarily a writer if editors had welcomed her reporting on the women’s movement. Their lack of interest pushed her toward speaking engagements.

With encouragement from her early speaking partner Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a Black feminist and child welfare advocate, Steinem gradually became more comfortable onstage. Their partnership challenged the perception that feminism represented only white, middle-class women. A widely recognized photograph showed the two standing together with their right fists raised in the Black Power salute.

In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, creating a prominent national platform for feminist journalism. She worried that failure would damage the movement, while critics confidently predicted the publication would disappear.

Television journalist Harry Reasoner was among its sharpest detractors. He later apologized on air.

President Richard Nixon also mocked Steinem and the magazine’s title in a recorded Oval Office conversation. Steinem was equally pointed in her assessment of him, describing Nixon during a 1972 National Press Club speech as “the most sexually insecure chief of state since Napoleon.”

She remained involved with Ms. until its purchase by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001 and continued afterward as an adviser.

As her influence grew, so did the scrutiny of her appearance and personal life. Profiles often dwelled on her looks, clothes and social circle, sometimes at the expense of her work. A 1992 Vanity Fair article went so far as to praise her “spectacular racehorse legs.”

Steinem found the attention frustrating. She told the AP in 2011 that descriptions of her as beautiful had become common only after she emerged as a public feminist in her mid-30s. What hurt, she said, was the suggestion that her accomplishments came from her appearance rather than her effort.

Even her signature style had a less glamorous explanation than some assumed. Her hair took inspiration from Holly Golightly in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” she said, but the large glasses offered a way to hide.

Public hostility could be more direct. During a 1990 appearance on Larry King’s CNN program, a woman called in, greeted Steinem warmly and then told her to “rot in hell,” accusing her of destroying the American family.

Steinem sometimes took such anger as evidence that feminism had progressed beyond being dismissed as a joke. Still, attacks could wound her. A mocking Esquire profile in the early 1970s left her in tears and prompted colleagues to hold a news conference in her defense.

Humor remained one of her most effective responses. Asked why she had stayed single, she often replied, “I can’t mate in captivity.” She valued laughter as an expression of freedom because it could not be forced.

At 66, she surprised many people by marrying British activist and businessman David Bale, the father of actor Christian Bale. The couple, who met at a fundraiser, wed in a Cherokee ceremony in Oklahoma in 2000.

Steinem explained that her principles had stayed consistent while marriage itself had changed. She and Bale loved each other and wanted to share their lives; he also needed a green card. When he developed brain lymphoma, she cared for him until his death in 2003.

She never had children and said she had never regretted that decision. For her, living without motherhood demonstrated that women could choose their own paths.

Her family relationships left more complicated feelings. She regretted failing to reach her father after a serious car accident before he died alone. Having spent her childhood caring for her mother, she said, she had feared being pulled back into a caregiving role she could not leave.

She also wished she had developed a closer relationship with her mother. In the HBO documentary “Gloria: In Her Own Words,” she acknowledged how strongly she had feared repeating her mother’s life.

Travel remained central to Steinem’s work well into her 80s. She spoke internationally about issues ranging from female genital mutilation to reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula, with women’s equality at the heart of her activism.

Her 2015 memoir, “My Life on the Road,” explored that life of movement and connection. Despite decades of travel, she never learned to drive. She appreciated the conversations that came with being a passenger, whether with a local host meeting her at an airport or a taxi driver taking her across town.

On Jan. 21, 2017, she addressed the Women’s March in Washington, where hundreds of thousands gathered in a vast demonstration.

“We are linked,” she told the crowd. “And this is a day that will change us forever because we are together.”

Her influence continued to reach new audiences. Shortly after her 85th birthday, she led a discussion at an off-Broadway production about her life, listening as women in the audience shared experiences of discrimination and thanked her for helping them find their voices. The feature film “The Glorias” followed in 2020.

At 91, she collaborated with Liberian peace activist and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee on “Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All,” a picture book published in February that encouraged young people to help change the world.

For all her visibility, Steinem resisted the idea that progress belonged to any single leader. She often said someone else would have done the work if she had not.

What mattered most, she believed, was that the next generation recognized its own possibilities.

“The primary thing is not that they know who I am,” she said, “but that they know who THEY are.”