WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — American journalist, activist and feminist icon Gloria Steinem has died, her foundation said on Thursday. She was 92.

“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 posted on Instagram. It did specify the cause of death.

Before becoming a leading figure in the women’s rights movement, Steinem cut her teeth in journalism in the 1960s, denouncing the inequalities women endured at a time when many in the US still 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 feminist activism in 1969, at a 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.”

After this point, Steinem moved from writing to public speaking.

She spent decades travelling the United States and the world, attending conferences and protests.

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

At first, she lacked self-confidence and was terrified of public speaking.

“I knew what I wanted to do but I was a little worried about approval, especially when there was no (women’s) movement in my life,” she confided to AFP in 2019.

If she had done it all again, she would have “done lots of things differently,” she added.

“We just need to be whoever the f… we are and just do it.”

– Public scrutiny –

Born in Ohio on March 25, 1934, Steinem followed the nomadic life of her traveling salesman father.

Her parents divorced when she was 10, forcing her to care for her depressive mother.

As a frontline feminist, she came under intense public scrutiny.

Her good looks, her miniskirts and her brief experience as a Playboy Bunny were used against her in an attempt 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 was given numerous awards and honors for her work, including the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end,” her foundation said.

“Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard.”

“Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”