Gloria Steinem speaks at a rally, hand raised, red scarf visible.Gloria Steinem Dies: Feminist Icon or Neoliberal Sellout?
Intra-Party Split Detected
On the left, Jacobin sharply breaks from the near-universal progressive tributes (Guardian, Nation, Atlantic, Vox, NYT, Slate) by calling Steinem a CIA-linked 'godmother of neoliberal feminism' who sidelined more radical activists. On the right, Daily Wire's sympathetic, personally admiring take diverges from National Review's harsher framing of Steinem's legacy as a 'rejection of womanhood,' while PJ Media and RealClearPolitics offer more measured, appreciative assessments than typical conservative critiques.
Left says
- •Steinem's core insight that abortion access, equal pay, and workplace protections are matters of basic human dignity reshaped mainstream American culture, moving once-taboo subjects like sexual harassment into open political debate.
- •She popularized and made accessible a movement that grassroots radicals had already built, using her platform and glamour to bring feminism to millions of women who otherwise felt isolated.
- •Her personal history — a secret illegal abortion, caring for a mentally ill mother in poverty — grounded her politics in lived experience rather than abstract theory, and she remained warm, funny, and generous with her time until her death.
- •Some critics on the left argue she directed the movement toward corporate-friendly, individualist feminism that sidelined more radical or anti-capitalist voices and took credit for organizing work others had already done.
Right says
- •Steinem's practical achievements — the right to credit in one's own name, property rights, and basic legal equality — are foundational and worth defending even by women who reject the broader feminist label today.
- •Her legacy is mixed: some conservative commentators argue that the movement she symbolized ultimately encouraged women to reject traditional womanhood and domestic life rather than simply demanding equal treatment.
- •Her past cooperation with the CIA during the Cold War complicates her image as a purely grassroots radical outsider, raising questions about how establishment forces shaped the feminist movement's direction.
- •Many younger conservative women find they can embrace narrow, dignity-based elements of her legacy — voting rights, financial independence, safety in single-sex spaces — while rejecting the ideological framework built around her name.
Common Take
High Consensus- Gloria Steinem, who died September 2 at age 92, was the most publicly recognized face of American feminism for over five decades.
- She co-founded Ms. magazine and fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion rights, and workplace protections for women.
- Her early life included poverty, caring for a mentally ill mother, and a secret illegal abortion in London in 1957 that shaped her later activism.
- Commentators across the spectrum acknowledge she was a uniquely influential and consequential figure whose legacy will continue to be debated.
The Arguments
Left argues
Steinem took the abstract insight that 'the personal is political' and used her platform to popularize once-radical demands — abortion access, equal pay, sexual harassment protections — moving them from fringe pamphlets into mainstream American political debate.
Left counters
As Jacobin and other left critics note, this popularization came at a cost: it displaced the grassroots radicals who had already built the movement and won early victories, while steering it toward a corporate-friendly, individualist feminism that sidelined anti-capitalist and more radical voices.
Right argues
Even women who reject the 'feminist' label today can embrace the narrow, dignity-based core of Steinem's legacy — the right to a credit card or bank account in one's own name, property rights, and basic legal equality — because these are foundational achievements, not ideological baggage.
Left counters
Reducing Steinem's legacy to a checklist of legal rights ignores that she saw those rights as inseparable from a broader structural critique of power — treating feminism as merely 'credit cards and property rights' strips out the analysis of systemic inequality that made those gains possible in the first place.
Right argues
Steinem's cooperation with the CIA during the Cold War complicates the myth of her as a purely grassroots outsider, raising legitimate questions about how establishment forces shaped and possibly co-opted the feminist movement's direction from the start.
Left counters
Focusing on a decades-old, disclosed CIA connection distracts from her decades of independent, unglamorous organizing work — visiting small towns, mentoring younger activists, and building institutions like Ms. magazine — that had no connection to intelligence agencies at all.
Right argues
Some conservative commentators argue Steinem's broader movement encouraged women to reject traditional domestic life and womanhood altogether, rather than simply demanding equal treatment under the law, leaving many women feeling their traditional choices were devalued.
Left counters
Steinem's own writing and life — including her care for her mentally ill mother — framed feminism as expanding women's choices, not dictating a single acceptable path; the goal was to ensure domestic life was a choice rather than a mandate enforced by law and economic dependency.
Left argues
Steinem's personal history — a secret illegal abortion in 1957, years spent caring for an impoverished, mentally ill mother — grounded her politics in lived experience rather than abstract theory, giving her moral authority that resonated with millions of isolated women.
Right counters
A compelling personal story doesn't settle whether the political program built around her name produced good outcomes; sympathy for her biography shouldn't foreclose legitimate debate over whether the cultural shift she symbolized ultimately served women's flourishing, including those who value traditional family structures.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If Steinem is criticized by the left for diverting credit from grassroots radicals and building a 'corporate-friendly' feminism, why do most left-leaning obituaries still center her as the singular icon of the movement rather than elevating the radicals she allegedly overshadowed?”
Left asks Right
“If conservative women can selectively embrace 'narrow' parts of Steinem's legacy like property rights and credit access while rejecting the broader feminist framework, how do they account for the fact that those specific legal victories were won through the same organizing, protests, and ideological arguments they now reject?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Jacobin's Branko Marcetic and similar democratic-socialist commentators who label Steinem a 'godmother of neoliberal feminism' and emphasize her CIA ties as delegitimizing; this view likely represents only 10-15% of the left, mostly socialist/anti-liberal factions distinct from mainstream Democratic feminists.
Right Fringe
Commentators at National Review and traditionalist Christian outlets who frame her legacy as an outright 'rejection of womanhood' and root cause of family decline represent a more hardline social-conservative position, likely 20-25% of the right, distinct from the more moderate GOP-women view (as in the Daily Wire piece) that selectively embraces parts of her legacy.
Noise Assessment
Moderate-to-high: obituary coverage amplifies both hagiography and hit-piece framing well beyond where average Americans, who mostly just associate Steinem with 'equal rights' vaguely, actually sit.
Sources (15)
For years, when interviewers asked for a favorite quote, I gave them Gloria Steinem’s: “We are linked, not ranked.” She used the line in 2013 as shorthand for her whole political vision. Women are not a tournament. We are not climbing over one another toward a single chair. We thrive when we treat our connection ...
Gloria Steinem died this week at age 92. The establishment’s favorite “radical” feminist, Steinem worked with the CIA to promote reactionary propaganda and helped direct the women’s liberation movement into a corporate-friendly, anti-socialist direction.
Women are becoming the men they wanted to marry. <img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gloria-Steinem.jpg?fit=617%2C360&ssl=1" />
The feminist icon thought many women would carry on her legacy. But at an unsteady time for feminism, how will the movement carry on?
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Gloria Steinem was asked about the young women supporting Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. Her answer created a brief hullabaloo.
The late, great Gloria Steinem did a stint with the CIA. Would today's CIA have a place for someone like her?
I once wrote that Gloria Steinem, the great feminist thinker and activist who died Wednesday at 92, was like an indispensable computer program running in the background of every American woman's life.
It was a brief interaction. It said a lot.
The activist and writer, who died yesterday at the age of 92, steadfastly fought for her belief that women could change the world together.
<p>The activist made the movement mainstream – and became a receptacle for its hopes and disappointments</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/03/gloria-steinem-groundbreaking-feminist-campaigner-dies-aged-92">Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/03/gloria-steinem-best-quotes">‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes</a></p></li></ul><p>By the time she died on Wednesday, at 92 years old at her home in New York, Gloria Steinem was synonymous with feminism, a kind of human mascot for the movement. So it can be easy to forget that when she was born, feminism was over. It was something that had been faddish years before, among women who were now old ladies; something that seemed, in retrospect, like it might have been a bit overwrought and out of touch. To the girl Gloria Steinem, growing up in Ohio in the 1930s and 40s, the suffrage movement that had gained women the right to vote less than two decades prior probably seemed remote – especially to a girl like her, growing up itinerant and poor under the care of a single mother who was plagued by a violent and debilitating mental illness. You might say that growing up, Steinem had worries that were more immediate than the status of women.</p><p>But experience has a way of radicalizing women about their own gendered condition. Steinem attended Smith, and her education opened up previously unhoped for possibilities. En route to a postgraduate fellowship in India in 1957, when she was in her early 20s, she had an illegal abortion in London. Later, in 1969, while she was working as a journalist for New York magazine, she attended an “abortion speak-out” put on by a group of radical women from the emergent fringe of what was then called the Women’s Liberation movement.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/03/gloria-steinem-us-feminist-movement">Continue reading...</a>
<p>The writer, publisher and activist spent a lifetime advocating for greater rights for women around the world and brought feminist discourse into the mainstream</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/03/gloria-steinem-groundbreaking-feminist-campaigner-dies-aged-92">Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92</a></p></li></ul> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2026/sep/03/gloria-steinem-a-life-in-pictures">Continue reading...</a>
<p>Katha Pollitt</p> <div><img alt="" src="https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/gloria-steinem-obit-getty.jpg" /></div> <div> <div class="wp-block-the-nation-dek article-title__dek"> <p>Second-wave feminism has an undeserved reputation for being dour, man-hating, racist. Gloria was the antidote: She was witty, fun-loving, and glamorous.</p> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gloria-steinem-sisterhood-obit/">Sisterhood Was Gloria Steinem’s Guiding Principle</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.thenation.com">The Nation</a>.</p>
<p>Joan Walsh</p> <div><img alt="" src="https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gloria.jpg" /></div> <div> <div class="wp-block-the-nation-dek article-title__dek"> <p>The feminist icon lived the struggle for gender equality and always found time to lend support and solidarity to other women leaders, even in her final days.</p> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/gloria-steinem-feminism/">Gloria Steinem’s Many-Splendored Feminist Life </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.thenation.com">The Nation</a>.</p>
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here. Gloria Steinem — the one-woman powerhouse who, in many ways, defined modern feminism in the United States — died Wednesday at 92 after six decades of activism. Steinem was a journalist and advocate who […]