09/03/2026
As a writer, journalist, organizer, and activist, Gloria Steinem, Smith College class of 1956, was a leading voice in the American women’s rights movement for more than five decades. Throughout her life she remained deeply connected to Smith, returning to campus to speak, teach, listen, and engage with new generations of Smithies.
Steinem’s vision helped inspire the Steinem Initiative and the Gloria and Wilma School for Organizers, which brought activists together with Smith’s extraordinary archives of women’s history. Her own papers reside in Smith’s Special Collections, where the Gloria Steinem ’56 Reading Room bears her name. And the Gloria Steinem ’56 Endowed Chair in the Study of Women and Gender ensures that scholarship in the fields that shaped her life’s work will continue for generations of Smithies to come.
In 2009, the Smith Quarterly looked back at Steinem’s remarkable life and the experiences that helped shape one of the most influential feminist voices of our time. Today, we revisit that story in remembrance of an extraordinary Smithie whose work changed the world.
Smith College Libraries
Smith College Special Collections
In this 2009 interview, Gloria Steinem ’56 reflected on feminism through the years.
