Feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem dies

**Jeanette Jalil** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jeanette Jalil, and at 14 Hours GMT on Thursday, the 3rd of September, these are our main stories. Gloria Steinem, a pioneer of the Women's Liberation Movement in the US, has died at the age of 92 We look back at her life and her influence on generations of women. The UN warns of a supersized El Nino, potentially the strongest for more than 70 years, which is expected to continue until at least next February. The BBC investigates how people smugglers are using mega dinghies to bring migrants to the UK from France.
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**Aryna Sabalenka** (0:44)
You guys are like a joke, party is fun, like, why would you even say that? Why would you even think about that? Like, what kind of question is that?

**Jeanette Jalil** (0:55)
Why tennis number one Aryna Sabalenka pushed back at reporters at the US Open?
The US feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem has died at the age of 92 In the late 1960s and early 70s, she was one of the most prominent leaders of the American women's movement, campaigning for gender equality and reproductive rights. She was also a trailblazing journalist who gained recognition after going undercover as a playboy bunny. In a statement on social media, her team announced that Steinem had passed away peacefully at her home in New York, saying her near century on earth were years well lived and she continued working for equality until the very end. Judy Frankel looks back at her life.

**Judy Frankel** (1:45)
Gloria Steinem never craved the limelight. She said she hated public speaking and was afraid of conflict. And yet, she became one of the most visible figures in the women's movement, leading marches and arguing passionately to give women equal rights in law, politics, education, and the home.
Her feminist awakening came in 1969, when as co-founder of the New York Magazine, she went to cover a hearing of young women talking about their own experiences of having an abortion.

**Gloria Steinem** (2:16)
For the first time in my life ever, I heard women stand up and tell the truth, tragic, funny, personal, about being one of every three American women who has needed an abortion at some time in her lifetime. And it revolutionized me, sitting there listening. And that's what made me start to ask questions. If this is necessary for so many of us, why is it illegal? Why is it criminal?

**Judy Frankel** (2:43)
Gloria herself had had an abortion 13 years earlier, at the age of 22, but had never told anyone about it until then. That meeting changed her life. She got involved in grassroots organizing, and in the years that followed, she testified in the Senate on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment, and co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus, the Women's Action Alliance and Ms Magazine, the first periodical ever to be created, owned and operated entirely by women.
With her long streaked blonde hair, middle parting and trademark aviator glasses, she soon became the face of feminism.
She had come a long way from her roots. Born in Ohio in 1934, she had a poor and itinerant childhood. Her father took his family on the road for months at a time, selling antiques from their trailer. Her mother suffered from mental illness and addiction. When her parents separated, Gloria became her mother's sole carer, aged just 10, and only then did she spend her first full year at school. For Steinem, finding feminism was like finding a family, and she continued to champion women's rights for the rest of her life.

**Gloria Steinem** (3:57)
I think my dreams at that point were not big enough. You know, I think I was looking at equality, not transformation. And I think it's even more important to make a society in which the paradigm is the circle, not a pyramid. And we understand we are linked, we are not ranked.
On the other hand, I realized what a huge victory it is just to know we're not crazy.

**Judy Frankel** (4:24)
Gloria Steinem never had children of her own, saying feminism had taught her it was possible for women not to conform to gender stereotypes and still be happy. But in the year 2000, she surprised everyone, including herself, when she decided to marry David Bale, the father of the actor Christian Bale, in a Cherokee wedding ceremony.

**Jeanette Jalil** (4:45)
Judy Frankel looking back on the life of Gloria Steinem, who has died at the age of 92
Our planet is already experiencing frequent record heat waves, droughts and floods because of man-made climate change. Now scientists say they think that will be exacerbated even further by a natural recurring weather pattern, El Nino, that causes surface temperatures to rise in the Pacific Ocean. The latest data shows it could be the strongest for more than 70 years and last until at least February next year. The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, said that El Nino was being supersized before our eyes with a world in the danger zone of even more extreme weather. The data was released by the World Meteorological Organization. Its secretary general is Professor Celeste Salo.