Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and Ms. magazine co-founder, dies aged 92

One of the leading figures of the American women's liberation movement, has died at her home in New York City, aged 92.

Gloria Steinem’s foundation said in a statement that she “passed away peacefully … surrounded by many who loved her”.

Steinem began her career as a journalist in New York before co-founding Ms. magazine in 1972, one of the first publications to address women's issues beyond domestic and beauty content.

More than 50 years ago she also co-founded the Women's Action Alliance, an organisation set up to combat sexism.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, on 25 March 1934, Steinem had a difficult childhood and did not attend school full-time until the age of 12. After university she spent two years in India on a research scholarship, working with village women on non-violent protest organising – an experience that shaped her lifelong commitment to grassroots activism.

She later moved to New York, where an exposé of working conditions for Playboy Bunnies established her as a journalist, and she went on to write a column for New York Magazine before launching Ms, Mallory Moench writes for the BBC.

Throughout the 1970s Steinem campaigned prominently for reproductive rights, having herself obtained an illegal abortion in London at the age of 22. She welcomed the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade ruling and, decades later, lived to see it overturned. She was also a vocal advocate for same-sex marriage, equal pay, and an opponent of the death penalty and female genital mutilation.

For much of her life Steinem avoided marriage, but wed South African-born entrepreneur David Bale in 2000; he died three years later of brain lymphoma. Asked about her change of stance on marriage, she said: “I didn't change. Marriage changed.”

In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honour. Her foundation said she continued working for equality “until the very end”, spending her later years hosting “Talking Circles” at her home – a tradition it said would continue – and completing a forthcoming book, An Unexpected Life.

Tributes followed her death, including from Meghan Markle, who described Steinem as a friend and mentor and said that privately she was “even better than you would imagine”.

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton called her “one of the architects of the entire structure of women's equality”, telling CBS Mornings that Steinem's activism was “rooted in optimism, and that's a moral choice, and she made it every day”.