In 1972, pioneering feminist, journalist and activist Gloria Steinem – who turns 90 today – co-founded Ms Magazine, putting conversations about gender equality, reproductive rights and social justice in the spotlight.
"The foundation of this magazine, and what makes it different from others, is that it simply considers that women are human beings – that doesn't sound very revolutionary but it is," Gloria Steinem – who turns 90 today – told the BBC in 1973, as she explained why she had felt compelled to launch the groundbreaking feminist magazine Ms – the first magazine owned, run and written by women.
Sitting at a desk, surrounded by papers and in front of posters advocating women's rights, Steinem was at the time already one of the best-known feminists in the US.
Articulate, energetic and committed, she had carved out a name for herself in the 1960s and 70s through her journalism, which included going undercover at the New York Playboy Club to expose exploitative working conditions. She was also a passionate activist, having founded, along with Brenda Feigen and Dorothy Pitman-Hughes, the Women's Action Alliance in 1971 – a group to empower women to combat sexism in society.
As a journalist, she felt that even publications women wrote for did not reflect her own experiences or those of women she knew. Nor did they offer advice about how to deal with the sexism, barriers and harassment they contended with on a daily basis.
"It started in desperation, I think, because there was just a great many women writers and editors who didn't feel that they were working on magazines that they read and that they had the opportunity to really be honest about their own experiences in a magazine," she said.
At the time, while there were glossy publications on the newsstands nominally for women, the vast majority of them were concerned with tips on homemaking, parenting advice or features on fashion and beauty. None of those magazines seemed to Steinem to be articulating or addressing the struggles faced by women in a male-dominated society.
"It would have been much easier to not start one, but it was just clear that there was no other way we could be honest about women's experience," she told the BBC in 1973.
At first, she planned to produce a newsletter to raise money for the Women's Action Alliance, as she told BBC Witness History in 2022, mostly "as a way of getting out the sort of writing we cared about. And Florynce........