Her foundation, Gloria's Foundation, confirms that she passed away peacefully at her home in New York, "surrounded by some of the many who loved her."
Steinem was one of the leading figures of "second-wave feminism" and one of the pioneers of the women's movement in the United States in the 1960s.
In the early 1960s, she worked as a "Playboy Bunny" at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club and wrote about the experience. She also founded the feminist magazine Ms, which published the 1980 article "The Real Linda Lovelace," in which Steinem accused the porn star's ex-husband Chuck Traynor of being behind the myth that Lovelace loved to be sexually abused.
She had her breakthrough as a feminist leader in 1969 when she published the article "After black power, women's liberation".
Gloria Steinem turned 92.
