The American Medical Women’s Association joins women around the world in mourning the passing of Gloria Steinem, the legendary writer, activist, organizer, and champion for women’s equality, who died on September 2, 2026, at the age of 92.
For more than half a century, Steinem helped shape the modern movement for gender equality. As a journalist, co-founder of Ms. Magazine, organizer, and advocate, she challenged assumptions about what women could do and who they could become. Her advocacy encompassed reproductive rights, workplace equality, political representation, freedom from discrimination and violence, and the fundamental right of women to determine the course of their own lives.
Her work also helped transform the world in which women physicians practiced medicine.
When Steinem emerged as a national voice for women in the late 1960s and 1970s, women remained a small minority in medicine. In 1960, fewer than 6% of entering medical students were women. The broader women’s movement, together with landmark changes such as Title IX, helped challenge longstanding barriers to women’s education due to arbitrary quotas set by many medical schools on numbers of women granted admission. By the mid-1970’s, women matriculants to medical school increased to around 25%.
Through her close friendship with AMWA Past President Gayatri Devi, MD, Steinem twice shared her wisdom directly with the AMWA community.
In 2012, Steinem was the keynote speaker and guest of honor at AMWA’s 97th Annual Meeting in Miami. Speaking to a capacity audience at the Gala, she reflected on the rights of women—past, present, and future – and inspired a gathering of women physicians, residents, medical students, and leaders who were themselves working to advance equality within medicine. Afterwards she joined AMWA members on the dance floor in an unforgettable evening.
Seven years later, she joined us again at the 2019 Centennial Congress of the Medical Women’s International Association, hosted by AMWA in New York City. In a fireside conversation with Dr. Devi, Steinem shared her perspectives on gender, equity, leadership, and a lifetime devoted to creating change. The conversation was one of the highlights of that historic gathering of medical women from around the world.
Women have made extraordinary gains in medicine, yet representation alone has not erased inequity. Women physicians continue to confront disparities in leadership, compensation, advancement, recognition, research opportunities, and the ability to build careers within systems that were not originally designed with women in mind. At the same time, the fight for women’s health and equitable access to care remains as important as ever.
We are grateful for the wisdom Steinem shared with our own community, and for the generations of AMWA members inspired by her advocacy.
As we remember her, we also recommit ourselves to carrying that vision into the future—for women physicians, for trainees, for patients, and for women everywhere.
