Feminist icon and founder of Ms Magazine Gloria Steinem passes away

Gloria Steinem, the American journalist and political activist who became the face of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has died at age 92, according to her verified Instagram account.

Steinem died Wednesday in New York City, “surrounded by some of the many who loved her,” the statement on social media said.

“Gloria’s near-century on earth were years well-lived, and she continued working for equality until the very end,” the statement read.

Steinem was a feminist icon who spent the better part of a century advocating for women’s rights in the workplace, the right to abortion and sex education. Her name and face became almost synonymous with the fight for women’s rights. She continued to be a vocal proponent of feminism and other liberal causes, like anti-war activism, into her 90s.

She even coined the term “reproductive freedom,” according to an interview published in the 1981 oral biography book, “Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.”

“In later years, if I’m remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like ‘reproductive freedom’ … as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to,” she said at the time.

She was honored for her decades-long civil rights work with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, as well as the United Nations’ Society of Writers Award and the National Gay Rights Advocates Award.

“Gloria was at heart an optimist. Her activism was rooted in optimism, and that’s a moral choice. And she made it every day,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS News on Thursday. “She was one of the architects of the entire structure of women’s equality.”