Who was Gloria Steinem and why is her death being treated as such a big moment?

Gloria Steinem died this week at 92, and if you grew up outside the US the reaction might seem out of proportion for a journalist. It is not. For half a century she was the most recognisable face of the American women's movement, and the way we talk about women's rights today, in India as much as anywhere, owes something to arguments she helped mainstream.

She started as a reporter in the 1960s, and her breakout piece was an undercover story about working as a 'Bunny' at a Playboy Club, which exposed the reality behind the glamour. In 1972 she co-founded Ms. magazine, which was the first mass-market publication in the US run by women for women, and it gave feminist ideas a platform that was not confined to academic journals.

What set her apart was accessibility. She could explain structural inequality in a sentence, she was funny, and she was willing to be a public figure at a time when that invited constant attack. She also kept working into her eighties, on issues from reproductive rights to trafficking.

Her death closes a chapter. The generation that built second-wave feminism is mostly gone now, and the debates have moved on. But the basic claim she spent her life making, that women's issues are not a niche but a matter of human rights, is now something most people accept without thinking about who fought for it.