Gloria Steinem, who has died at 92, was once asked about work-life balance. She said she lived to work.

Gloria Steinem was one of the most recognizable names in second-wave feminism, but she didn’t rest on her laurels.

On Wednesday, Steinem died at her home in New York City at the age of 92, “surrounded by some of the many who loved her,” according to a post shared on her Instagram page.

Interviews in the final years of her life painted a picture of someone as motivated as ever by work and social change.

In 2018, The Cut asked her about work-life balance at the age of 84, to which she replied: “Most people must work to live, but some of us live to work.” It’s a common theme among long-living legends who have recently passed, including Dolly Parton and David Hockney.

Longevity experts say a long life and having a firm purpose are linked.

Steinem said she thought of her life as a stove topped with 12 pots. “One pot is boiling over, one needs salt, one is a new recipe,” she told The Cut. “I’m constantly going from pot to pot.

There are writing projects, groups that I care about and I’m on the board of, there’s a lot of traveling — I spend a third to half of my life on the road — there are political emergencies and campaigns, many different pots.

At any given moment, there are 12 projects in my life.” At the time, Steinem was an advisor to Vice Media, executive-producing the film adaptation of her memoir “My Life on the Road,” and remained involved in social activism.

She helped take feminism mainstream as a journalist and activist in the ’60s and ’70s, including co-founding both “Ms.

Magazine” and the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.

Steneim received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013 for her work, which spanned issues including reproductive freedom and equal rights.

Decades later, Steinem supported the intersectional feminist movement of the 2010s, and spoke against Roe v.

In 2024, Vogue interviewed Steinem to mark her 90th birthday and asked what she hoped to be celebrating at her 100th. “Certainly much less emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender,” she said. “Also, less emphasis on groupism and more on shared, unique human individuality.

And it goes without saying that wars, killing, and crime in the street are tragedies.” She partly credited not having children for her success on Bobbi Brown’s “I Am Me” podcast in 2025, and said that she was excited to get older. “I don’t care about getting old, except I love it here, and I don’t want to leave,” Steinem said.