Today we mourn the loss of Gloria Steinem, whose life changed the shape of the feminist movement in the United States and far beyond it. Gloria’s public legacy is vast: she was a writer, organizer, editor, political strategist and movement-builder who helped make feminist ideas visible to millions and insisted that women’s equality was central to democracy, justice, peace and human rights.

Gloria was not only a close friend and longtime political collaborator of our founder, Bella Abzug. She was part of the institutional history from which WEDO itself emerged. In 1979, Gloria joined Bella, Mim Kelber and others in founding Women USA, created to strengthen women’s participation in public life and political decision-making. Women USA would eventually become the institutional home from which WEDO grew.

One of its earliest convenings was the Women Against War Forum, held at NYU on June 10, 1980, around the questions “Should Women Be Drafted?” and “Can Feminism and Militarism Live Together?” Bella opened the gathering and Gloria was among the speakers. Listening to the surviving recordings today is a reminder that those of us fighting for a just world are part of one continuous conversation. The recurrence of these questions does not mean nothing has changed; it tells us something about what resists and what remains.

Over the following decade, the work expanded beyond women’s representation in U.S. politics toward questions of foreign policy, peace, economic justice, environmental policy and global institutions. In 1991, that political journey, alongside the leadership of women including Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva and Thais Corral, helped give rise to the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. In 1995, Women USA formally became WEDO.

Gloria once said, “The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights.” Gloria belongs to the generation of women whose organizing, relationships, disagreements, political imagination and institution-building created the ground on which WEDO stands today.

We are grateful for the path she helped make possible, and we will keep walking it.