There are women who enter history by becoming the first. And then there are women who change history by making sure there will never again be a “first” that feels impossible. Gloria Steinem belongs to the second category.To proud feminists like me, Steinem is not merely the woman with the iconic glasses, flowing hair and quotable lines. She is proof that feminism was never supposed to be polite. It was supposed to interrogate power.And that is precisely why she matters to feminists in India. Because Indian women have never lacked strength. What we have lacked, far too often, is a society willing to acknowledge that strength without demanding that we apologise for it.Steinem emerged in America at a time when women were being told that their lives should be organised around marriage, motherhood and male approval. She challenged the idea that a woman’s value could be measured by how desirable, obedient or sacrificial she was.But the larger lesson of Steinem’s feminism transcends America: women cannot be truly free if the structures around them remain designed to keep them dependent.Look at the questions Indian women are still asked. When will you marry? When will you have children? Why are you working so hard? Who is looking after the kids? Why are you travelling alone? Why are you dressed like that? Why are you divorced? Why are you so ambitious? Or not ambitious enough?Nobody asks a man these questions with quite the same relentless enthusiasm.This is where Steinem’s feminism remains radical. She understood that patriarchy is not simply a collection of individual bad men. It is a system of expectations. It is the invisible architecture that teaches women to police themselves before anyone else has to.Indian feminists know this architecture intimately. We see it in the gender pay gap. In unpaid domestic labour. In the disproportionate burden of childcare. In sexual harassment. In restrictions on women’s mobility. In the policing of female sexuality. In the violence faced by women who refuse to conform. And, perhaps most insidiously, in the cultural glorification of female sacrifice.Women are frequently celebrated for how much they can endure. Steinem asks a more dangerous question: Why should endurance be the measure of a woman’s worth at all? That question is revolutionary.It also explains why economic independence is such an important part of the feminist conversation. A woman who cannot earn, own, inherit or control money is vulnerable to control in every other area of her life. And this is where feminism in India must become far more ambitious.We cannot celebrate women’s empowerment while women continue to perform vast amounts of unpaid labour. We cannot talk about ‘women entrepreneurs’ while treating childcare as an individual woman’s responsibility. We cannot congratulate women for entering boardrooms while ignoring the millions of women who remain economically invisible.Steinem understood that personal freedom and structural freedom are inseparable. But perhaps her greatest gift to feminists is her insistence on solidarity.Indian feminism has its own complicated fault lines: caste, class, religion, language, sexuality, geography and access to education. The woman in a Mumbai boardroom and the woman doing agricultural labour in rural India do not experience patriarchy in the same way. A feminism that pretends otherwise is privilege wearing feminist lipstick.Steinem’s work reminds us that feminism must keep asking: Which woman are we talking about? Who gets heard? Who gets represented? Who gets left behind?That question is particularly urgent in India, where the word ‘feminist’ itself is sometimes treated as an insult — as though demanding equality means declaring war on men, marriage, motherhood, or tradition. It doesn’t. Feminism is not about women becoming men. It is about women becoming fully human. That distinction matters.Steinem also understood the power of storytelling. She recognised that culture doesn’t merely reflect society; it helps construct it. The stories we tell about women determine what women believe they are allowed to become. When a girl sees women who are writers, scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, mothers, leaders — and women who choose not to be mothers at all — her imagination expands. And imagination is where freedom begins.The point isn’t to imitate Steinem; it is to inherit her audacity. Every generation has to fight its own version of the same ancient bargain: behave yourself and you will be rewarded with acceptance. Steinem’s answer was essentially: No. We don’t need permission to be ambitious, angry, to leave, to stay, to earn, speak, write, lead, desire, refuse, begin again, or take up space.The feminist revolution was never about making women acceptable; it was about making them free. And freedom, unlike approval, is not something we should ever have to earn.— The writer is an acclaimed author