In 2016, Gloria Steinem backed Hillary Clinton and dismissed young women who supported Bernie Sanders as doing so only because “the boys are with Bernie.” (She later said she misspoke). After her death last week, Steinem has been extravagantly praised in the mainstream media. Is it any wonder, then, that some leftists see Gloria Steinem as the “godmother of neoliberal feminism”?

Yet left-wing dismissals and establishment celebrations both have Steinem wrong.

At the height of her influence in the 1960s and ’70s, when she was a leading spokesperson for women’s liberation, Steinem was very much on the Left. Far from representing feminism for the 1 percent, Steinem believed that feminism had to represent all women and fundamentally remake society. Like many other major figures of second-wave feminism, she backed far-reaching reforms of the kind that many on the Left today support: federally funded childcare, a generous guaranteed annual income for all, strong labor unions, and opposition to racism and militarism.