The Venice Film Festival was supposed to talk about cinema. Suddenly, it began talking about power. The death of Gloria Steinem, announced on September 2, 2026 in New York at the age of 92, gave the 2026 DVF Awards a particular resonance. Two days later in Venice, Diane von Furstenberg brought together Jane Fonda, Gisèle Pelicot, Mia Amor Mottley, Lynsey Addario and Wawira Njiru for the 17th edition of her award. The event was no longer only a philanthropic ceremony. It became a symbolic handover.
The coincidence is powerful. Steinem moved through six decades of journalism, political organizing and the fight for equality. The women honored in Venice embody, each in her own way, the contemporary translation of that method: acting through institutions, courts, images, education, the street and the cultural industry. Feminism appears no longer as a slogan. It becomes an architecture of power, with figures, networks, prizes, stages and financial means.
The Steinem Moment
Associated Press recalled the scale of Gloria Steinem’s imprint: cofounder of Ms. Magazine, central figure of the American second-wave feminist movement, advocate for equal pay, abortion rights, political representation and women’s autonomy. Her force did not come only from public speeches. It came from a rare ability to turn isolated experiences into a shared language.
The death of a figure of this size always creates a danger: turning her into a statue. Steinem herself resisted that logic. The tributes published after her death emphasize less a frozen icon than a living organizer, attentive to listening, collectivity and alliances. That is precisely what the Venice evening made visible: an inheritance only truly exists if it is redistributed.
Venice, an Unexpected Political Stage
The choice of Venice is not incidental. The festival is a place where image governs: gowns, red carpets, films, photographers, platforms, stars. Installing a ceremony devoted to women of action inside that environment redirects attention without leaving spectacle behind. The DVF Awards understand this paradox. They use glamour to make visible what political institutions often forget to celebrate.
Diane von Furstenberg created the award in 2010 with a clear promise: to recognize and amplify women who improve the lives of other women. The official DVF Awards site indicates that honorees receive grants intended to support their work. The message is crucial. In a world saturated with symbolic honors, money is a reminder that influence must also become capacity for action.
Jane Fonda and Gisèle Pelicot, Two Forms of Courage
The presence of Jane Fonda and Gisèle Pelicot gave the evening particular intensity. Fonda represents a long tradition of public, assumed and sometimes confrontational activism, in which celebrity serves as a megaphone for social, environmental and feminist causes. Pelicot embodies another form of power: that of a survivor who turns intimate violence into a collective fight against silence and shame.
Their meeting in Venice, noted by Vogue France and Vogue España, tells two timelines of feminism. On one side is the activist who has crossed decades and knows that visibility can be a weapon. On the other is the woman whose recent courage forced a country to look at what it preferred not to see. Between them, Steinem’s inheritance is not transmitted as doctrine. It circulates as a method: name, refuse, gather, begin again.
Mia Mottley, Lynsey Addario and Wawira Njiru Widen the Frame
The other honorees shift the center of gravity again. Mia Amor Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, represents a political voice linking climate, debt, international justice and sovereignty. Lynsey Addario, a war photojournalist, reminds us that seeing can sometimes be an act of resistance. Wawira Njiru, founder of Food4Education, roots the struggle in daily access to school and food. These trajectories prevent feminism from being reduced to a Western or socialite conversation.
The award therefore functions as a map. It shows that equality is not played out in a single sector. It is played out in parliaments, courts, newsrooms, school kitchens, festivals, foundations and platforms. That is what makes the Venetian stage interesting: it brings together forms of power that do not usually share the same vocabulary.
Feminism and the Attention Economy
The tribute to Steinem arrives in an era very different from the one in which Ms. Magazine emerged. The problem is no longer only finding a platform. It is holding space in a public sphere that is fragmented, fast, polarized and governed by algorithms. Celebrity, style, photography and ceremonies are therefore not secondary. They have become tools of circulation.
That reality can be uncomfortable. It forces social movements to accept that visibility sometimes passes through the very codes of spectacle. But the alternative would be to leave those codes to people selling only products or personal power. The DVF Awards propose another hypothesis: use the available light to center women who are truly transforming institutions, laws, narratives or lives.
Transmission as Strategy
The tributes to Steinem emphasize a quality that now seems almost countercultural: listening. In an era where influence is often measured by volume, her legend also rests on the ability to make others speak, connect testimonies and create shared consciousness. That is a strategic lesson. Durable movements are not built only by strong figures, but by relays.
Venice offered the image of those relays. Fonda speaks through the stage and through activist memory. Pelicot speaks through judicial courage and public dignity. Mottley speaks through international negotiation. Addario speaks through visual proof. Njiru speaks through social infrastructure. Together, they answer the question that always follows the death of a great figure: what happens to an inheritance when the founding voice falls silent?
Can a Ceremony Change Anything?
The question is worth asking. Awards can flatter the powerful, smooth conflicts and turn struggles into beautiful images. But they can also serve as resonance chambers and mechanisms of redistribution. Everything depends on what survives after the photograph. The DVF Awards have force because they combine narrative, money, visibility and network. That is not enough to change the world, but it is enough to strengthen those who are trying.
Gloria Steinem’s legacy is therefore not only in the quotations repeated after her death. It is in the ability to move a private experience into the public sphere, then turn the public sphere into action. In Venice, feminism took the form of a ceremony. But behind the dresses and flashes, the real subject was older and more urgent: how an idea survives, finances itself, is transmitted and continues to disturb.
Sources
- Associated Press, September 4, 2026, obituary of Gloria Steinem.
- Associated Press, September 4, 2026, tributes from political figures and public personalities to Gloria Steinem.
- Vogue, September 5, 2026, report from the DVF Awards in Venice.
- DVF Awards, official page for the 2026 edition and honorees.
- Vogue France, September 3, 2026, Jane Fonda and Gisèle Pelicot at the Mostra.
- Vogue, September 3, 2026, tribute to Gloria Steinem.
