WASHINGTON — Gloria Steinem and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were engrossed in conversation steps from his ceremonial office, where he was getting his makeup done. Ms. Steinem, already prepped, was here to interview him for “Woman,” her new Vice TV show.

She skipped past notes her producers had readied about their topic, “It’s on Us,” the White House’s pledge initiative against sexual assault, and led with her own question: What motivated him to take on this cause? She pressed him on gender-related problems in the military — “the culture is changing,” he said, in part because of advocates like her. A photo of “Joe and Glo” was snapped for her new Instagram account.

After the vice president strode away, young White House staffers stepped in to angle for their own selfies. Seen-it-all aides went rapt as Ms. Steinem recounted her experience as a 17-year-old in Washington (“We made it a project to swim in all the fountains”), the first president she remembers (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the times she picketed outside the Capitol (numerous).

While Ms. Steinem, 82, has clocked a half-century as an activist, journalist and feminist leader, “Woman” is the first time she has produced and hosted a TV series. Beginning on Tuesday, it will run on the new cable channel Viceland, exploring in eight weekly episodes human rights and violence against women around the world, from child marriage in Zambia to sexual attacks in the United States military. It is not an easy watch, but Ms. Steinem was adamant that it would present a complex portrait of its subjects, as survivors and advocates, and offer viewers a way to become involved.