Despite its promise of progress, Blue Origin’s all-female spaceflight exposed the persistent double standards women face in STEM—where success is still too often judged by sparkle, not substance.
Federal Judge Rules Alabama Can’t Criminalize Help for Out-of-State Abortions
A federal court blocks Alabama’s attempt to punish those who help residents obtain legal abortions elsewhere—affirming core constitutional rights to travel, speak freely and support reproductive autonomy.
“The right to interstate travel includes both the right to move physically between two States and to do what is legal in the destination State—otherwise, our freedom of action is tied to our place of origin [and] the right to travel becomes a hollow shell.”
This Week in Women’s Representation: Women Outperformed Expectations in Battleground Congressional Races in 2024; Gen Z Women Shake Up Congress
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: The 2024 election is not yet over for North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs; Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois and Deja Foxx in Arizona are redefining what it means to run for office; debunking any suggestion that women and racial minorities are not electable; and more.
‘I Don’t Want Thick Skin. I Want to Feel People’s Pain’: Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Truth, Power and Breaking the Rules
Rep. Pramila Jayapal doesn’t believe in growing a thick skin. “I want to feel people’s pain,” she tells me. As chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and founder of the Resistance Lab, she’s building a politics rooted in empathy, resistance, and readiness: “We have to get strike ready.”
From walking out of the State of the Union to confronting power with “moral clarity,” Jayapal is done playing by the old rules: “When you don’t give respect, you don’t get respect.”
Thousands of U.S. Women Are Killed Each Year. Where’s the Outrage?
A spate of 11 femicides in Italy so far this year is making global headlines and prompting calls for “cultural rebellion.” Yet femicide is far worse in the U.S., claiming thousands of lives a year, and comparatively normalized. It’s where the cultural pushback is needed most.
Last month, the U.N.’s annual two-week Conference on the Status of Women wrapped up in New York, having barely addressed growing threats of gender-based violence and without acknowledging the elephant in the room: how Trump administration policy swerves threaten to undo decades of progress for women, including women in the U.S.
She Was Tracking Post-Roe Abortions. The Trump Administration Just Pulled Her Funding.
Diana Greene Foster is responsible for landmark research on the effects of abortion access—a massive 10-year study that tracked thousands of people who had an abortion or were denied one. But funding for a follow-up to her seminal Turnaway Study has just been cut as part of a wave of canceled health policy research.
Foster received a MacArthur “genius grant” for the Turnaway Study. That piece of research, which examined the impact of restrictions even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, helped shape public understanding of how abortion access can affect people’s health and economic well-being by finding that people who were denied abortions were more likely to experience years of poverty compared to those who could terminate their unplanned pregnancies.
The U.S. Aid Freeze: Counting the Global Cost of Chaos
On the first day of his second stint in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing all U.S. foreign assistance. Four days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio halted foreign aid work already underway. Soon after that, Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Rubio canceled 83 percent of its programs.
“Since Inauguration Day, I’d say the Trump administration has immediately gone to work in reckless, heartless and shameless ways that have attacked sexual and reproductive health and rights [and] LGBT rights,” said Caitlin Horrigan, senior director of global advocacy for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Rearming Domestic Abusers: Trump’s New Gun Policy Threatens Women Across the Country
President Donald Trump restored gun rights to his friend Mel Gibson, who admitted to abusing his girlfriend. In a reality where domestic abusers are armed, women will suffer most.
—A gun in a domestic violence situation makes a woman five times more likely to be killed.
—Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women, with 68 percent of those homicides involving firearms.
—Black women face higher rates of intimate partner violence and are more likely than white women to be fatally shot.
—Forty-one percent of perpetrators in mass shootings between 2016 and 2020 had a history of domestic violence.
So why would any administration push policies that arm abusers? As always, follow the money.
This Dept. of Labor Program Transformed Our Lives. Now It’s on the Chopping Block.
U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has given most U.S. Department of Labor employees until April 18 to opt into early retirement or deferred resignation programs, signaling the imminence of mass layoffs. As ironworker tradeswomen, we are particularly concerned about what this could mean for the Women’s Bureau, a critical agency within the department, as well as the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) program it administers.
It is imperative that Chavez-DeRemer, a former representative of Oregon, preserve and expand support for the Women’s Bureau and WANTO. It is only fair: Oregon has received and benefited greatly from WANTO funding, along with additional federal funding for infrastructure. These investments have driven the state’s thriving economy at a time when employers nationwide face a shortage of skilled workers in key industries like construction, plumbing and electrical work.
Class Action Lawsuit Against Crisis Pregnancy Center and Groundbreaking Massachusetts Law Regulating Ultrasounds: ‘A Chink in the Armor’
Antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) across the United States receive state and federal funds but have operated with little or no government oversight. CPCs use unsterilized transvaginal ultrasounds wands inside of patients, delay access to lifesaving care by misdiagnosing serious medical conditions and steal patient data from real medical clinics, according to investigative reporting and lawsuits filed against them. Advocates have been stymied in their efforts to obtain any sort of CPC accountability. But that may be changing.