America’s Medical Research System Has Been Failing Women for Generations

PUBLISHED 6/11/2026 by and

For decades, women have been systematically excluded, overlooked and underfunded by America’s scientific and medical institutions—and the consequences are measurable. Women were not required to be included in federally funded clinical research until 1993, and even today, no more than 8.8 percent of NIH grant spending goes toward women’s health research. The result is a dangerous knowledge gap that affects everything from cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders to drug safety, maternal health and reproductive care.

The problem transcends partisan politics. While the Trump administration’s cuts to women’s health research have intensified concerns, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have failed to prioritize women’s health.

Private philanthropy and venture capital have also fallen short, with women’s health receiving just a fraction of available funding.

As women face rising healthcare deserts, worsening maternal mortality rates and persistent gaps in diagnosis and treatment, meaningful progress will require action on every front—from federal investment and philanthropy to innovative new funding models focused specifically on women’s health research.

What the PCOS-PMOS Rebrand Tells Us About the State of Women’s Health Research

PUBLISHED 6/11/2026 by and

The announcement in May of 2026 that polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) will be renamed polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) was a genuine milestone. After 14 years of global collaboration, 22,000 survey responses and workshops spanning every inhabited continent, researchers and patients finally agreed on a name that reflects what the condition actually is: not a quirk of the ovaries, but a complex, multi-system disorder of hormones, metabolism, and endocrine function affecting one in eight women worldwide.

For decades, the term polycystic had patients and clinicians alike focusing on ovarian cysts, while metabolic dysfunction and insulin resistance went underappreciated and undertreated. Patients report feeling dismissed, confused, and dissatisfied with their care. The very name, researchers concluded, contributed to stigma, delayed diagnosis and fragmented policy.

But renaming a disease is not the same as researching it. And for women’s health, the research has been underfunded and undervalued for so long that a vocabulary fix (however warranted) cannot close the gap on its own.

Texas May Eliminate a Critical Tool for Preventing Maternal Deaths

PUBLISHED 6/11/2026 by and

Texas is considering whether to continue one of its most important tools for preventing maternal deaths.

The state’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC), which investigates pregnancy-related deaths and identifies ways to prevent them, is currently undergoing Sunset review—a routine process that determines whether state programs will continue operating. If lawmakers fail to reauthorize the committee, Texas will lose a critical source of information about why mothers are dying and what can be done to save lives.

The stakes are especially high for Black women. In Texas, Black women are nearly four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes. Texas’ maternal mortality rate also exceeds the national average, and approximately 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are considered preventable.

As public health researchers who have studied women’s health and health disparities in Texas for decades, we know that meaningful progress depends on understanding what is driving these deaths and holding systems accountable for addressing them.

Maternal mortality review committees are one of the most effective tools states have for doing exactly that.

Normalizing Entitlement: How Ordinary Moments Sustain Extraordinary Disrespect

PUBLISHED 6/11/2026 by

Over the course of three days, three very different public moments involving Kristen Welker, Cardi B, Donald Trump, Charles Barkley and Jon Stewart left me thinking about the cultural permissions our society grants men—and the expectations it places on women.

The incidents were not identical, nor should they be treated as such. Yet each revealed a familiar dynamic: a woman doing her job became the target of insults, objectification, condescension or scrutiny that shifted attention away from the original behavior and onto the woman herself.

Whether it was Trump calling Welker “crooked” and “stupid” before ending an interview with “Thank you, darling,” Barkley reducing Cardi B’s halftime performance to jokes about her breasts, or Stewart questioning whether Welker responded appropriately to Trump’s treatment, the pattern was strikingly consistent: Women are often expected not only to endure disrespect, but to manage it in ways that make others comfortable.

These moments are not simply about the individuals involved. They offer a window into the broader cultural permissions that allow entitlement to flourish—permissions that are reinforced through humor, rationalized through frustration and sustained by the expectation that women will absorb the consequences with grace.

When we focus only on the personalities, we miss the larger system that makes these moments feel ordinary in the first place.

Keeping Score: Threats Against Abortion Clinics Doubled in 2025; Sounding the Alarm on ‘Horrible Conditions’ of Delaney Immigration Center; Pride Celebrations Around the U.S.

PUBLISHED 6/10/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—”Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries,” observes AOC.
—Two-thirds of abortion clinics reported violence or harassment in 2025.
—The TAKE IT DOWN Act (Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act) took effect last month. It requires social media sites to take down non-consensual sexual imagery within 48 hours.
—Members of Congress visited the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center after detainees started a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions.
—The Trump administration announced an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who Trump sexually abused and defamed.
—Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape trial resulted in another mistrial.
—A North Carolina bill would allow deadly force against patients seeking abortion care.
—Healthcare premiums have skyrocketed, forcing 21 percent of HealthCare.gov enrollees to lose coverage.
—Women freelancers charge an average of 19 percent less per hour than men.
—Americans are struggling to access disability benefits after cuts to the Social Security Administration.
—Social media platforms are enabling anti-LGBTQ hate and censorship.
—Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act to ban the death penalty at the federal level. Last month, the DOJ announced they would bring back firing squads and potentially electrocution and lethal gas for executions.
—A comprehensive calendar shows all the Pride parades this month, across the country and globe.

… and more.

The Sharpest SNAP Decline in Nearly 30 Years Is Happening Right Now

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

More than 3 million people stopped participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) between July 2025 and January 2026—a decline of roughly 8 percent nationwide and the steepest drop in the program’s caseload in nearly three decades.

The sharp decrease followed enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR 1), which made historic changes to SNAP and shifted significant new costs and administrative responsibilities onto states.

What makes the decline notable is that it has not been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in economic conditions. SNAP participation has historically expanded during periods of need and gradually declined as low-income households experienced sustained economic recovery. This time, however, enrollment has fallen far more rapidly than during previous recoveries, even as unemployment has remained relatively stable.

The trend echoes the last major contraction in SNAP participation following the 1996 welfare law, which introduced stricter eligibility rules and work requirements.

As states implement additional provisions of HR 1 in the months ahead, researchers and anti-hunger advocates warn that participation could continue to fall, potentially leaving more households without assistance to afford groceries.

Trump’s White House UFC Fight Is a Master Class in Fake Populism

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The UFC cage fight scheduled for June 14 on the White House lawn has been dismissed by some as harmless entertainment and condemned by others as authoritarian theater. But there’s another way to understand it: as a political strategy. By bringing one of America’s most hypermasculine spectacles to the nation’s most recognizable symbol of power, Donald Trump is signaling to his base—especially working-class men—that he still sees them, respects them and shares their cultural grievances, even as his policies continue to favor the wealthy.

The event reflects a longstanding formula in right-wing populism. When politicians cannot—or will not—deliver material improvements in workers’ lives, they offer something else: recognition, validation and cultural solidarity. Trump has built much of his political appeal on this approach, celebrating professions associated with toughness and masculinity while advancing an economic agenda that benefits plutocrats. The White House UFC fight is the latest expression of that bargain.

At the center of the spectacle is UFC CEO Dana White, whose close relationship with Trump has helped elevate mixed martial arts from the margins to the mainstream. Together, the two men have blurred the lines between sports, entertainment and politics, transforming a cage fight into a made-for-TV display of power, masculinity and populist branding at one of the most consequential moments in American democracy.

How I Became a Feminist Historian, and Why It Matters Now More Than Ever

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

In August, the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin will close. I joined the department last year after leaving the University of Iowa’s Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies department, which also closed this year. As programs in women’s studies, ethnic studies and Black studies disappear across the country, I’ve found myself reflecting on how I became a feminist historian—and why this work matters now more than ever.

Back in 2005, as an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, I took a course on feminist activists and read Angela Davis’ Women, Race, and Class. Davis argued that the experiences of Black women could only be understood through the intersecting forces of race, gender and class—and that confronting racism, misogyny and poverty was essential to liberation. From that moment, I knew a feminist view of history could transform how I understood present-day inequality and how I wanted to teach those ideas to future students.

For years, I brought that framework into the classroom, helping students connect the histories of voting rights, reproductive justice, racial discrimination and gendered violence to the challenges they see unfolding around them today. As feminist studies and ethnic studies programs come under increasing attack, I remain convinced that this work is indispensable. Nearly 45 years after Davis historicized the triad of women, race and class, we still need that critical lens to understand our world—and to defend human dignity and justice within it.

Feminist Lessons from 2020 to Present: The Fight for Democracy Is Far From Over

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The decade opened amid a pandemic, economic upheaval and a reckoning over democracy itself.

In early 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, seemingly bringing a nearly 50-year constitutional struggle to a historic milestone.

Yet within months, COVID-19 exposed the deep inequalities that feminists had long warned about. Millions of women—especially women of color—lost jobs, left the workforce to shoulder caregiving responsibilities or found themselves on the front lines of a public health crisis. As the country debated recovery, feminists argued that the economy itself was built on the underpaid and often invisible labor of women.

At the same time, Kamala Harris became the first woman and first woman of color elected vice president, while President Joe Biden assembled the first gender-balanced Cabinet and later appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman justice on the Supreme Court.

Then came Dobbs. In June 2022, nearly 50 years after Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, triggering bans and severe restrictions across much of the country. Clinics closed, patients traveled hundreds of miles for care, and pregnancy criminalization accelerated.

The decision was not an isolated event but part of a broader wave of attacks on reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and democratic institutions themselves. As Ms. observed throughout the decade, the same forces seeking to control women’s bodies were also working to restrict participation in a multiracial democracy.

Yet even as rights were rolled back, women continued to build political power. The number of women serving in Congress and state legislatures reached record highs, the gender gap remained a decisive force in elections, and support for feminist priorities—including abortion rights and the ERA—continued to grow.

The lesson of the 2020s is both sobering and hopeful: Progress is never permanent, but neither is backlash. Every generation inherits unfinished struggles, and the future of democracy depends on whether people are willing to organize, participate and fight for the freedoms they refuse to lose.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.

Feminist Lessons from the 2010s: When Millions Refused to Go Back, Feminists Turned Backlash Into Power

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The 2010s began with a burst of feminist victories that seemed to signal a new era.

Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, appointed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and signed the Affordable Care Act into law. For millions of women, the ACA transformed healthcare almost overnight: Insurers could no longer charge women more than men, deny coverage because of a previous C-section or experience of domestic violence, or exclude maternity care. Contraception, well-woman visits, breastfeeding support and other preventive services became available without out-of-pocket costs, saving women billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the administration strengthened protections for survivors of sexual assault, expanded support for Indigenous, immigrant and LGBTQ survivors of violence, and advanced women’s rights globally.

But beneath those gains, another story was unfolding. State lawmakers introduced hundreds of abortion restrictions, anti-choice politicians targeted contraception and family planning programs, and Republicans repeatedly attacked the very policies feminists had fought to secure.

Then came the political earthquake of 2016. Hillary Clinton became the first woman nominated for president by a major political party, only to lose to Donald Trump after one of the most openly misogynistic campaigns in modern history.

Within months, Trump reinstated the global gag rule, undermined reproductive healthcare programs, rolled back Title IX protections and began reshaping the federal judiciary with far-right judges whose influence would last for decades.

Yet the defining story of the decade was not the backlash itself—it was the response. Nearly 6 million people joined Women’s Marches in 2017, making them the largest single-day protest in U.S. history at the time. Survivors launched the #MeToo movement into a global reckoning over sexual harassment and abuse. Women flipped 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms, revived the Equal Rights Amendment campaign and elected record numbers of women to office.

The lesson of the 2010s is that backlash can become fuel. Faced with escalating attacks on their rights, millions of feminists refused to go back—and instead transformed resistance into political power.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.