Partnering with ProQuest’s powerhouse archive platform, Ms. is releasing more than 50 years of ground-breaking articles, thought-provoking essays and history-making journalism.
Bounding from newsstand to newsstand, Wonder Woman traversed the whole of the United States in the summer of 1972. Illustrated on the cover of the inaugural edition of Ms. beneath the headline, “Wonder Woman for President,” her giant leaps announced the arrival of the revolutionary idea that women had a voice—and they would be heard.
This summer, Ms. is sending Wonder Woman on an epic journey once more. Rather than space, the magazine will be sending this “superhero” through time. Partnering with ProQuest’s powerhouse archive platform, Ms. is releasing more than 50 years of ground-breaking articles, thought-provoking essays and history-making journalism.
Supercharged by ProQuest’s innovations in information technology, the Ms. Magazine Archive features intuitive navigation, fully searchable text and archive-level metadata, including article titles, authors and dates. Cover-to-cover, full-color digitization preserves Ms.’ impactful graphic design, which functioned as the conduit and amplifier of the magazine’s content through engaging photographs, illustrations and layouts.
The revelatory rollout of this comprehensive digitized archive of contemporary feminism arrives at a germane moment as women’s hard-won gains are being pushed into the past. But it was in the past when women first won these battles, making the Ms. Magazine Archive an indispensable guide.
Nowhere is the urgency of this archive more palpable than in the earth-shattering, effective Ms. petition, “We Have Had Abortions.” Published in the magazine’s preview issue the year before Roe v. Wade legalized women’s right to abortion, this bold declaration signed by 53 prominent American women proved that banning abortion doesn’t eliminate the practice but only prevents safe abortions. It simultaneously started the process of destigmatizing women’s bodily autonomy.
Still, for many it was too late, since women—like democracy—often die in the darkness.
In April 1973, just after Roe was decided, Ms. ran the haunting image of Gerri Santoro. Curled up over her knees on the floor, Santoro died alone, bleeding, in 1964 after her lover abandoned her in a motel room when a self-induced abortion went wrong. Written by Roberta Brandes Gratz, the accompanying article, “Never Again,” deftly described the societal conditions that allowed for the death of Santoro and so many women like her.
“The whole abortion debate has always been as emotional as legal,” Gratz wrote. “For the patriarchal structure to give up control of women, especially the most fundamental control of women’s bodies as a means of production, means the loss of an emotional and actual sense of superiority.”
The past is not even past but screams into our present. As Gratz told Ms. in a recent interview, this loss of real and perceived superiority “accounts for everything because men are asserting themselves in every which way from Sunday—from abortion to not wanting a Black woman president.”
For the patriarchal structure to give up control of women, especially the most fundamental control of women’s bodies as a means of production, means the loss of an emotional and actual sense of superiority.
Roberta Brandes Gratz
Today, this image and article have become eerily prescient.
“We’re already seeing a return to a dangerous two-tiered system, one where people with resources can travel for care and others are forced to take desperate measures,” public health strategist and reproductive justice advocate Lauren Kahre says. “What’s even more alarming is that pregnant people are dying of preventable complications because hospitals are afraid to provide care, even in emergencies, due to legal confusion or fear of prosecution. The trauma is not hypothetical—it’s unfolding now.”
Ms.’ increasingly relevant coverage of past struggles against patriarchal culture hardly ends with reproductive rights.
In 1985, Ms. published “Date Rape: The Story of an Epidemic and Those Who Deny It,” an explosive article by Ellen Sweet detailing the impact of a groundbreaking study on date rape, also called acquaintance rape, on college campuses. Conducted by psychology professor Mary Koss, this extensive survey found that one in eight respondents experienced the legal definition of rape, but less than 10 percent reported this assault to the police. What’s more, one in 12 of the male respondents admitted to rape or attempted rape—without realizing they had committed sexual assault.
Such men, Koss commented at the time, “‘oversubscribed’ to traditional male roles. … They believe that aggression is normal and that women don’t really mean it when they say no to sexual advances.” With the rise of hyper-patriarchal politics fueled by social media’s toxic manosphere, Koss’ words echo into this moment all too clearly as the culture that permits acquaintance rape is again increasingly prevalent.
Simultaneously, survivors of sexual assault are left with fewer support structures, further enabling would-be assailants. As Koss noted in a recent interview, the Trump administration “just zeroed out funding for the rape education program at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. Important grants on the response to rape were denied, requests for proposals were withdrawn. Women’s bodily autonomy is being attacked on multiple fronts. Policy seems intent on taking women back to the 1950s.”
Yet Koss’ study and Sweet’s article were far from futile. As the article details, a group of students at the University of Michigan, armed with knowledge of this epidemic, staged a sit-in demanding more protections from sexual assault as well as increased resources for survivors. As a result, the university dedicated $75,000 in seed money for what became the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, which remains one of the country’s foremost organizations of its kind.
Twenty years later, Ms. broke the story of another hidden epidemic of sexual assault, this time on U.S. farms, where the rape and assault of women farmworkers were so pervasive that many began to call the fields “The Green Motel,” because assailants viewed their place of work as a brothel without the ‘inconvenience’ of payment or consent.
In her article titled after this grim moniker, Rebecca Clarren painted the landscape of farmwork as inherently dangerous to women, writing in haunting detail:
“Many think of farmwork as a communal endeavor where entire families labor side by side. Not so. Inside the citrus groves, people work alone amid dark, obscuring foliage. Add to this isolation the fact that many farmworkers aren’t paid hourly but by the pounds of fruit they pick, so each day is a furious race of snipping. … No one has time to watch out for others.”
In addition to illuminating this hidden crisis, Clarren’s article spotlighted grassroots organizations like Líderes Campesinas that worked tirelessly to combat sexual assault and support survivors.
Suguet López, executive director of Líderes Campesinas, says the article itself became an organizing tool that for years the group distributed to “keep it on the minds of people because it is still an issue. It is still happening.” More than that, López continues, the article was successful in “encouraging the women themselves to feel empowered to reach out and ask for help.”
The voices, connections and struggles that Ms. uniquely documented are powerfully relevant in the current fight for women’s rights. Yet for decades, the full impact of these stories remained latent and inaccessible. Now, with the release of its entire archive online to virtually anyone, anywhere, Ms. magazine’s historic reporting can be continuously reactivated within the contemporary discourse of feminism and the ongoing march toward gender equity.
Clarren notes, “As a writer of history, archives are everything. They are the basis and foundation of the creation of new work.”
Karla Strand, the gender and women’s studies librarian at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, notes that for years scholars have requested a complete archive of Ms. Now that it’s here, she says, “The Ms. archive is bound to have a significant positive impact on scholarship in women’s history, journalism, gender studies, women’s studies and feminist scholarship across the disciplines.”
The Ms. archive is bound to have a significant positive impact on scholarship in women’s history, journalism, gender studies, women’s studies and feminist scholarship across the disciplines.
Karla Strand
Journalist and author Clara Bingham says her new book, The Movement: How Women’s Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973, “would have benefited enormously” if she could have had access to the Ms. digital archive.
“My book is an oral history, so I depended on first-person voice and direct quotes,” she says. “If the magazine’s archive was digitized, it would provide a valuable record of the conversation on and about feminism in the ’70s and ’80s and beyond.”
Moreover, the scope of Ms. travels well beyond the borders of America. As Brown University historian Keisha N. Blain recently pointed out:
“One of the most exciting aspects of the archive is that it includes the perspectives of women from various racial and social backgrounds. While the magazine sheds light on the experiences of women in the United States, it also includes an array of articles on women living in various parts of the globe—and many of the writers of Ms. magazine were very much attuned to the global nature of their local and national struggles.”
So, too, will the archive profoundly shape the pedagogical landscape of feminist and gender studies, as Blain envisions incorporating the archive into her classes, noting that “the magazine featured a wide array of articles on what scholars refer to as ‘second wave feminism’ that would enrich my graduate course on Black transnational feminism. … I also envision utilizing the archive in my undergraduate course on Black women’s intellectual history. Students will be able to analyze articles written by some of the most influential Black women intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison.”
Nneka D. Dennie, president and cofounder of the Black Women’s Studies Association and assistant professor at Washington and Lee University, likewise says she “can easily see the Ms. Magazine Archive becoming a valuable teaching tool. In courses like Introduction to Black Women’s History, for instance, my students analyze a variety of primary sources about Black women’s labor, politics, ideas and activism from the 1700s to the present. We use a combination of recorded interviews, speeches and written documents like newspaper articles. Ms. magazine would be a perfect addition to that kind of class.”
The Ms. Magazine Archive fundamentally shifts the balance of control over history and who has the ability to write the future.
Looking back on Ms.’ five decades of reporting from where the world stands now, it might be easy to think we have not progressed very far, if at all. However, by integrating the lessons of past struggles, feminists today can find the tools to build the world in which they wish to live.
By bringing to light its historic reporting on thousands of people from all over the world and all walks of life who have for more than half a century worked and fought for justice and equality, the Ms. Magazine Archive fundamentally shifts the balance of control over history and who has the ability to write the future. Because, like Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, the Ms. Magazine Archive is capable of making history tell the truth about women’s rights, once and for all.
Now available to academic and public libraries around the world through ProQuest, the archive is free to access for students, teachers, scholars and activists via their institutions. Feminists everywhere are encouraged to ask their local or campus librarians about subscriptions or free trial access; find more information here.
To stay updated on new teaching tools, workshops and events marking the launch of the archive, sign up here. For questions or further information, contact Karon Jolna, Ph.D., at kjolna@msmagazine.com.
This article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox.
