The Mystery of Women’s History

To what extent can we, as the National Women’s History Project urges, “Write women back into history,” without perpetuating factual and perceptual errors? Women are half of humanity, and women’s history is half of history. We owe it to ourselves as women to take a harder look at what that means.

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: As the U.S. Celebrated International Women’s Day, Feminists Wonder—Where Are the Women in Politics?

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.

This week: A look at different perspectives on women’s representation across the globe, from the U.S. to South Korea and beyond; women supporting Ukranian refugees; how to get more women into elected offices; and more.

Domestic Violence: A Global Problem Requiring a Global Solution

I joined the activist movement nearly 30 years ago. The first year, I worked alone with no funding in a room the size of a closet. Approximately 700 women reached out for support.

Today, one in three women worldwide will suffer from domestic violence. A coalition of grassroots women’s rights activists, including myself, along with medical experts and human rights attorneys from all corners of the world are advocating for a solution: a new global agreement to end violence against women and girls.  

Don’t Fence Me In: Reproductive Freedom and Women Workers

For centuries under common law, a daughter or a wife was the property of the family father or husband or, upon his death, the closest relative with a penis. Whatever was theirs was his, but most importantly the family patriarch oversaw her most valuable asset: her womb. In earliest medical thought, a womb was fertile ground in need of guarding and fences to make property rights clearer, and she to be plowed and planted with seed, quite literally semen.

We thought such laws and cultural metaphors were behind us. But now the cowboys of Texas have put a bounty on women’s wombs. The stakes are women’s civil rights as citizens, surely, but also financial ones.

The Supreme Court Revealed a Lack of Respect for Precedent and Women’s Health—And It Won’t Stop There

The Supreme Court has been rewarding anti-abortion efforts. On Dec. 1, the Court heard oral arguments in a case involving Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban; the following week, the Court issued a devastating ruling allowing Texas S.B. 8 to stand. Many see these recent Court decisions as signals it’s poised to overturn Roe and throw away 50 years of precedent—all while trying to pretend it’s not.