Author: Ms. Magazine Editors

A current list of Ms. print and digital editors can be found on the masthead.

The History of the Women’s Rights Movement, 1600 to Present

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This timeline traces key moments, movements and leaders that have shaped the fight for women’s rights in the United States and beyond. Compiled by editors at Ms. and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance, it highlights the interconnected histories of feminism, abolition, labor organizing, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ liberation and democratic participation.

The timeline is part of Ms. magazine’s FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists project, a multimedia essay series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by examining the women and feminist movements that have expanded the meaning of freedom, equality and democracy in the United States. Through reported features, essays, interviews and historical analysis, FEMINIST 250 explores how generations of activists have challenged exclusion and worked to make the nation’s founding promises more fully realized.

FEMINIST 250’s Parts 2 and 3—Feminist Lessons and Feminist Futures—drop this month on MsMagazine.com.

May 21 Virtual Event: Tackling Patriarchy and Power (With Anna Malaika Tubbs, Aisha Becker-Burrowes and Danielle Robay)

The Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. have partnered with Women’s Foundation California to invite you to a national virtual conversation with Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs that turns our attention toward the system that has kept us from achieving true democracy for the last 250 years: patriarchy. 

Drawing from her latest book (and New York Times best-seller) Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us, Tubbs traces the ruthless logic that has organized American life for 250 years—always bound to race, always rooted in a binary that decides who counts and who does not.

The event is Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 CT / 8:30 ET. RSVP today!

Tubbs will be joined in conversation by Aisha Becker-Burrowes, co-founder and co-executive director of FEMINIST—a nonprofit media company serving a global community of over 6 million—and interviewed by TV host, journalist and content creator, Danielle Robay.

‘The South Belongs to Us’: Voices, Signs and Scenes From Montgomery’s Voting Rights Rally

On the morning of Saturday, May 16, in Selma, Alabama, activists and organizers gathered near the Edmund Pettus Bridge before traveling to Montgomery for the “All Roads Lead to the South” national day of action protesting attacks on voting rights and Black political representation across the South.

The chants echoed through downtown Montgomery: “The power is with the people.” “We won’t go back.”

After Voting Rights Advocates Rally in Montgomery, Republicans Turn Their Sights on Southern Poverty Law Center

Civil rights organizations are sounding the alarm ahead of a May 20 House Judiciary Committee hearing targeting the Southern Poverty Law Center, warning that the proceeding is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to weaponize the federal government against dissenting voices and nonprofit watchdog groups. The hearing is at Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET.

“Congressional Republicans are aiding and abetting the Department of Justice’s campaign of retribution against civil rights organizations and anyone who dares disagree with them,” said Fatima Goss Graves, board chair of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, warning the hearing will be “a spectacle designed to further harm an organization that has spent 50 years tracking hate groups, infiltrating extremist networks, and dismantling violent white supremacist organizations.”

The hearing also comes just days after thousands of voting rights advocates gathered in Montgomery, Ala.—the same city where the SPLC is headquartered—on Saturday, May 16, for the “All Roads Lead to the South” national day of action.

Black Feminist Visionary Beverly Guy-Sheftall to Discuss New Book ‘Black! Feminist! Free!’ @ LA Ms. Mag HQ, April 23

A leading voice in Black feminist scholarship will take center stage in Beverly Hills later this month, as Beverly Guy-Sheftall joins professor and dean emerita Bonnie Thornton Dill for a public conversation on her new book, Black! Feminist! Free!

The event, hosted at Ms. magazine headquarters in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 23, from 6 to 8 p.m., is free and open to the public. Attendees can expect an evening of reflection, dialogue and community, with light refreshments provided. Copies of Guy-Sheftall’s book will be available for purchase on site, followed by a signing hosted by Reparations Club. RSVP today!

In Her Own Words: Dolores Huerta on Surviving Abuse, Speaking Out at 96 and Honoring the Movement Beyond One Man

In the wake of newly reported sexual abuse allegations against labor leader César Chávez, our hearts are with our long-time Ms. advisor, Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.) board member, friend, and feminist and labor icon Dolores Huerta. The fact that she felt she had to bear this in silence speaks to the layers of harm that women who suffer sexual assault must bear.

In the wake of going public for the first time, Huerta writes, “I have never identified myself as a victim, but I now understand that I am a survivor—of violence, of sexual abuse, of domineering men who saw me, and other women, as property, or things to control.”

“The knowledge that he hurt young girls sickens me. My heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years. There are no words strong enough to condemn those deplorable actions that he did. César’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement.”

Kathy Spillar on ‘Velshi’: A Warning About the Right’s Agenda for Women

This weekend on Velshi with MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) anchor Ali Velshi, Kathy Spillar—executive editor of Ms. and executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.)—joined to discuss a sweeping new policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that lays out a vision for reshaping American family life and rolling back women’s independence.’

Velshi summarized the underlying logic of the proposal starkly: “You cut off opportunities outside the home. You make the public sphere hostile to women’s independence. You create a system where the only viable path left for women is dependence on a man for survival. In other words, you drag the country back to a time when women had fewer choices.

“Women today have opportunities their grandmothers could only dream of. From the perspective of the new right, that’s the crisis.”

Spillar said the report spells out a broader political strategy. “They are determined to use whatever levers of power they have under the Trump administration—to change tax laws, to provide incentives for women to have more children, to get married younger and to stay married, even in bad relationships,” and added the proposed policies primarily target heterosexual, middle- and upper-income families.

“This is the game plan of an authoritarian regime,” she said. “It’s designed to support an authoritarian government that has control over its women—and therefore over its men as well, making men more compliant because they now have larger families who depend on them economically.”