“Making our nation and world fit for all our children and grandchildren is a task for marathoners—not sprinters or dabblers here today and gone tomorrow. Transformative change is a complex, long-term and never-ending struggle that must be pursued with urgency and persistence.”
Author: Emily Sernaker
Emily Sernaker is a Ms. contributor and a staff writer for the International Rescue Committee. Her poetry, articles and reviews have appeared in The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney's, The Rumpus and more. She is a 2019 Lincoln City Fellowship recipient in poetry.
Patty Griffin’s Latest Act of Bravery
“I’m always trying to find a way to personally not feel disempowered by the structures around me, to get myself undominated by whatever it is—whether its growing up poor, or thinking of myself a certain way. Nobody’s better than anyone. There’s a lot of hierarchical thinking, and women always tend to be up against it.”
Celebrating Inspiring Women in Sports (and the Girls Looking Up to Them, Too)
Student athletes could hardly contain their excitement walking alongside the first female coach of a NFL team, WNBA players and Olympic medalists at the Women’s Sports Foundation’s 39th annual champion-packed gala in New York City.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is Zooming in on Women’s Global Economic Empowerment
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has crafted their first-ever Gender Strategy—committing $170 million dollars to programming in Kenya, India, Uganda and Tanzania advancing women’s economic empowerment. Ms. caught up with Sarah Hendricks, the foundation’s Gender Equality Director, to discuss this concentrated approach—and how true financial independence allows women to move themselves and their communities forward.
The Ms. Q&A: These Teen Girl Scientists Want to Ask More Questions—and Close the STEM Gender Gap
We caught up with three Regeneron Science Talent competition semi-finalists Natalia Orlovsky, Kavya Kopparapu and Nitya Parthasarathy—and talked curiousity, diversity and good friends.
No More Masks: Celebrating a Landmark Anthology of Women’s Poetry 45 Years Later
In 1971, Goucher College professor Florence Howe and her student Ellen Bass gave themselves a prompt: Could they, solely from memory, recite poems by women about women’s lives?
Five Female Poets on Protest and Resistance
These poets cover North Korean missal taunts, the water crisis in Flint, the inadequacy of the U.S. government’s apology to Native Americans, children affected by school shootings and economic divides in their poems that radiate defiance and vision.
The Ms. Q&A: Poet Vievee Francis Knows the Power of Her Narrative
“Those of us who have gone unheard must speak. I do not seek permission. I want my differences accepted without the accompanying reduction of racism, or the pretense of ignorance. Hell, I want my differences lauded.”
The Ms. Q&A: How Poet Marwa Helal Uses Poetry as Preservation
“I want readers to viscerally feel through my work how deeply I believe our identities are inextricably intertwined and that we have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to work harder and to do better in this life.”
These Girls Are Proof: Investing in Young Feminists Pays Off
Since 2011, 280 high school girls have participated in HERLead, an innovative program that empowers them to foster change in their communities. We caught up with three of them.