What did you do when you were 13 years old? If you’re like me, you raced bikes with the neighborhood kids, tore your way through the entire Baby-Sitters Club canon (even the Super Specials) and choreographed elaborate dance routines with your BFFs to the pulsing, booty-wiggling beats of C+ C Music Factory. But if you’re […]
Author: Kitty Lindsay
Kitty Lindsay is a Ms. blogger and works at the Feminist Majority Foundation. She is also creator and host of Feminist Crush, a weekly podcast featuring conversations with feminist artists and activists. Follow her on Twitter!
Remembering Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs, accomplished author, feminist, tireless community organizer and champion of civil rights, died “peacefully in her sleep” yesterday at her home in Detroit. She was 100 years old. Born June 27, 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island to Chinese immigrants, Boggs grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. At 16, she enrolled in Barnard College, graduating in 1935 […]
Meryl Streep’s New Film Tackles “A Fate Worse Than Death”
In the new documentary Shout Gladi Gladi, narrated by multiple Academy Award-winner Meryl Streep, filmmakers Adam Friedman and Iain Kennedy focus their lens on the women of war-torn Sierra Leone and Malawi, who suffer from an affliction many in their communities describe as a fate worse than death: obstetric fistula. Obstetric fistula—which occurs during days-long obstructed labor—is a […]
Wheels of Change: Afghan Women Ride Bikes Despite Threats and Opposition
Even before the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, women were banned from riding bicycles. Though they’re no longer officially banned, women’s cycling is still frowned upon in the conservative country. But there are groups of women winding their way through cultural taboo and beating a new path to women’s equality, and they’re being profiled in a new documentary […]
Your Feminist Fall TV Guide
As the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences rolls up the red carpet on this year’s Emmys, the new season of must-see TV is just beginning. Women continue to struggle with representation on and off screen, but excitement is in the air(waves) for a fresh crop of women-created and women-centered programming. Here’s Ms. Blog’s roundup […]
An (Un)Surprising Thing Happens When Women Run TV Shows
When a woman is calling the shots on a TV show, she does one thing differently than a man would: She hires more women. According to a new study by Martha Lauzen of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, primetime television programs with at least one […]
NEWSFLASH: First Women Graduate Elite Combat School
On Friday, for the first time in history, two women will graduate from the United States Army Ranger School, outlasting 17 other women and 287 men to earn the distinguished honor. As students in this year’s first ever co-ed class, Captain Kristen Griest and First Lieutenant Shaye Haver endured 62 grueling days of intense physical and mental […]
Blazing a Trail Toward Girls’ Empowerment
This summer, four Stanford students are packing their custom-kitted RV, hitting the road and plugging a new kind of destination into their GPS: girl power. Equipped with a blazing passion for learning and an unstoppable drive to help cultivate the women leaders of tomorrow, Girls Driving For A Difference (GDD) co-founders Katie Kirsch and Jenna Leonardo, with friends […]
Lilly Ledbetter’s Fight for Equal Pay Gets the Big Screen Treatment
Across industries, women continue to be paid less than men for the same work—and that’s especially true in Hollywood. Indeed, it appears as if the eradication of workplace sex discrimination may be too fantastical a concept for even the world’s largest creative industry to imagine. But feminist filmmaker Rachel Feldman hopes to change that with a little help from her […]
After the Quake: Why Haiti Needs New Narratives
In her latest book, Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, feminist artist, anthropologist, activist and Ms. writer Gina Athena Ulysse digs deep into Haiti’s history, exposing the myths surrounding the country’s cultural identity while offering new, more nuanced stories. With the centennial observance of the United States’ occupation of Haiti this month, the Ms. Blog seized the opportunity to […]