More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: Four steps we must take to see more women running in future elections; St. Paul, Minn., which uses ranked-choice voting for local elections, is projected to elect its first women-majority city council; how Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman in the U.S., shifted political rival Alabama Governor George Wallace’s stance on racial segregation; and more.
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
This November brings a brilliant selection of new book releases. From Native American Heritage Month to Trans Day of Remembrance, there are books for you to learn from, unwind with, and reflect upon. Which of these 24 titles will you be reading this month?
CNN Newsroom anchor Fredricka Whitfield has a lot to be proud of. As the 2023 Women’s Media Center’s Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Whitfield’s three-plus decades as a radio and television journalist have included stints across the country, where she has covered both domestic and international issues.
Eleanor J. Bader sat down with Whitfield to learn more about her incredible story.
“My work honors the people on whose shoulders I stand. I know that I have not had it as difficult as my parents or predecessors. They had to endure so much to create the path I walk. I refuse to be deterred. I’m mindful that even on my toughest days I have it better than the people who came before me.”
The first mass shooting of the modern era occurred in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 1, 1966. Before police killed him, Charles Whitman would be responsible for the murder of 17 and the wounding of 31. But the tower murders weren’t the beginning of the carnage.
The night before, while his mother and wife were sleeping, he had already stabbed them to death. Coverage of the campus massacre virtually eclipsed the women’s stories. But Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman, by Jo Scott-Coe, aims to change that.
Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire dressed up as Johnny Depp, holding with a wine bottle, while her friend impersonated a very distressed Amber Heard—a reference to the pair’s heavily sensationalized defamation trial. You may recall when Heard broke down talking about the alleged sexual assault she endured at the hands of Depp using a wine bottle.
This is merely the most recent in a long tradition of people dressing up as famous women during their lowest moments. I’ve seen several people celebrating Halloween as a bald, disheveled Britney Spears; an inebriated Amy Winehouse; a dejected but alluring Marilyn Monroe; a bloodied Sharon Tate, paired up with her murderer Charles Manson. Why do the Bill Cosbys and Chris Browns of the world get away with it, while the victims get pelted with sticks and stones?
More than 300 years after the Salem witch trials, a class of middle schoolers helped exonerate the sole remaining woman legally classified as a witch.
Originally expected to be a simple class project, the path to clearing Elizabeth Johnson Jr.’s name took three years and the help of a Massachusetts state senator, Diana DiZoglio (D). Unwed women were viewed with suspicion at the time of the trials, and many individuals convicted were later exonerated by their own descendants. With no descendants to clear her name, Johnson’s wrongful conviction remained in place—making her the last remaining witch in Salem history—until Carrie LaPierre’s class came to her aid.
Filmmakers Annika Hylmö and Dawn Green tell this story in their upcoming documentary, The Last Witch.
The percentage of women in politics, and many other professions, has grown significantly in the past few decades. However, when one looks at public artwork, women are almost nonexistent.
Inspired by the centennial of the 19th Amendment, the Chicago Womxn’s Suffrage Tribute Committee formed in 2020 in order to create public artwork to honor those who fought to legalize the vote for women. What originally started out as a one-mural project featuring suffrage leaders grew into three murals, all within one block of each other in the South Loop of Chicago.
When I heard the title of Elizabeth Silver’s new book, The Majority, I knew the lone word in the title held layers of resonance.
The novel’s main character is reminiscent of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or “The Notorious RBG,” and the reader follows her arduous, yet steady, ascending legal career. The novel reveals an intergenerational weave of feminists still trying—sometimes in impossibly constricted ways—to break down doors, laws and spaces to effect change. In this book, we see a composite of personal and professional challenges that reflect the path of one character but represent so much more beyond just her.
The Way We Were premiered in 1973. Today, audiences are still drawn to the film’s unlikely romance. In creating the character of Katie, screenwriter Arthur Laurents drew on memories of classmate Eva Moskovitz, who became the successful author Eve Merriam.
Given that the 50th anniversary of The Way We Were is also the anniversary of Ms. magazine and a high point in the women’s liberation movement, it is worth considering what it means that in 1973, a successful female author could be recast in an iconic and beloved film as a woman willing to give up her ambitions to get the hunky guy.
Journalists covering the Israeli-Gaza war bear witness to stories of tragedy, despair and resilience. The Coalition For Women In Journalism is following the work of journalists, especially women on the frontlines amidst the relentless torrents of war and civil unrest, risking their lives to shed light on the truth.
