Herstory

Women’s History Month: Looking Back on How Far We’ve Come and the Hill That Lies Ahead

PUBLISHED 3/6/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

This week:
—Primary season marks few advances for women.
—Donald Trump’s endorsements were overwhelmingly male, and they mattered.
—LA Charter Commission recommends ranked-choice voting.
—German women oppose online hate speech.

… and more.

The Epstein Files Reveal a System Built to Shield the Powerful

PUBLISHED 3/6/2026 by

Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were not carried out in isolation—they were enabled by a system that repeatedly narrowed investigations, shielded powerful figures and sidelined survivors.

Investigative journalist Julie K. Brown with the Miami Herald has extensively documented the mishandling of the Epstein case. Early reports and accusations were treated with skepticism; initial investigations were shut down; charges were narrowed; powerful actors were shielded; and even meaningful survivor notification of prosecutorial decisions was bypassed. Drawing on more than two decades working within the legal system on domestic violence and sexual assault cases, I see the Epstein files as a stark illustration of how institutions often fail those they are meant to protect.

The partial and selective release of the Epstein files only deepens these concerns. Survivors’ identifying information has been exposed while the names of powerful associates remain redacted. When victims are left vulnerable and power remains protected, accountability has not merely failed—it has been inverted.

This moment demands more than incremental disclosure: It requires full transparency, rigorous investigation and prosecution wherever the evidence leads, so that survivors’ courage is met with the justice they were promised.

‘Lone Star Three’: How Three UT Austin Students Paved the Way for Birth Control Access in 1960s Texas

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by and | UPDATED 3/10/2026 at 5:31 P.M. PT

In 1969 Victoria Foe, Judy Smith and Barbara Hines were students at the University of Texas in Austin when Smith invited Foe and Hines to attend women’s liberation meetings at her house. Their discussions led them to start a campus Birth Control Information Center and eventually evolved into an underground network that helped women access safe abortion at a time when it was illegal in Texas. 

Their activism would eventually extend far beyond their university campus, planting the seeds for Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that would legalize abortion in the U.S. Not until 1965 did birth control in the U.S. become legal for married women. Not until 1972 did it become legal for anyone, married or unmarried, to access birth control.

A new documentary, Lone Star Three, directed by Karen Stirgwolt, tells the story of the women who formed the underground networks that allowed young women to access reproductive care in Texas in the days leading up to Roe v. Wade. Ms. recently spoke with Foe and Hines (Smith passed away in 2013), and archivist Alice Embree, about their activism from the 1960s to the present moment.

Haudenosaunee Governance: The Matrilineal Democracy That Shaped America

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by

I am a member of the Oneida Nation Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, whose governance model influenced modern democracy and the women’s rights movement. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is recognized as the oldest continuous, participatory democracy in the world.

Our representative form of government, organized on local, state, national and international levels, flows organically from our Creation Story, which begins with Sky Woman, pregnant, falling from Sky World. She descends toward an endless water world, where water animals already reside and help form the first land, known as Turtle Island. Through their efforts, the living world we inhabit today was brought forth.

Haudenosaunee women inherently hold political, economic and spiritual authority—a significant difference from colonial patriarchy.

When the U.S. founding fathers drafted their Constitution, drawing inspiration from Haudenosaunee governance, they committed a catastrophic omission: matrilineal leadership. As the U.S. commemorates the 250th anniversary of its founding documents amid political, social and ecological upheaval, the country has a unique opportunity to revisit the original influences of American democracy.

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

The Road to the ERA Runs Through Congress

PUBLISHED 3/3/2026 by

In 1916, just as Americans were beginning to enjoy the new travel freedoms that came with motorized vehicles, a couple of frustrated leaders of the campaign to secure women’s rights to vote, Alice Snitjer Burke and Nell Richardson, secured one of the first gas-driven automobiles in the country. They named the car, a Saxon, Golden Flyer and set off across the country to get support for what would become the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Yes, the original ‘road trip’ was an act of political audacity. Long before women even had the vote, these two women drove into towns across America, on their own, spoke in town squares, slept in boarding houses and not surprisingly, endured ridicule and resistance. They were history’s first “Thelma and Louise.” This road trip had a very different ending, of course, as it led to the passage of constitutional clarity on the question of voting rights, at least for white women, with the 19th Amendment. Getting that right guaranteed for all women, whatever race or circumstances, would still take other struggles. And the campaign for full equality for all women didn’t end with the Drive across America for voting rights.

The struggle for a constitutional guarantee of equality has led to another road trip across America: Driving the Vote for Women’s Equality Tour.

When Burke and Richardson set out in the Golden Flyer in 1916, they did not know the outcome. They only knew that democracy requires action. And the action now is to finish the work through the ERA joint resolution. The message to policymakers is direct and clear: Recognize the will of the states and acknowledge that the ratification threshold has been met. Finish the work.

Equal means equal. It did in 1916. It does now. And this time, we will not stop until the Constitution says so.

America’s Founding Feminists: Rewriting America’s Origin Story

PUBLISHED 3/2/2026 by

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a small group of men declared that “all men are created equal,” casting a vision of liberty that has shaped the American imagination ever since.

Yet even as they debated freedom in Philadelphia, women were writing, organizing, governing, resisting and insisting on their place within the nation taking form. Some, like Mary Katherine Goddard, literally set their names in print; others, like Phillis Wheatley, wrote themselves into intellectual existence against a backdrop of enslavement and doubt. Still others left their mark through acts of refusal and flight, choosing freedom when the republic would not grant it.

A new series, Founding Feminists—launching at the start of Women’s History Month—unfolds over two months, twice a week. On this semiquincentennial of the United States, Ms. turns to these “founding feminists” not as anachronistic heroines, but as architects of an unfinished democratic project. There is no nation without women at its core—no democracy without their labor, intellect, resistance and imagination.

From Haudenosaunee matrilineal governance, to Black women’s freedom-seeking acts, from revolutionary manifestos to quiet domestic rebellions, our Founding Feminists series reexamines the past to illuminate our present moment of backlash and possibility.

If the Declaration of Independence set forth a promise of equality, it was women—across race, class, sexuality and nationality—who pressed the nation to live up to it.

Two hundred and fifty years later, their questions remain ours: What does freedom truly mean, and who gets to claim it?

Democracy Is Not Self-Executing: How We Shape a Better Government Through Laws, Institutions and Culture

PUBLISHED 2/27/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

This week:
—The SAVE Act would block women, young people and low-income people from voting.
—Crowded Illinois primaries call for ranked-choice voting.
—The American women’s hockey team wins gold at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
—An election in Denmark could extend women’s leadership

… and more.

He Called Me ‘Doc.’ I Called Him ‘Rev.’ Remembering Jesse Jackson’s Moral Leadership

PUBLISHED 2/17/2026 by

I knew Rev. Jackson beyond the conventions. He married me and my husband, Gregory Shaffer, almost 25 years ago. He always showed up and gave graciously of himself when I called—whether it was to host a convening on HIV/AIDS at Rainbow PUSH in the early 2000s, or to bring together hundreds of working-class residents from the South Side of Chicago to engage on matters of national healthcare, or to meet with (mostly women) academics coming together to figure out the intersections of law, family and reproductive rights at the University of Chicago Club 20 years ago. 

He called me “Doc” or “Doctor Michele.” I called him “Rev.”

A week ago, by his father’s bedside, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) and I spoke by phone. He had just delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast calling the president to account—to be more humane and just, and to “do what is right.” It was clear that Rev. Jackson’s legacy is already living on.

In a Scorching Order, Federal Judge Rejects Trump’s Attempt to Trample the First Amendment and Rewrite America’s Antebellum Past

PUBLISHED 2/17/2026 by

In a sharply worded order, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe instructed the Trump administration on Monday—George Washington’s birthday—to reverse course and restore exhibits that depicted and paid homage to the enslaved people who labored at Washington’s home in Philadelphia. Citing George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Judge Rufe (first appointed by President George W. Bush) chastised the administration for operating as if the U.S. has a “Ministry of Truth” whose motto is “Ignorance is Strength.” 

The panels in question were installed at the President’s House in the early 2000s, after years of advocacy by local Black leaders and activists, to commemorate the nine men, women and children enslaved by Washington there: Ona (Oney) Judge, Hercules Posey, Richmond Posey, Christopher Sheels, Joe Richardson, Austin, Giles, Moll and Paris.

However, last month—a week before the start of the United States’ 100th anniversary of Black History Month—NPS workers arrived unannounced at the historical site in Philadelphia and removed these panels and video exhibits.

This case is not just about the erasure of slavery—which on its own is historically important. It’s also about the separation of powers and the First Amendment, which the Trump administration repeatedly violates.