More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: a new ranked-choice voting ballot initiative in Colorado, the “electability” debate for women running for office, the Democratic Party is challenging long-held beliefs regarding the electability of women candidates, and more.
Title X, the federally funded family planning program that provides confidential family planning services to teens has once again come under attack. In separate lawsuits, two Texas parents have alleged that by allowing their daughters to obtain contraceptives in the absence of their consent, the program has effectively divested them of their “God-given right to ensure their daughters remain virgins until marriage.”
This attack is on Title X is nothing new. The rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children has long been a rallying cry of Christian conservatives as they battle against the ostensible indoctrination of their children “with a secular worldview that amount[s] to a godless religion.” As they see it, a particularly pernicious aspect of this “godless religion” is the belief that “’teen promiscuity is … normal and acceptable conduct.”
Over the course of four decades, courts have consistently held that although Title X encourages parental involvement, it does not require it based on the recognition that “confidentiality [is] a crucial factor in attracting teenagers to Title X clinics and reducing incidence of teenage pregnancies.”
Just days after Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic party’s official nomination, Gloria Feldt—former Planned Parenthood president and longtime women’s rights activist—convened the 10th annual Take the Lead Conference in Washington, D.C., on Women’s Equality Day.
Hopes are high and determination steeled that 2025 will see the first woman president and the ratification of the ERA. For the hundreds of women and dozens of presenters and organizers who took part in the Take the Lead conference, promoting women’s power at every level and in every field has always been essential to the formula for that success.
On a long list of issues in the newly released survey, women identified domestic and sexual violence as the third most important one facing U.S. women collectively, behind abortion access and cost of living.
As we mark the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act today, it’s worth remembering one lesson that law teaches: Progress is possible.
For most of the nation’s history, members of the U.S. House of Representatives have been addressed as “Congressman” or “Congresswoman.” By contrast, a senator is referred to as, well, “Senator.” These gendered terms for House members dominate in journalism, everyday conversation and among members of Congress.
“Whereas ‘congressman’ or ‘congresswoman’ tends to call our attention to a House member’s Capitol Hill activities and to his or her relationship with colleagues,” wrote the late Richard Fenno, “‘representative’ points us toward a House member’s activities in his or her home district and to relationships with constituents.”
If there was any doubt that a woman could lead this country, it was put to rest last night. From the moment she crossed the stage and reached out her hand to greet Donald Trump, Kamala Harris dominated the presidential debate on substance, style and seriousness.
Like the prosecutor she used to be, the vice president made her case sharply and cleanly, identifying and exploiting Trump’s weaknesses. In doing so, she effectively undercut her opponent’s longtime strategy of snidely attacking, denigrating and even looming over women in debates.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris had their first and only debate on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. According to CNN, Trump spoke for about 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for 37 minutes and 36 seconds. Trump spoke 39 times to Harris’ 23 times.
Here’s what each candidate said on some of the issues feminists care about—including access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare, the Affordable Care Act, childcare, immigration, racial unity and the economy.
The final installment of a three-part series about the 900-plus-page right-wing “misogynistic manifesto”:
Project 2025 is a sinister plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants who enforce laws guaranteeing women’s rights, with trained ideologues determined to undermine these rights.
(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
This November, voters in New York state will have the chance to weigh in on Proposal 1, the first U.S. constitutional amendment of its kind, which will establish comprehensive safeguards against discrimination and explicitly protect reproductive rights, including the right to abortion for state residents. According to New Yorkers for Equal Rights (NYER), a broad coalition of more than 300 diverse groups that support the initiative, the effort is different from other equal rights amendments because it includes protections for reproductive rights.
NYER campaign director Sasha N. Ahuja spoke to Ms. two months before Election Day: “We have to set the path for other states to pursue equality and provide the strongest possible protections in their constitutions.”
Any road to the White House runs through moms. But new polling from Demand Justice shows that on the issues moms care most about—women’s rights, gun safety and healthcare—former president Donald Trump has a problem: his stacking of the U.S. Supreme Court with extremist justices.
