Violence & Harassment

‘Pink Belt’ Documentary Follows Aparna Rajawat’s Mission to Train Women and Girls in Self-Defense Across India

PUBLISHED 4/17/2026 by

Even as a child, Aparna Rajawat could see how boys in India were more respected, safer and freer than girls.

Wanting a way to defend herself, Rajawat cut her hair short and disguised herself as a boy, attending karate lessons behind her father’s back with the help of her mother and sister. By the time he discovered her secret, she was so good her coach was able to convince her father to let her continue. She went on to become a national champion and compete internationally, all while she was a teenager.

But that’s only the beginning of Rajawat’s story—a story in which her own achievements are only a backdrop to a life-long quest to inspire other Indian women and girls to achieve their dreams and protect themselves in a country where, despite its many advancements, incidents of sexual assault are still rampant and survivors struggle to get justice.

Enter Pink Belt Mission, Rajawat’s nonprofit, through which she works as a motivational speaker as well as training thousands of girls and women in self-defense.

It’s also the subject of a new documentary directed by John McCrite. A remarkable film, Pink Belt starts with Aparna Rajawat’s story, but goes much further, illuminating a path for anyone who cares about human rights to take that first step towards making a difference in their own communities and beyond.

Trump’s DOJ Claims Biden Administration Was Wrong to Prosecute Clinic Violence

PUBLISHED 4/15/2026 by

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released an 882-page report Tuesday about the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Act does just what it sounds like it would do: Makes it possible for individuals who provide medical care or want to receive it to enter clinics that provide reproductive health care without being subjected to violence, threats, intimidation, or physical obstruction. The law allows federal prosecutors to criminally charge people who violate it and gives victims the right to bring civil lawsuits against aggressors.

The report concludes that the Biden administration “weaponized” the DOJ against people protesting outside abortion clinics, and that it criminalized their conservative beliefs. But it doesn’t hold up very well. It’s politics in the guise of prosecution, an effort to justify Trump’s pardons of 24 abortion opponents who harassed patients and attacked clinics and curry favor with parts of his base.

War in the Middle East Is Devastating the Global Aid System, and Women and Girls Are Paying the Price

PUBLISHED 4/13/2026 by and

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran, the conflict has not only generated massive humanitarian need—it has fractured the global aid system itself.

The renewed U.S. blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz marks a shift from fragile reopening to active restriction, choking already limited shipping routes and delaying the delivery of food, medicine and fuel.

Even before the blockade, many vessels avoided the strait amid fears of mines and retaliation; now, with access further constrained, the consequences are immediate and far-reaching.

As these disruptions compound, it is women and girls who continue to bear the heaviest burden when humanitarian systems break down.

The closure and continued instability of the Strait of Hormuz have sent shockwaves through global supply chains, driving up oil prices, inflating food costs and straining already underfunded aid operations. These economic shocks reverberate far beyond the region, deepening poverty and food insecurity in places where women already face structural disadvantage.

From rising fertilizer costs that threaten crop yields to surging prices for staple goods, the impacts land hardest on women—who are more likely to live in poverty, eat last in times of scarcity, and rely on fragile aid systems for survival.

As the war’s effects ripple outward, they do not simply linger; they intensify. Environmental damage, displacement and collapsing infrastructure are compounding crises that further erode access to clean water, healthcare and safety. For women and girls, these overlapping shocks mean increased exposure to violence, exploitation and long-term instability.

Without urgent efforts to secure humanitarian access and center the needs of women in response strategies, the consequences of this conflict will continue to deepen inequalities and entrench suffering well beyond the battlefield.

Ms. Global: Energy Crisis in Cuba, Feminist Activist Assassinated in Iraq, Gay Asylum-Seeker Deported and More

PUBLISHED 4/8/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to healthcare. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This month:
—Seoul holds the 41st Women’s Strike in South Korea for International Women’s Day.
—Hospital patients suffer during Cuba’s three major blackouts.
—The U.S. is at fault for the missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, Iran, on Feb. 28, killing 175 people.
—Yanar Mohammed, a leading Iraqi feminist and human rights defender, was killed in an armed attack in Baghdad.
—IOC restricts transgender participation in Olympics.
—Amid widespread displacement, poverty and institutional collapse during the ongoing war in Gaza, families are increasingly turning to child marriage for their daughters.

… and more.

In Iran, Iraq and the U.S., Women Speak Out Against State Repression

PUBLISHED 4/4/2026 by | UPDATED 4/7/2026 at 12:13 P.M. PT

Internationally acclaimed Iranian human rights attorney and women’s rights advocate Nasrin Sotoudeh has been arrested by the Iranian regime. Her whereabouts are currently unknown. Our hearts are with Sotoudeh and her family, including her husband Reza Khandan, who has been detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison since December 2024 for supporting her work for women’s equality.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, an American freelance journalist has been kidnapped. Shelly Kittleson, who had built her freelance career reporting from the Middle East for years, is known among colleagues for her determined, on-the-ground reporting and willingness to go where others would not. On Tuesday, she was taken by two unknown men, after learning of threats to her safety from militias. 

Time and time again, it is women who speak out in the face of state repression—whether they are doing so as journalists speaking truth to power, lawyers fighting for the rights of the oppressed, or everyday women taking to the streets in defiance of regimes that seek to strip them of their autonomy and human rights.

Trump Considers Blocking Abortion Access for Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors in Federal Custody (Again)

PUBLISHED 4/4/2026 by and

A looming policy change threatens to undo existing protections and leave pregnant immigrant teens in federal custody without meaningful access to abortion care.

We won’t know what direction the rule will take until the proposed rule is released, but if the Trump administration’s antiabortion policies—such as the reinstatement of the Veterans Administration’s ban on abortion and abortion counseling, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and the reinstatement of an expanded global gag rule—are any indication, the rights of this marginalized population are at great risk.

I Want to Be Obsolete. Instead, I’m Afraid to Teach.

PUBLISHED 4/3/2026 by

I want to be obsolete. I want to walk into a classroom full of students excited to learn feminist histories and begin by marveling at how far we’ve come—how unthinkable it now feels that a president once demeaned women, faced dozens of credible accusations of sexual violence, and still rose to the highest office in the country. I want that version of this story to feel distant, resolved, finished.

Instead, I walk into my gender, women and sexuality studies classes scanning for signs of hostility—wondering who might be recording, who might be there to report me, who might see my teaching not as scholarship but as something to punish.

Teaching about marginalized communities, especially through a feminist, anti-racist lens, now carries real risk: of being surveilled, doxxed, harassed or silenced. Books are banned, curricula are targeted, and the very act of naming systems of power is treated as a threat.

And yet, I keep teaching. I keep showing students that what they are experiencing is not individual failure but the result of structural forces—and that those forces can be challenged. I tell them their voices matter, their rage is justified, and their histories deserve to be known.

I would rather be obsolete. But as long as these attacks persist, our work is far from done.

Abandoned by the Department of Education, Advocacy Organizations Demand Action on Student Sexual Violence

PUBLISHED 4/1/2026 by

In a powerful rebuke, 112 gender equity and survivor advocacy organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly M. Richey on Feb. 23 condemning the Department of Education for “neglecting to protect students from actual sexual violence while pursuing an ongoing dangerous and unlawful campaign of discriminating against transgender students under the guise of preventing sexual violence.” 

The heart of this crisis is the weakening of Title IX enforcement by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights. OCR oversight has been essential in compelling schools to respond appropriately to sexual harassment and assault. Federal enforcement elevates school districts’ Title IX awareness and compliance, reducing barriers to reporting, and motivating schools to adopt preventive action. For the vast majority of students, the federal complaint process has been the only mechanism to seek redress beyond local decision-makers.

“We finally had hope,” said Elizabeth Stewart-Williams, who filed an OCR complaint claiming sex and race discrimination under Title IX and Title VI at her daughter’s Texas high school. “But it wasn’t very long before we learned that the OCR office was closed. It is crushing. It is cruel. The OCR complaint process was our only pathway for help. If the department and its investigative and protective roles are diminished, what remedies do our children truly possess?”

War on Women Report: Georgia Woman Arrested for Self-Managed Abortion; Idaho Forces Teachers to Out Trans Youth; Ohio Bill to Force Doctors to Report Pregnancies to the State

PUBLISHED 3/31/2026 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—More restrictive abortion laws in a particular area are linked to a higher risk of depression for women residents.
—Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales has dropped his bid for reelection after the House opened an inquiry into his sexual relationship with Regina Santos-Aviles, a subordinate (Gonzales’ Uvalde district director) who died by suicide last year. Texts between Santos-Aviles and Gonzales show her attempting to deter her boss’ advances.
—An Ohio appeals court dealt a final blow to Senate Bill 27, permanently blocking the state’s attempt to mandate the burial or cremation of fetal tissue.
—New Mexico legislators passed a first-of-its-kind bill ensuring fully funded universal childcare for families of all income levels.
—More than 8 million people worldwide took to the streets for the third No Kings protest on March 28, protesting Trump, ICE raids and the war in Iran.
—Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is spearheading a legal offensive to criminalize the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol into the state. 
—In Georgia, 31-year-old Alexia Moore, an Army veteran and mother of two, has been arrested on murder and drug charges for an alleged abortion in December.
—In Montana, 20-year-old Charles Felix Jones has been charged with planning to shoot and kill a Missoula abortion provider.
—The latest installment of rePROs Fight Back’s annual 50-State Report Card finds that access to sexual and reproductive healthcare in the United States remains deeply unequal and increasingly under threat, with the nation once again earning an overall failing grade.

… and more.

We Need a Word for What’s Happening to Jewish Women

PUBLISHED 3/27/2026 by

Ever since I’ve been writing about slut-shaming, I’ve been called a slut and a whore.

In the 1990s, the age of doorstopper phone books (the kind with white pages and yellow pages), I received alarming letters delivered to my mailbox. In the early 2000s, the letters morphed into emails. And when I began posting on Instagram, the insults followed me there, too.

Over three decades, the insults were consistent: I was called various synonyms for prostitute and vagina, and an ugly pedophile for good measure. The hatred was misogyny—targeted, specific and designed to put me back in my place.

Then Hamas brutally attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel retaliated in a devastating war in Gaza. The insults changed. I am no longer a regular slut and a whore; I am a “Jewish whore,” a “chosenite supporting the porn industry,” and a “whore” whom everyone could agree was bad apart from “tribes who hate Jesus.” 

I call it “misogynam” (mih-SAH-jih-NAHM)—the intertwined violence of anti-Semitism and misogyny directed at Jewish women.