As the world watches the Taliban seize and tighten their grip on power in Afghanistan, women’s lives come under greater threat each day. What is the reality for women and girls on the ground in Afghanistan? What do Afghan women stand to lose? How are feminists fighting back?
Boston Will Soon Have a Woman Mayor; How Can the U.S. Get More Women Judges?: Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation.
This week: Boston will have a woman mayor come November; why are first-generation Americans underrepresented in the federal government?; German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s tenure is coming to an end; the dearth of women in judicial offices; and more.
Rally for Reproductive Rights: Women’s March Returns October 2
The day after Texas’s new abortion law went into effect, the Women’s March announced its return to Washington and across the nation on October 2 to rally in support of reproductive rights.
Student Activists Are Breaking the Silence on Period Poverty
Student activists in the “Free The Period” coalition have worked to introduce California Assembly Bill 367, the Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021.
Until menstrual products are as ubiquitous as toilet paper and talking about periods is normalized—the fight to #FreeThePeriod continues.
Texas’s Abortion Ban Is Already Causing a Brain Drain in the State. Will Companies Speak Out?
For many, Texas has a lot to offer. It’s no wonder then that more than half a million people relocated to Texas from other states over the last few years.
Then along came Senate Bill 8—one of the nation’s most extreme abortion bans that criminalizes abortions after just six weeks and deputizes private citizens to enforce the law. The brain drain has already begun, and is likely to continue, as a result.
“When you’re looking at the accumulation of anti-constitutional rights legislation being passed over and over again here, it’s got to have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to consider Texas as a place to come,” Texas state Rep. Donna Howard told Ms.
Before Roe v. Wade, the “Janes” Gave Desperate Women a Safer Choice (Fall 2018)
There’s a reason most people don’t know about the underground network of nonmedical women in New York City who are volunteering their homes to help women living in states where access to abortion is severely restricted.
It’s the same reason most people living didn’t know about Jane, a group women who in the years before Roe v. Wade used code names and street-corner pickups to arrange as many as 11,000 abortions.
“Like We Do Not Exist”: Armenian Women Fight for Their Homeland
In Nagorno Karabakh, Armenians are beginning to rebuild their democracy after military attacks from Azerbaijan and decades of political instability.
“I feel more responsible for my relatives, for people around me, for my homeland. I’m not just a woman, I’m an Armenian woman. I am a woman of Artsakh.”
Keeping Score: Breonna Taylor Portrait Unveiled at Smithsonian; Texas’s Unprecedented Abortion Ban; Half the World’s Children at “Extremely High Risk” from Climate Change
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in in this biweekly round-up.
This week: Texas implements unprecedented pre-viability abortion ban; Biden’s Education Department forgives $5.8 billion in student loan debt for disabled borrowers; Supreme Court order maintain’s Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy; North Carolina bans child marriage under age 16; and more.
Policing and Surveillance: How Texas’s Abortion Law Could Add To Systemic Racism
Vigilante action in the form of policing, surveillance and violence has long endangered people of color. That reality worries some experts who fear Texas’s latest anti-abortion law—which empowers private citizens to sue anyone they suspect of providing, or aiding and abetting an abortion—will disproportionately target people of color.
Gavin Newsom Survived the GOP-Led Recall—Thanks in Large Part to Women Voters
According to the Public Policy Institute of California, a full two thirds of women voters (66 percent) are against the recall — a wide margin, compared to just 48 percent of men who are against it. Women are also much more approving of Newsom’s performance as governor — with 62 percent expressing approval, compared to just 43 percent of men.