How ICE Enforcement Is Driving Black Domestic Workers Out of Public Spaces

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by

Like many domestic workers in New York City, Felicia has built a strong network of other working professionals who meet at local parks to socialize and share their experiences. Over the two decades she has spent caring for New York families since arriving from St. Lucia, those conversations have grown into friendships—friendships she says have become a lifeline.

For years, the park has been one of the only places Felicia felt she could exhale. That has all changed under the second Trump administration.

Felicia hears it constantly: fewer nannies at the park, fewer informal gatherings in play spaces, fewer familiar faces lingering in bookstores to warm up with kids on cold days. People are staying indoors, shortening their routes and avoiding public places that were once part of the workday. That’s because fear has gotten louder. The process feels unpredictable and unchecked. “No one knows,” Felicia says. “ICE can kidnap you.”

Ms. Global: Iranian Girls’ School Hit in U.S.–Israeli Strikes, Taliban Legalize Domestic Violence, and More

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 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 week: stories from Iran, Afghanistan, the Netherlands and more.

A State of the State for Women: Taking Stock of the Fight for Democracy at Home and Abroad

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by

March’s Women’s History Month arrives at a moment when our rights, and democracy itself, feel newly precarious.

From feminist perspectives on the war in Iran, where women and girls remain at the forefront of resistance, to the troubling parallels between authoritarian crackdowns abroad and the rollback of reproductive rights here in the United States, the throughline is hard to ignore: Democracy rises and falls with women’s movements and mobilization.

Taking stock of the moment, I’m highlighting reporting and analysis that help make sense of where we are now—from the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes in places like El Salvador, to new data revealing stark disparities in women’s well-being across U.S. states.

At the same time, as the country approaches its 250th anniversary, initiatives like Ms.’ FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists remind us that women’s ideas, resistance and organizing have always been central to the project of democracy—and remain essential to its future.

Aid Held Hostage: How Trump’s Expanded Global Gag Rule Weaponizes Foreign Assistance

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by , and

Global maternal and child health is already in crisis. Hundreds of thousands of preventable pregnancy-related deaths occur annually, and progress to address maternal mortality has stalled globally.

Now, the Trump administration’s expanded global gag rule—which took effect last week—will accelerate this already dangerous backslide.

The global gag rule, or Mexico City Policy, has long functioned as a financial chokehold, barring U.S. aid to international organizations that offer abortion counseling or referrals, even with non-U.S. sources. In its most sweeping expansion to date, the policy now extends to nearly all non-military foreign assistance.

A policy that accelerates a global maternal and child health crisis cannot credibly be described as pro-life. As care fragments and organizations are forced into silence, the fallout is predictable and permanent: Survivors will navigate trauma alone, and women will die.

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

PUBLISHED 3/5/2026 by and

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.)

From DM’s to I Do’s: Five Ways Social Media Is Reshaping Child Marriage

PUBLISHED 3/4/2026 by

As the world goes digital, so does the ancient practice of child marriage. 

More than half a billion women and girls living today are, or were, child brides. Among young adult women aged 20 to 24, one in five was married before age 18.

But that doesn’t mean that child marriage has stayed the same. There has been gradual progress in ending child marriage (around a decade ago, one in four women was married under 18). And technology is playing a growing role, both in cases where girls say “I do” and in cases where they say “I don’t.”

What Trump’s Rollback of DEI Means for First-Generation Students Like Me

PUBLISHED 3/4/2026 by

“People can take anything from you, but they can never take away your education.” My roots are in Guyana, a Caribbean nation, and this mantra of resilience echoed through generations and followed me from Guyana to Queens, N.Y.

But when President Trump recently bragged he “ended DEI in America,” he was openly celebrating the very shift I’ve already felt in my own education.

When I entered college in Fairfield, Conn., I carried more than my own ambition. I carried the unrealized dreams of my grandmother and the women in our village who were told their place was in the home, not a lecture hall. My education isn’t just for me—it’s for my family, my community and every girl back in our motherland who never got the chance and never will.

But higher education in the United States has increasingly transformed from a public good into a private marketplace. The very pathways that made my presence in these institutions possible are now being publicly dismantled through legislation and policy.

Immigrant and first-generation students do not weaken universities. We strengthen them. If we believe education cannot be taken from us, then we must be willing to fight for the conditions that make it accessible in the first place. In a political moment where leaders celebrate the end of DEI as progress, defending its need has never felt more urgent.

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.

Sundance 2026: ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ Is an Empathetic, Slice-of-Life Portrait of One Teenage Girl’s Summer

PUBLISHED 3/3/2026 by

For adults who’ve conveniently blocked out memories of their own teenage angst, director Paloma Schneideman’s Big Girls Don’t Cry may bring all those feelings roaring back—but it’ll also urge you to have a little empathy for the younger version of yourself.

A New Zealand entry in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic competition, the film is a sensitive, insightful portrayal of how teenagers struggle to sort out their own mixed motivations while shuttling constantly between big adult feelings and childlike urges.

(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)