Black Women Lead: From the Stage to the Streets

Our focus is on building the leadership capacity and political power of Black people and women. But we are struck by the complementary activism taking place in the arts to underscore this moment in history and to inspire progress.

Broadway’s Tony-nominated POTUS, Natalie Moore’s The Billboard and Molly Smith’s upcoming Arena Stage production, My Body No Choice, remind us to trust women as we collectively work to get our republic back on track.

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: A Record-Breaking Number of Women Are Running for Governor

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 Democratic party has nominated more women of color than the Republican party; 25 women are running for governor in the upcoming midterms; women leaders in Malaysia—which ranks 142nd for women’s representation—have called for the introduction of gender quotas for political parties; and more.

Join Ms. and Learn to Take Charge of Your Own Reproductive Healthcare

Learn everything you ever wanted to know about birth control, including things your doctor might not even know.

This free conversation will feature Dr. Sophia Yen, CEO and co-founder of Pandia Health, the only women-founded and women-led birth control delivery and telemedicine company. Yen will outline everything she thinks we need to know about birth control, emergency contraception, periods, abortions pills and more. (This event is back by popular demand!)

Not Your Mother’s Menopause

We all remember the moment we heard her story: an old woman, a witch, a shapeshifter, a ghost, who was feared by all who encountered her—likely somewhere between 40 and 101 years old.

But maybe the old woman living in the woods is not a mythical threat, but a person navigating their highly individualized journey with menopause and aging that transforms everything she knows about her body and her relationship to the world around her. Perhaps we should take another look and see her in her full personhood.

‘I Felt Like the Luckiest Girl in the World’: Afghan Students Restart College in the U.S.

In all, 148 Afghan women who had been college students in Bangladesh ended up in the U.S. They were able to flee thanks to an extraordinary effort orchestrated by their university, private businesses and government officials across the world. Sixty-four of them arrived at Arizona State University last December—including Oranous Koofi, 25, who escaped Kabul with only her cell phone, and Masooma Ebrahimi, 25, a refugee for the second time in her life.

Emerald Garner on Trauma, Picking up the Pieces and Finding Her Voice

An excerpt from Finding My Voice: On Grieving My Father, Eric Garner, and Pushing for Justice by Emerald Garner, Monet Dunham and Etan Thomas:

“While you haven’t even fully grieved, you’re now linked to other cases, and you only have the bond that your loved one was also murdered by the police. … We didn’t choose for my father to be murdered, but we were left to pick up the pieces after, and that just wasn’t fair.”

The Power of Young Black Women’s Votes

Panelists discussed youth voter turnout and the importance its impact on the fight for equal rights at the Getting out the Vote for Equality Roundtable hosted by the ERA Coalition and the Howard University Political Science Department on Sept. 20, National Voter Registration Day.

“Our vote is really the only way we’ve seen our voice be taken seriously. I personally am tired of seeing Black women get robbed of their justice,” said Nandi Perry of Gen Z for Change.

Keeping Score: Women Protest Hijab Law Across Iran; SNL and Sesame Street Casts Make History; U.S. Government Scores C+ on Repro Rights

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: Saturday Night Live and Sesame Street hire first nonbinary and Black woman cast members, respectively; Kelley Robinson hired as first Black woman director of the Human Rights Campaign; California becomes sanctuary state for trans youth; U.S. Soccer Federation documents rampant abuse; 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, and more.