New Episode of Ms.’s On The Issues With Michele Goodwin Podcast: What Does Feminist Foreign Policy Look Like?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | March 9, 2021

On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a popular, issues and policy focused podcast featuring feminist analysis, insightful conversations and exciting guests. This is the first podcast from Ms. magazine, a legacy feminist publication. In each bi-weekly episode, host Dr. Michele Goodwin and special guests will tackle the most compelling issues of our times, centering feminist concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality.

A new episode—What Does Feminist Foreign Policy Look Like? (with Karen Greenberg, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Pardis Mahdavi, and Lyric Thompson)—is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and MsMagazine.com.

As women continue to be hit by job loss, increased home responsibilities, family caretaking, unaccounted for invisible labor, homelessness, and domestic violence, it is clear the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed underlying institutional and infrastructural inequalities in our society.  The pandemic underscores the urgency to examine and reimagine the international status of women and girls.

This week, Dr. Goodwin and her guests ask: What would a feminist foreign policy agenda look like in the United States? How does it look globally? How does it take into account vulnerable women and girls? What hope exists for ending inequality based on race, sex and gender? What differences do women and girls make as social, political and economic motivators for change?

Dr. Goodwin is joined by Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law; Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Daughters of Kobani; Pardis Mahdavi, dean of social sciences and director of the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University; and Lyric Thompson, senior director of policy and advocacy at the International Center for Research on Women and frequent Ms. contributor.

Their conversation covered a wide range of topics; you can find a full transcript here, as well as a few excerpts below:

“How is that actually possible that we still have hundreds of children who cannot be reunited with their families and no real plan on how to do it because the information was never taken down, right? We don’t have the names. We don’t have the numbers. We don’t have the points to connect. But it’s more than that.” —Karen Greenberg

“[I]t is really important that we listen and amplify homegrown agents of change in their own communities who are risking their safety to advocate for a better future for the next generation to live in a world that is more just, and the whole notion of women not being forgotten at the center of national security and foreign policy matters.” —Gayle Lemmon

“I think what we’ve seen in the last 10 or 15 years is the emergence of pretty strong transnational feminist networks, some of them deploying the spaces of the underground, but really giving birth to a new kind of feminism which many and I agree, we call it justice feminism.” —Pardis Mahdavi

“Sweden launched the world’s first Feminist Foreign Policy, and for them they said that meant three things. Women’s rights, representation, and resource in every element of their foreign policy, so more women doing foreign policy.” —Lyric Thompson

Meet the Host of On the Issues: Dr. Michele Goodwin is a frequent contributor to Ms.Magazine and on MsMagazine.com. She is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and also serves on the executive committee and national board of the ACLU. Dr. Goodwin is a prolific author and an elected member of the American Law Institute, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the Hastings Center. Her most recent book, Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood, is described as a “must read.”

About Ms. Magazine: Co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1972 and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation since 2001, Ms. magazine has been a trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online for nearly 50 years. Ms .’s time-honored traditions of an emphasis on in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis have never been more relevant, bringing a new generation of writers and readers together to share news, analysis, research and strategies for fighting back and moving forward, for shaping the future.

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If you would like more information on the On the Issues with Michele Goodwin podcast, or to schedule an interview with Host Michele Goodwin or Executive Producer & Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar, please email press@msmagazine.com.

Launched in 1971, Ms. is the most trusted, popular source for feminist news and information in print and online with a tradition of in-depth investigative reporting and feminist political analysis. Ms. is wholly owned and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.