AAPI Women

Asian American and Pacific Islanders are the fastest growing racial group in the U.S. Yet, they remain underrepresented in almost every industry, including politics.

However, in 2024 Vice President Kamala Harris made history as the first Black American woman and first Indian American woman to be a presidential nominee.

‘These Aren’t Decorative Constitutional Provisions—They’re Powerful Tools Waiting to Be Used’: How the ERA Project Is Advancing the Feminist Agenda, State by State

PUBLISHED 9/10/2025 by

In the final episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward, ERA Project director Ting Ting Cheng breaks down the power of state Equal Rights Amendments—and how activists and lawmakers can leverage them to build a stronger foundation for federal constitutional equality for everyone.

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “The Feminist Fight For The Equal Rights Amendment Is Far From Over—and More Urgent Than Ever (with Pat Spearman, Ellie Smeal, Carol Moseley Braun, Kathy Spillar, and Ting Ting Cheng)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.  

State Courts Hold the Power to Free Us Or Erase Us

PUBLISHED 8/30/2025 by and

While national headlines fixate on the U.S. Supreme Court, state courts shape nearly every part of our lives. From traffic violations and business disputes to child custody and criminal charges, an estimated 95 percent of all legal cases in the United States are handled in state courts. 

State courts decide whether you can access abortion care, whether your protest leads to jail time, whether you keep custody of your child and whether your gender identity is protected or punished.

Despite their vast power, state courts remain one of the most overlooked battlegrounds—and opportunities—in the fight for justice. As organizers, we’ve seen the cost of that neglect. Now we’re calling on progressive movements to treat state courts not as a footnote, but as a headline.

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

Female Founders Fund’s Anu Duggal Is Betting Big on Women

PUBLISHED 8/26/2025 by

When Anu Duggal invested in one of her earliest portfolio companies, many in her network hesitated—there were concerns about the founder’s past that few wanted to investigate or understand. But Duggal went the other way, going beyond standard due diligence; she took the time to truly understand what happened and recognized that, under different circumstances, she could have been in the same position herself. 

“If you do that to everyone,” she says, “you’re never going to give anyone a second chance.” She trusted her instincts and leaned into context over spreadsheets. That leap of faith paid off: The company went on to achieve a successful exit, and that founder is already on her way to her second venture.

What Duggal represents isn’t just a woman with a fund—it’s a different operating system for venture. The industry still privileges spin-outs, paper perfection and familiar faces. Duggal’s career shows why that lens is too narrow. Traits often coded as “soft”—intuition, nuance, second chances—can lead to transformative returns—and ripple through the entire ecosystem for women, creating role models, opportunities and capital for the next generation.

(This piece is part of an ongoing series, “Redefining Power: How Indian American Women Are Rewriting the Rules of Leadership, Identity and Care.” The series explores what it means to modernize without losing our roots—through candid conversations with Indian American women reshaping culture, power and possibility.)

Fifty Years After War, Southeast Asian Communities Face a New Kind of Violence. Gender and Queer Justice Must Be at the Heart of This Moment.

PUBLISHED 7/29/2025 by and

Drawing on histories of war, displacement and resistance, Southeast Asian organizers expose how patriarchy fuels violence, erasure and division—and why intersectional justice must lead the way forward.

“Patriarchal power is regrouping, seeking to reassert its grip. If we do not recognize and resist this realignment, we risk losing hard-won resources, protections and, most importantly, people. 

“As a community, Southeast Asians’ trauma is compounded by war and displacement. Nearly 16,000 Southeast Asian refugees face deportation; many live in poverty and fear, underserved by traditional systems and are often overlooked in broader Asian American narratives. As the United States expands its deportation machine, refugees from the U.S.-backed wars in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are being re-criminalized and forcibly removed. These deportations fracture families, destabilize communities, and retraumatize those already targeted by the carceral state. Gender-based violence and anti-queer violence only intensify those challenges.”

(This essay is part of a collection presented by Ms. and the Groundswell Fund highlighting the work of Groundswell partners advancing inclusive democracy.)

How Reshma Saujani Makes the Invisible Work of Motherhood Impossible to Ignore

PUBLISHED 7/1/2025 by | UPDATED 7/7/2025 at 12:25 P.M. PT

Most women are taught to make motherhood look effortless. Reshma Saujani wants you to see that we were never supposed to do it alone.

In a country that still treats caregiving as a personal responsibility rather than a public good, Saujani is changing the script. Not by asking for sympathy, but by exposing the architecture of the lie—and building something better in its place.

“I come from a long line of rule-breakers,” she told me. “My parents fled a dictator. They landed in Chicago with nothing. I grew up surrounded by refugees who were just trying to make it work. That kind of survival teaches you two things: one, that struggle is constant—and two, that silence is dangerous.”

She was a rule-breaker long before she was a movement-builder—always challenging authority, always in detention. “I’ve never been good at following the script,” she said. And that’s exactly what makes her effective.

Women Rise in Cabinets and Campaigns—But Gaps Persist, From Korea to Congress

PUBLISHED 5/30/2025 by

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!

This week:
—For the first time in Australian history, there will be more women than men in the federal Cabinet, thanks in large part to ranked-choice voting and gender quotas.
—Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop announces South Orange Village Mayor Sheena Collum as running mate.
—A new report written by Jennifer Piscopo, Nancy L. Cohen and Natalia Vega Varela explores how gender inequality continues to limit women’s opportunities and well-being globally.
—As South Korea approaches its 2025 presidential election, the complete absence of female candidates on the final ballot marks a stark regression in gender representation.

… and more!

‘Tap Someone In’: Mini Timmaraju on Mentorship, Motherhood and Mobilizing Indian American Women

PUBLISHED 5/20/2025 by | UPDATED 5/28/2025 at 1:12 P.M. PT

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL), doesn’t just rise—she brings others with her. This ethos of tapping in challenges Indian American women to move from individual achievement to collective empowerment.

As my conversation with Timmaraju unfolded, we explored her childhood, her professional journey and the simplest yet most impactful action she believes Indian American women should take right now. It’s clear that Timmaraju’s story is not just about her own path, but about building pathways for others.

“We need to build our own villages—not just for family, but for career and leadership, too,” she said. “We shouldn’t do it alone.”

‘I Don’t Want Thick Skin. I Want to Feel People’s Pain’: Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Truth, Power and Breaking the Rules

PUBLISHED 4/17/2025 by

Rep. Pramila Jayapal doesn’t believe in growing a thick skin. “I want to feel people’s pain,” she tells me. As chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and founder of the Resistance Lab, she’s building a politics rooted in empathy, resistance, and readiness: “We have to get strike ready.”

From walking out of the State of the Union to confronting power with “moral clarity,” Jayapal is done playing by the old rules: “When you don’t give respect, you don’t get respect.”

Women’s History Month: Five Groundbreaking Researchers Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Tested Atomic Theories, Vanquished Malaria and More

PUBLISHED 3/4/2025 by

Behind some of the most fascinating scientific discoveries and innovations are women whose names might not be familiar but whose stories are worth knowing:

—Marie Tharp revolutionized oceanography by mapping the seafloor, uncovering a rift valley that helped prove plate tectonic theory.
—Margaret Morse Nice transformed ornithology with her empathetic study of song sparrows, pioneering methods still used today.
—Tu Youyou led groundbreaking research in Maoist China, extracting artemisinin from traditional medicine, which became a lifesaving malaria treatment.
—Emmy Noether, a mathematical genius praised by Einstein, overcame systemic barriers to make foundational contributions to theoretical physics.
—Chien-Shiung Wu, an atomic physicist, played a critical role in the Manhattan Project and experimentally disproved a long-standing nuclear theory … though her male colleagues received the Nobel Prize for the discovery.

Women’s Paychecks Are Shrinking—And Policy Isn’t Keeping Up

PUBLISHED 2/1/2025 by

Last September, the National Partnership for Women and Families reported the wage gap for all women workers had widened to 75 cents for every dollar men earned, representing a 3-cent decrease in real pay per hour for women.

While on the surface this may seem negligible in a paycheck, even a seemingly small increase in wage disparity dramatically impacts the significant gains in pay since the 1980s. American Progress reports that with this current backslide, it will now take until 2068 to close the wage gap.