Civil Rights

Civil rights mean equal protections and opportunities under the law, and are a vital part of human rights and for the functioning of a democracy. They include liberties such as the right to vote, the right to a trial, and the right to access government services and education.

Afghan Women Are Trapped Between Two Prisons: Home and Society

“Hopelessness echoes from their [Afghan women’s] voices.”

Since the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2021, Afghan women have been systematically erased from education, employment, and public life, making Afghanistan the only country where girls above sixth grade are barred from school. Once vital contributors to the nation’s progress, women are now trapped in a cycle of oppression that not only devastates their futures but also weakens Afghanistan’s economy and global standing. The world must take urgent action to combat this gender apartheid and support Afghan women in their fight for basic human rights.

Beyond Affirmative Action: Why Gender Bias in College Admissions Still Favors Men

The recent Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions was heralded as a victory for “merit-based” selection. The ruling has, however, left an implicit discriminatory practice intact: Male applicants continue to be prioritized over female applicants when needed to balance out the student population. This is no coincidence. It’s the result of a deeply ingrained, albeit often unacknowledged, bias in the admissions process that dates back decades.

Keeping Score: Devastating Attacks on USAID; Louisiana Indicts N.Y. Doctor; Autumn Lockwood Is First Black Woman Coach to Win Super Bowl

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 this biweekly roundup.

This week: Musk and Trump’s USAID attacks have devastating impacts; 80% of the clean energy investments from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—which Trump wants to roll back—are in Republican congressional districts; Louisiana indicts a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills; new executive orders go after workers and LGBTQ people; the Laken Riley Act was signed into law; childcare costs affect the health of parents; and more.

‘There Is a Lot of Advocacy Underway … We Can’t Retreat’: Demelza Baer on the Legal Fight for Civil Rights

An interview with Demelza Baer, director of public policy at the 62-year-old Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law:

“We’re making plans, discussing litigation strategies and doing outreach. A lot is happening behind the scenes. … I know that this moment feels like one of the most challenging periods of our generation, but this makes our social justice work more meaningful than ever. Everyone in the civil rights and social justice communities is facing attacks, but this is our moment to lean in. We can’t retreat.”

The SAVE Act Is Voter Suppression Disguised as Election Integrity

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), would impose strict in-person documentation requirements for voter registration, effectively dismantling vote-by-mail, online registration and voter registration drives. These changes would disproportionately disenfranchise historically marginalized communities, including people of color, low-income individuals and women, while being based on debunked claims of non-citizen voting.

Critics argue that the bill is a voter suppression tactic designed to maintain political power rather than protect election integrity, threatening the fundamental right to vote in a democracy.

‘Calling In’: Loretta Ross’ New Book Teaches How to ‘Model the World We Desire’

Reproductive justice founder Loretta Ross has a groundbreaking new book: Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel. Ross draws on over 40 years of experience as a feminist activist to offer hope and guidance for how we can learn to communicate and work together across our differences of identity, political opinion and priorities. Calling In is part activist memoir, part how-to guide for calling in and part strategic plan for growing the human rights movement.

Beautifully written and engaging, Calling In is a guide to “compassionate politics”—an antidote to infighting and calling out that is weakening the women’s movement and the left today. 

Beyond the Bus: Rosa Parks’ History of Fighting Sexual Violence and Systemic Oppression

Rosa Parks is often remembered as the quiet seamstress who ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet, her history as an advocate against sexual violence is often overlooked. Parks’ work demonstrates how the fight against sexual violence is inseparably linked to the fight against systemic oppression, particularly racism, sexism, and misogynoir.

Universities Must Do Better for the Trans Community

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For the past decade, Americans have been fed a steady diet of transphobic hysteria, with 2024 being the 5th consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. The election of Donald J. Trump was predicated on a fight against trans rights.

As professors at San José State University, we have seen the results of this type of targeted campaign. Recent and past events on our campus by transphobic individuals and extremist groups emphasizing bigotry and hate, turn university spaces into anti-intellectual theater and harm trans students. In so doing, they position our campuses too closely to intolerance. 

U.N. Landmark Ruling Condemns Ecuador and Nicaragua for Forcing Girls Into Motherhood

For the first time in its history, the United Nations Human Rights Committee recognized in a Jan. 20 ruling that denying an abortion to a child is not just a denial of choice but an imposition of pregnancy and forced motherhood that irreversibly disrupts their health, well-being and life trajectory.

This landmark decision represents a crucial shift in how the international community addresses the intersection of children’s rights, reproductive rights and gender justice.

This Is the Power-Grab Moment

Trump is not a small-government conservative because he read Ayn Rand in college. He’s a government-of-one conservative: an authoritarian.

What Trump has done here is not just a funding pause. It is a test: Will members of Congress comply with increasingly extreme acts—acts that strip their power, publicly humiliate them and anger their constituents? Will Congress and the public agree that in order to receive federal funding that Congress has already allocated, every single agency and organization that receives such funding has to demonstrate their loyalty to far-right Trumpian ideology? Will the people who make up the federal government decide that the foundation of American democracy—the separation of powers, put into place in part to ensure that the nation would be governed by representatives of people and not a singular king—is worth preserving?