More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris had their first and only debate on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. According to CNN, Trump spoke for about 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for 37 minutes and 36 seconds. Trump spoke 39 times to Harris’ 23 times.
Here’s what each candidate said on some of the issues feminists care about—including access to abortion and other reproductive healthcare, the Affordable Care Act, childcare, immigration, racial unity and the economy.
The Valiente Fund is a new (but long overdue) donor collaborative, grantmaker and accelerator unleashing the power of the next generation of Latine changemakers while addressing the severe underinvestment in our communities.
(This essay is part of a Women & Democracy package focused on who’s funding the women and LGBTQ people on the frontlines of democracy. We’re manifesting a new era for philanthropy—one that centers feminism. The need is real: Funding for women and girls amounts to less than 2 percent of all philanthropic giving; for women of color, it’s less than 1 percent. Explore the “Feminist Philanthropy Is Essential to Democracy” collection.)
On Friday, presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris revealed details of her economic platform, which included a large focus on policies that would have an outsized benefit on women.
It is encouraging to see Vice President Harris lean into policies focused on alleviating these difficult situations many women in our country find themselves facing. And, there are areas where we know we need to do more.
Here’s a breakdown of the good, the bad and areas in need of improvement.
In 2020, the Raising Haiti Foundation began funding the provision of small loans ($25-$50) to 50 women clients in two communities: Medor and Sarrazin. Most of the women use their loans to become entrepreneurs, or to expand their current businesses, selling goods in local markets. Some use them to purchase livestock or crop seeds, improving their farming outputs.
This interview with recipient and entrepreneur Benita Bien-Aimé exemplifies some of the achievements of the microcredit clients.
“I think what makes women like me successful in business is that we have courage, we have strength; we know what the market needs are, we go looking for these products, and we bring them to the community!”
A recent study found concentrations of 16 metals in 30 different varieties of tampons. Although there may be no need for immediate panic, consumers have every right to be angry. Where is corporate responsibility? Why so little transparency? How can the government step in?
Come November, Colorado voters will have the opportunity to prove their support for abortion rights in the Centennial State. In May, Coloradans for Reproductive Freedom gathered more than the 125,000 valid petition signatures needed to place Initiative 89 on the 2024 general election ballot.
The measure reads as follows:
“The right to abortion is hereby recognized. Government shall not deny, impede, or discriminate against the exercise of that right, including prohibiting health insurance coverage for abortion.”
Front & Center is a groundbreaking Ms. series that began as first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond a single policy intervention to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women experiencing poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face—including navigating the existing safety net; healthcare, childcare and elder care; and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
Dive into this first-person account from a mother struggling to feed her kids when they’re home from school during the summer, after Mississippi was one of 15 states to decline federal food aid for poor families: “There are times I don’t eat to make sure that they do. When you’re a parent, sometimes you have to make those decisions.”
When right wing activists and media personalities (falsely) accuse Tim Walz of deliberately misrepresenting his military record, they’re not just attacking his honor and integrity, and therefore his character. The actual—although unspoken—target of the attacks on Walz’s career in the Army National Guard is his masculinity.
The reason is straightforward: Military service confers a certain kind of masculine street cred on men who wear the uniform. As a result, when a male candidate has a record of service—especially if he’s a Democrat—right-wing operatives make it a point to plant seeds of doubt about whether they were truly worthy of that respect. It’s a battle tactic in the political war. The ultimate goal is to punch holes in the “real man” credentials of someone like Walz, and thereby undermine his popularity with men.
Front & Center is a groundbreaking Ms. series that offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond individual stories to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women in poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face, including healthcare, childcare and elder care, and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.
“When we started our Front & Center series three years ago, our goal was to give Black women living in extreme poverty—too often ignored in our politics and press—a platform to share their lived experience. … Instead of the narrow spotlight we’ve held to the singular program of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income pilot, we recognize that we must illuminate the full range of systems that harm our most vulnerable communities.”
Conservative politicians are complaining about childless cat ladies, declining marriage rates, unstable families and single-parent households. Their strategy so far has been to ban abortion, offer families no real support, do nothing to help struggling Americans find greater financial stability, promote a deeply misogynistic worldview to young men, and then yell at young women that they need to get married and have babies. Shockingly, this is not working very well.
On the other side, liberals have de-emphasized marriage and the nuclear family as the primary organizing unit for society, while offering women and men alike more choices about when, how, and if to start families, and more support if they do. And while marriage and childbearing rates are down generally, the prototypical Democratic voter—the college-educated woman working for pay in or near a large city in a blue state—is more likely to find herself in a happy, stable marriage than the prototypical Republican voter.
This isn’t a coincidence.
