More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Emily Wilson, a classicist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, made history as the first woman to translate Homer’s The Odyssey into English. Her groundbreaking translations offer a fresh lens through which to view these ancient texts.
Wilson’s work challenges long-held interpretations and underscores the value of diverse voices in literature—especially as U.S. education is under fire by conservative politicians and organizations.
My name is Suraya Mohammadi, a girl living in the heart of Afghanistan, a country under Taliban rule. I write this letter with a heart full of pain and hope, a letter that aims to be the voice of all Afghan girls, girls who are enduring an imposed and cruel silence.
Since the day the Taliban regained power, my life and the lives of thousands of other girls have turned into a nightmare. We have been deprived of going to school and continuing our education, from working and having a bright future. Every day, I look out of the small window of my house and wish that I could go back to school, open my books again, and dream of becoming a doctor, an engineer, or a lawyer. But sadly, these dreams have now turned into a nightmare we experience while awake.
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.
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 Marimène Tijuste exemplifies some of the achievements of the microcredit clients.
“Having more and different types of products to sell in my business has changed my life. I have more clients. I earn a profit. I can feed my family. … Everything has changed for me!”
The Justice Department went to the U.S. Supreme Court this week in defense of the Biden administration’s new Title IX sex discrimination rule that includes transgender protections—arguing strongly that the logic of the rule is “compelled” by the Court’s ruling in Bostock.
The rule, issued under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, is set to go into effect on Aug. 1.
One of the Court’s most significant decisions of 2024 was Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. In a reversal of 40 years of precedent, courts—not agencies—will have the last word on interpreting federal law.
In her Loper dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “In every sphere of current or future federal regulation, expect courts from now on to play a commanding role.” Kagan’s dissent raises the specter of judges across the country—not doctors or scientists or educators, nor even politicians, who at least must answer to the public—playing a “commanding role” in reproductive rights policy.
The late Faith Ringgold was a feminist, an activist, a teacher, a mother and an artist known for her innovative use of mediums, ranging from the more traditional oil on canvas, murals and mosaics, to story quilts, protest posters and soft sculptures.
(This article originally appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
A United Nations (U.N.) report released last month exposes the Taliban’s brutal gender-based system of discrimination, exclusion and oppression against Afghan women and girls.
Take action: Send an emergency action email urging the U.S. and U.N. to continue their non-recognition of the Taliban until they end gender apartheid and their crimes against humanity.
The latest Head Start reauthorization bill and President Biden’s 2025 fiscal budget include much-needed funding increases to raise educator wages. However, these gains are fragile, as evidenced by a recent Washington, D.C., budget proposal that would eliminate the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, a program created in 2021 to achieve pay parity between early childhood educators and their K-12 counterparts.
As at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson pointed out, “It feels like we’re balancing the budget on the backs of Black and brown women in the childcare sector.”
As administrative and legislative decisions take steps to erode the scope and funding of diversity offices, Black alumni must take a more vocal and firm stance to support, affirm and protect current and future undergraduates in an anti-DEI landscape.