Feminist History

Amid Reproductive Rights Rollbacks, a New USPS Stamp Honors Sarah Orne Jewett, Who Imagined Lives for Women Beyond Marriage

PUBLISHED 9/24/2026 by

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) issued a new stamp late last month honoring 19th-century writer Sarah Orne Jewett—putting a woman whose work centered on female independence and unconventional lives, into mailboxes and collection books across the country.

The stamp, the 35th in USPS’ Literary Arts series, was unveiled in Jewett’s hometown of South Berwick, Maine. Its portrait of Jewett appears against the Maine coast, a reference to her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs. USPS says renewed interest in Jewett’s writing has been driven partly by her strong female characters.

In 2025, Ms. selected Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade, edited by Karen Weingarten, as one of the most anticipated feminist books of the year. The published collection brings together literature documenting abortion before Roe v. Wade, including an excerpt from Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Jewett never explicitly writes the word “abortion” in the published passage. Instead, one of the novel’s central characters, Mrs. Todd, is an herbalist who gathers plants and receives women who arrive privately at her door seeking remedies and whispered instructions. Weingarten said she included the passage because abortion exists in its subtext, reflecting a period when reproductive knowledge could be encoded in language about women’s networks of care.

That history makes the timing of Jewett’s stamp particularly striking. More than four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion remains banned outright in 13 states, with additional states enforcing early gestational limits. Battles over reproductive healthcare continue at both the state and federal levels—from access to medication abortion, to funding for family-planning services.

Jewett’s face is now traveling through a postal system caught up in that debate, across a country still contesting reproductive freedom. The stamp itself makes no claim about voting or reproductive rights. But there is something notable about a federal institution commemorating a woman whose work has become part of the literary history of abortion at the same moment reproductive autonomy is again being fiercely contested.

No Liberation Without Community: In One of Her Final Interviews, Gloria Steinem on Her New Memoir, Chosen Family and the Future of Feminism

PUBLISHED 9/24/2026 by

“Feminism is positive, widely embraced and global. It is spreading and growing. That gives me hope.”

In one of her final interviews, the late Gloria Steinem discusses her new memoir and the optimism that fueled her feminism.

“The written word has always been magic to me,” Gloria Steinem—celebrated writer, feminist activist and cofounder of this magazine—observes in her charming new memoir, An Unexpected Life. “One of my greatest pleasures has always been opening a book and finding a friend.”

In this posthumous release, she gives us exactly that: a volume that is wise and witty, intimate and inspiring. It’s a chance to get to know her not as an icon, but as a friend.

Gloria and I chatted about the book the month before her death.

Iranian Women’s Rights Activist Nasrin Sotoudeh Remembers Gloria Steinem: ‘Our Fate and Fortune Is Tied Together’

PUBLISHED 9/11/2026 by

Nasrin Sotoudeh is an Iranian human rights lawyer and activist who, along with her husband Reza Khandan, has been repeatedly arrested for her women’s rights activism and spent six years in prison. In the wake of Gloria Steinem’s passing on Sept. 2, Soutoudeh shared these words with Ms.

“Gloria Steinem’s extraordinary life and activism has touched, elevated and inspired women all over the world.

“I can attest to her deep influence on me and countless other women’s rights activists here in Iran, including my husband, Reza Khandan.

“As women, we know that whether we are in America or India, Europe or Africa, Iran or Afghanistan, our fate and fortune is tied together. The rights that we achieve or lose in one corner of the world have a direct bearing on another. In a very real sense, when it comes to persecution or emancipation, our minds, bodies and spirits are one.”

What Did Gloria Steinem Mean to You? Share Your Story With Ms.

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

Ms. has created a new digital tribute to Gloria Steinem, bringing together memories and reflections from friends, colleagues, fellow activists and readers around the world.

We invite you to add your voice by answering one question: What did Gloria mean to you?

Gloria was the people’s feminist. She made people feel seen, heard and capable of changing the world. She famously reminded us, “The Constitution does not begin with ‘I, the president.’ It begins with ‘We, the people.’”

So we invite you—the people—to help tell the story of her extraordinary feminist legacy.

Perhaps you met Gloria at a march, lecture or organizing meeting. Perhaps you grew up reading Ms. or discovered her writing decades later. Maybe her words helped you recognize an injustice, leave a harmful situation, find your voice, raise a feminist child, begin organizing or imagine a life beyond the limits prescribed for you.

Your tribute does not need to capture the whole of Gloria’s life or legacy. It only needs to tell your part of the story.

Share your memory, reflection or story about Gloria Steinem.

Gloria Steinem in Her Own Words: On Trump, Roe v. Wade, and the Birth of the Modern Women’s Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 9/4/2026 by and

As we grieve the passing of Gloria Steinem, Ms. founder and feminist visionary, we’re looking back at some of our favorite quotes from Steinem’s 50+ years of speaking and activism across the U.S. and throughout the world. She was sharp, funny and infinitely quotable, and many of her interviews from over the years combine deep feminist insight with some snappy one-liners.

The two most famous quotes attributed to Steinem are possibly, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and, “If men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament.” However, while Steinem said and popularized both, she made it clear that neither quote originated with her; the first is attributed to Australian writer and activist Irina Dunn, and the second, according to Steinem, was originally said by her speaking partner Florynce Kennedy.

Steinem still had no end of wise, funny, inspiring sayings of her own that other feminists will keep quoting for years after her death. Below are some of our favorites.

Beyond André Breton: The Life and Art of Jacqueline Lamba, the Surrealist Woman That Art History Forgot

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

Jacqueline Lamba lived in the shadow of her French poet husband and was essentially erased from modern art history. A groundbreaking biography Jacqueline Lamba: The Forgotten Surrealist (published April 7, 2026, by Merrell Publishers) from art historian and author Salomon Grimberg, repositions Lamba as a major creative force in her own right, while uncovering a previously unknown love affair between Lamba and Frida Kahlo.

Saving Seneca Falls: The U.S. Birthplace of ‘All Men and Women Are Created Equal’ Must Be Preserved

PUBLISHED 7/17/2026 by

A caved-in roof. A crumbling porch. A memorial water wall in need of restoration.

These are just a few areas of the $10 million of deferred maintenance needed at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., one of 11 sites on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2026 list of “Most Endangered Historic Places.” The Women’s Rights National Historical Park celebrates the first Women’s Rights Convention, held on July 19 and 20, 1848. Of the 433 parks within the National Park System, only 13 are dedicated to women’s history, making the inclusion of the Women’s Rights park on the “most endangered” list even more imperative. Rather than merely lament a need for restoration, the list, according to the trust, aims to increase “visibility, public attention and new resources to save and activate historic places for the public good.”

The story of suffrage, like so many stories in our nation’s history, is neither uncomplicated nor is it a “single story” that’s “preserved in amber,” insists Miranda Johnson-Haddad, president of the Friends of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, the non-profit philanthropic group that supports the park. Johnson-Haddad emphasizes that the park’s leadership wants to continue to have “brave conversations about difficult subjects,” including that some suffragists, like Stanton, succumbed to white supremacist thinking—despite being active in the abolition movement—championing the right to vote for white women, but not for Black men and women. No Black women were known to be in attendance at the first Seneca Falls Convention, and only one Black man, Frederick Douglass, signed the declaration.

Still, “these are stories that belong to all of us in all their messiness and complexity,” Johnson-Haddad stresses, “and that can guide us through the current messy complexity.” She cites “Bread and Roses,” a protest song dating back to 1912: “As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days / The rising of the women means the rising of the [human] race.”

Feminist Must-Reads: Our Favorite Books, Essays and Multimedia Projects for America at 250

PUBLISHED 7/2/2026 by

We’ve made it to July—another eighth of the Trump administration’s days behind us, halfway through a hell of a long year, and the eve of a long weekend to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

President Donald Trump’s apparent glee that women were absent from his recent White House UFC Fight was just the shot of inspiration I needed to collect and curate some of the best feminist takes on democracy to carry us through the national holiday.

Looking to Black and Indigenous Foremothers to Resist Erasure

PUBLISHED 7/2/2026 by

Free Black women and Indigenous women are the foremothers of generations of African Americans. Yet they remain largely absent from the official story of American freedom. Their lives, contributions and descendants have been systematically erased—from colonial records and legal classifications to public memory itself.

That erasure began in the earliest colonial records. The 1620 Virginia census recorded “four Indians in the service of several planters,” alongside 15 Negro men and 17 Negro women, reducing people to categories that obscured their identities, families and histories. Over the centuries, laws, court decisions and public institutions repeatedly reinforced that disappearance.

The best celebration of 250 years of American freedom—after the fireworks and celebrations by a newly blue-painted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are over—could be a visit to a cool, air-conditioned archive. In the quiet, anyone can search the records for the full story, of the enslaved and freeborn, Indian and African. Anyone can defy censorship and erasure with an open mind and a pencil, no fees required. 

The Equal Rights Amendment and the First Amendment: A Roadmap for a Feminist Future

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by

Donald Trump’s jingoistic whitewashing of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country will no doubt celebrate the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where the Sons of Liberty protested oppressive British import taxes. But throughout American history, women activists—the Daughters of Liberty to suffragists, journalists and civil rights advocates—have been making patriarchal governments tremble, by taking full advantage of the precious rights protected by the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. 

That same spirit must now drive the final push to secure the Equal Rights Amendment. Although the ERA has been ratified by the required 38 states, it has yet to be officially recognized as part of the Constitution.

The First Amendment gives us the tools to change that: by speaking out, organizing, protesting and demanding that elected leaders make constitutional equality a national priority.