As anti-rights groups launch a global attack on sexual and reproductive health, countries supporting feminist policy are battling to preserve funding.
Global Women’s Rights
Stories covering the fight for gender-based rights across all regions of the world and stories of international coalitions advocating for global feminist change.
Alliance Defending Freedom Succeeded in Overturning Roe. Now It’s Turning to the United Kingdom.
If you follow the fight over abortion access in the U.S., you’ve likely heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The powerful nonprofit was instrumental in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. ADF drafted model legislation used to defend Mississippi’s 15-week ban and has long championed policies targeting LGBTQ+ rights, contraception access and same-sex marriage.
Now, ADF is setting its sights across the Atlantic. The organization—which boasts operations in 112 countries—has been quietly expanding its influence in Britain through its new alliance with the right-wing Reform Party, led by populist figure Nigel Farage.
The Reform-ADF partnership is following a familiar playbook: reframing reproductive rights as a free-speech issue. ADF has backed efforts to challenge the Public Order Act of 2023, which established “safe access zones” around abortion clinics—150-meter perimeters designed to prevent harassment and obstruction. Despite broad public support for these zones (77 percent of Britons favor them), Farage and his allies have called the policy a “sinister crackdown on expression.”
“There is a clear pattern here of U.S.-funded antiabortion activists testing the limits of the new U.K. law, seemingly trying to find the most acceptable-looking behavior to gain public sympathy, and then using that to try to tear down the law,” said Karen Wright, public affairs manager for Humanists U.K. “It is deeply concerning to see efforts from outside groups attempting to influence domestic law, particularly when it comes to women’s reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy.”
Why Won’t the U.S. Stop Child Marriage?
Child marriage is a persistent, evolving, global problem, and the United States is far from immune: Between 2000 and 2018, nearly 300,000 children were married in America—most of them girls wed to adult men.
Lack of a strong legal framework to prevent child marriage in the U.S. contributes to its prevalence. Banning child marriage is still in the best interest of America’s children and teens.
From Iceland’s ‘Women’s Day Off’ to No Kings, Progress Begins When Women Stand Together
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!
This week:
—Fifty years ago, the women of Iceland changed the course of their nation … not through an election or a revolution, but through one simple, collective act: They stopped. On Oct. 24, 1975, 90 percent of Icelandic women refused to work, cook or care for children for a single day. That strike, known as the Women’s Day Off, became a watershed moment for equality, but it didn’t emerge overnight.
—Women hold the majority in the Bolivia legislature.
—Japan confirms Sanae Takaichi as its first woman prime minister.
… and more.
Russia Was Once a Revolutionary Feminist Motherland
Russia’s hostility to feminism today stems not from its foreignness, but from memory. A century ago, it was Russian women who lit the first sparks of revolution. On International Women’s Day in 1917, factory workers filled the streets of Petrograd demanding bread, peace and equality—an uprising that toppled the Romanovs and pulled the world into modernity. Under the Bolsheviks, women won the right to vote, divorce became accessible and abortion was legalized. For a brief, radical moment, the Soviet experiment made women’s liberation a pillar of the state.
Julia Ioffe’s book, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, reminds us that today’s Russia rejects feminism precisely because it once knew what it could do: ignite revolutions, upend hierarchies and reimagine power itself.
The Ripple Effects of the U.S. Retreat from International Reproductive Care
The U.S. withdrawal of international reproductive health funding is already having devastating effects around the world. Clinics are closing, health workers go unpaid, and essential medications and contraceptives sit unused in warehouses while millions of women and families lose access to life-saving care.
These abrupt cuts are not just administrative—they are a direct attack on decades of global health progress, putting children, pregnant women and marginalized communities at heightened risk of preventable disease, unintended pregnancy and death.
Yet there is still a path forward. The infrastructure to deliver reproductive and public health services remains in place, and health workers are ready to act. If funding is restored, we can prevent the worst outcomes, safeguard global health, and ensure that the fundamental human rights to health, life and bodily autonomy are protected.
The global community must act urgently to reverse the harm and prevent a full-scale public health and human rights crisis.
After the War: Author and Aid Worker Claudia Krich Challenges the Myths of Vietnam
American humanitarian worker Claudia Krich—co-director of the American Friends Service Committee medical relief program from 1973 to 1975—was one of only a handful of Americans who stayed in Vietnam past April, 30, 1975, after the war ended. (She and her husband finally left in July 1975.)
Fifty years later, in April, Krich published her full journal from those months in Vietnam. Those Who Stayed: A Vietnam Diary, now available from the University of Virginia Press, combines Krich’s 1975 diary—including sections originally published in Ms.‘ July 1976 print issue—with extra historical content and some first-person accounts by people mentioned in or relevant to the book.
To celebrate the book’s release earlier this year, Claudia Krich communicated with Ms. about her book and her experiences as an American woman living and working in Vietnam during this historic moment.
“People think the war was North versus South, but that’s not true. … I hope my book motivates more people to travel, to take risks, to be outspoken, to record what they experience.”
Technical Difficulties: How Social Media Is Impacting the Landscape of Misinformation About Reproductive Health
There’s a lot of unreliable information circulating about birth control—and it’s doing real harm.
The Trump administration is mischaracterizing contraceptives as abortifacients and using that false claim to justify plans to destroy nearly $10 million worth of birth control. For now, the supplies sit in a Belgian warehouse, their fate uncertain.
Meanwhile, social media is flooded with misleading videos about hormonal contraception, watched billions of times. This wave of misinformation is helping drive a decline in contraceptive use among young women that can’t be explained by access alone.
We know from experience that accurate, engaging storytelling can counter these lies—shows like East Los High have proven it—and the same approach could transform TikTok and other short-form platforms.
Hegseth’s Call to ‘Toughness’ Sparks Concerns About Military Sexual Violence
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently vowed to enforce “tough” new rules of engagement for the U.S. military, declaring there would be “no more walking on eggshells.” Critics say his rhetoric risks normalizing aggression and sexual violence both within the ranks and in combat.
Hegseth, a member of a Christian nationalist church that promotes patriarchy, also called for past infractions by so-called “tough” leaders to be expunged. Sexual assault in the military remains pervasive: the Department of Defense reported 8,195 cases in 2024, and estimates suggest nearly a quarter of active-duty women experience sexual assault during their service.
Historically, rape has been used as a weapon of war, from ancient Israel to World War II, and it continues today in conflicts abroad and at home. Experts warn that leadership matters—policies and rhetoric that prioritize violent masculinity put survivors at serious risk.
This International Day of the Girl, ‘Doing Nothing Is Not an Acceptable Choice’
On Oct. 11, we celebrate International Day of the Girl, a global call to recognize girls’ rights and confront persistent inequality.
When hope wavers and progress stalls, I look for words that steady me. Recently, I found them in writer Roxane Gay’s powerful essay in The New York Times, “Civility Is a Fantasy,” where she writes: “As a writer, as a person, I do not know how to live and write and thrive in a world where working for decency and fairness and equality can be seen as incivility … I worry and I worry and I worry, and I feel helpless and angry and tired, but also recognize that doing nothing is not an acceptable choice.”
After reading Gay’s words, I reminded myself of the girl I am and the change I lead, and thought about the many girls who might be feeling that same helplessness right now—those watching rights roll back, hearing their worth debated or wondering if their voices still matter. So, on International Day of the Girl, this letter is for them. It’s a call for action.