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.

Nine Books by Black Women About Travel, Belonging and the Search for Home

PUBLISHED 8/19/2026 by

Over the years, I’ve immersed myself in the stories of other Black women, not only as literary models, but as encouragement that the world might actually want to hear my story, my lessons and my truth. These books reminded me I am part of a long lineage of brave Black women who decided to leave home in search of adventure and themselves. The following memoirs, anthologies and novels explore movement across borders while grappling with history, race, identity, belonging, faith, joy and ultimately, home.

As Heat Rises and Wildfires Rage, Gender Inequality Is Turning Deadly

PUBLISHED 8/14/2026 by

As salient as extreme heat and wildfires have been this summer, an important dimension has been mostly absent from discussions of it: gender.

Climate change impacts are not gender-neutral. Heat affects different populations in different ways. Climate vulnerability depends on intersecting factors like age, income, occupation, disability, race, but also gender, which is often overlooked.

Protecting women, especially those with multiple factors of vulnerability, must be central to climate action, not peripheral.

Detaining Families, Policing Pregnancy: Trump’s Immigration Crackdown on Women and Children

PUBLISHED 8/12/2026 by

Trump’s latest attacks on birthright citizenship are part of a much broader effort to police American identity, punish migrant women for entering the U.S. and ultimately regulate their reproduction. Immigrant women and children remain particular targets of a hostile immigration system that seeks to control them through detention, family separation and deportation. The administration’s reinstatement of family detention has made it possible to incarcerate whole families while avoiding the political backlash generated by the “zero tolerance” separations of Trump’s first term.

But detaining families together does not make detention humane. Family residential facilities expose mothers and children to interrupted medical care, inadequate health screenings, poor living conditions and lasting physical and psychological harm. Women—particularly those who are pregnant, postpartum or caring for young children—also face heightened vulnerability to neglect and abuse inside a system where government officers and private contractors wield enormous power over their daily lives.

These policies are not simply about immigration enforcement. They are a means of penalizing pregnancy, motherhood and family formation in immigrant communities. From attacks on birthright citizenship to the detention of pregnant women and U.S.-citizen children, the administration is using the immigration system to make migration more painful and precarious—and to enact that punishment on the bodies and families of migrant women.

A Groundbreaking U.N. Resolution Calls Forced Pregnancy What It Is: Reproductive Violence

PUBLISHED 7/25/2026 by

It took until July 7, 2026, for the world’s leading human rights body to call forcing someone to be pregnant—or forcing them not to be—what it is: reproductive violence. In a landmark resolution adopted unanimously, the U.N. Human Rights Council formally recognized “reproductive violence” as a specific, systemic form of gender-based violence. 

This historic U.N. declaration has implications for the United States, where 41 states ban abortion at some point during pregnancy. These bans block medical providers from offering needed care, and enable police and state attorneys to arrest and criminally prosecute pregnant women whose reproductive decision-making they oppose.

Any law or government action that requires a person to carry a pregnancy to term against their will is a form of bodily assault. The dynamics mirror domestic violence and sexual assault. The core of rape is the violation of consent—taking control of another person’s body and forcing them to submit. Abortion bans likewise hijack a person’s body, stripping them of their bodily integrity and self-determination.

As anti-violence advocate Irene Weiser once asked: “How can we ever begin to end violence against women if the laws of our society will not even guarantee the most fundamental of human right to women—to say at all times, under all circumstances, what we allow to happen to our bodies?”

Ms. Global: Genocide in Sudan, Withdrawal of HIV Funding in South Africa, Two Killed in Protests in Afghanistan Over Arrests of Women

PUBLISHED 7/20/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to healthcare. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems.

Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This month: news from Sudan, South Africa, Afghanistan and more.

Climate Change Hits Women Hardest. It’s Time Our Solutions Reflected That.

PUBLISHED 7/19/2026 by

Imagine being nine months pregnant with no clinic to give birth in and no skilled birth attendant anywhere within reach. This was the reality for 73,000 women who were weeks away from their due date in my native province of Sindh, Pakistan, when catastrophic floods submerged the region in 2022. At that moment, there were a total of 650,000 pregnant women living in the disaster zone. Those women were not a statistic to me; they were my community members. What happened to them is what happens to women everywhere when climate disasters strike, and most countries are not prepared for it.

Decades of working in women’s health and human rights have made one thing clear: Climate change is not gender neutral. Climate change accelerates violence against women. It accelerates poverty that disproportionately affects women and young people. And it puts women and girls at profound reproductive health risk, especially in communities where rights and resources are already fragile. Treating this as a footnote is not just a moral failure; it is a strategic one.

Policymakers and governments must ensure disaster response plans treat gender-based violence as a public health emergency. They need to ensure climate adaptation plans protect girls’ access to education, because when schools close after a disaster, it is the girls who don’t return. They need to ensure that when climate disasters strike, access to contraception and reproductive healthcare does not disappear overnight. And they need to make sure that when they talk about climate resilience, they are prioritizing the health and safety of women and girls.

The climate movement has fought hard and made strides. But a movement that does not center the people bearing the heaviest burden is an incomplete one. Climate leaders, negotiators and policymakers must do more than acknowledge that women are disproportionately affected; they must build solutions into every plan, every policy and every dollar spent. The infrastructure and the expertise exist. What is missing is the political will, and the funding, to match the scale of the crisis.

Hegseth Rolls Back Progress for Military Women; Darline Graham Nordone, Sister of Lindsey Graham, Heads to the Senate

PUBLISHED 7/17/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

This week:
—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven senior Navy officers, five of whom are women or people of color.
—Darline Graham Nordone, the younger sister of the late South Carolina Rep. Lindsey Graham, was appointed by the state’s governor to complete his U.S. Senate term.

… and more.

War on Women Report: Trump Administration Defines Embryos as ‘Children,’ Eliminates LGBTQ Veteran Healthcare *and* Guts Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—This month marked the fourth anniversary of Dobbs. Today, 41 states have some form of abortion restrictions in place, including 13 states that ban abortion entirely.
—HHS has terminated 53 of its 67 grants for the federal Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, totaling about $68 million and affecting grantees in two dozen states.
—Two family planning programs sued the Trump administration for curtailing the Title X grant program, which funded clinics providing reproductive healthcare services to low-income patients.

… and more.

The World Cup Is Here—But Who Is It For?

PUBLISHED 6/23/2026 by

Soccer is one of the most beloved sports in the world, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the largest in the tournament’s history—has drawn millions of fans across the globe. This year, for the first time, the event is being jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, with matches and related events taking place across North America.

FIFA stands to earn billions of dollars from the tournament.

But as the organization reaps record revenues, many host communities are bearing significant costs. Soaring ticket prices, displacement, labor concerns and aggressive immigration enforcement have raised questions about who truly benefits from the World Cup. For many working-class residents—and even lifelong soccer fans—the tournament is out of reach.

To better understand those impacts, I spoke with Jennifer Li, co-director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at the O’Neill Institute and director of Dignity 2026, a coalition of labor and human rights organizations working to protect communities most at risk during the World Cup.

Soccer “is very much an immigrant sport, let’s face it,” said Li, “and by extension, a sport for people of color, diverse communities. It is a sport that’s not expensive to play, but very expensive to watch, apparently. So, the question then becomes: Who is this for?”

The Tradwife Fantasy Isn’t Replacing Feminism

PUBLISHED 6/22/2026 by

As conservative organizations are carefully curating messaging about femininity, marriage and traditional values, the data tells a different story: Feminism remains remarkably popular, especially among young women.

That reality stands in sharp contrast to the messaging on display at gatherings like Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit, held earlier this month in San Antonio, Texas—part of a growing strategy among conservative organizers to attract young women through lifestyle content rather than traditional political organizing. The “pink pill pipeline” is a pathway that introduces conservative politics through wellness culture, dating advice and discussions about traditional gender roles. 

Yet while anti-feminist rhetoric has gained visibility online, research continues to show that young women remain one of the strongest constituencies for feminism.