More Than A Magazine, A Movement
A Ms. conversation with legal scholar Diane Rosenfeld and activist Ashley Judd reveals what some of our closest relatives can teach us about preventing sexual violence.
(This story also appears in the Summer 2023 issue of Ms. magazine. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get the Summer issue delivered straight to your mailbox!)
A new generation of young feminists are organizing shoulder-to-shoulder with seasoned activists, demanding the Equal Rights Amendment be immediately added to the Constitution.
To demonstrate this support for the ERA, students at Hunter College in New York City launched a petition drive to send a message to Congress that the time is now to put the Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution. Sign the petition and get involved in the drive at www.sign4ERA.org.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) just announced the first vote on the Equal Rights Amendment in the Senate in 40 years.
To build momentum ahead of the congressional vote, ERA advocates announced a nationwide petition for the public to pledge their support of the ERA.
Pioneering feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes died on Dec. 1, 2022, at the age of 84. Hughes became an icon of the women’s movement when Esquire published an image of her and Gloria Steinem in 1971 standing side by side with fists raised. That image has since been recreated, reinterpreted and reproduced on everything from mugs to T-shirts. A copy even hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes’ life of activism, however, transcended this image.
2023 will mark 100 years since the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress. Of this milestone, Gloria Steinem remarked “I never thought we would still be fighting this battle after all these years.”
Steinem, along with Carol Jenkins, president emerita of the ERA Coalition, and Mona Sinha, board chair of the ERA Fund for Women’s Equality, formed a panel at Smith College on Sept. 16. Joined by moderator Becca Damante, legislative assistant to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), the four discussed the merits of the ERA and its relationship with democracy.
There has never been a queer leader like Urvashi Vaid. Until her death of metastatic breast cancer on May 14 at age 63, she spent the better part of five decades fighting injustice. Principle drove Urvashi in almost everything she did. She exploded onto the scene with a dynamism that has never been equaled since.
“The lesbian agenda is the reconstruction of families … the reimagining of power … the reorganization of the economic system … the reinforcement of civil rights and dignity for all people … the end of the oppression of women, the end of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia … the reestablishment of a proper relationship to our environment. … When I list this laundry list of oppression, it does not overwhelm me; it tells me how far I have to go in my struggle; it tells me who my allies are.”
Over the last 30 years, only four countries have restricted access to abortion: Poland, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the U.S. While the leaked Supreme Court decision is cause for alarm, it is also a reminder of how far we’ve come, and why we cannot turn back the clock in countries that have liberalized abortion. Stories of abortion providers in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nepal of life before their countries legalized abortion show the U.S. how restricting abortion rights can endanger women’s lives.
Laura Lovett’s biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes is a fascinating read for anyone wanting to know more about the iconic feminist, as well as Black feminist organizing and interracial feminist collaboration in the U.S. women’s movement—a history we should know.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes died on Dec. 1. Rest in power, Dorothy.
Taymor’s film about Steinem—”The Glorias”—shows the complexities of many different yet united women, who form the backbone of a movement for peace, freedom and equality.
“We have to recognize that the voting booth is the only place on earth where we are equal,” states Gloria Steinem in her recent call to action.
