Latina Women

Invest in Black and Latina Early Childhood Educators. Our Students Deserve It.

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.”

From Green to Red Tide: Latin America Is Leading the Way in the Fight Against Obstetric Violence

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In the early 2000s, Latin American feminists coined the term “obstetric violence” (OV) to refer to acts of abuse in the context of pregnancy, labor and birth, including physical and psychological violence, abusive medicalization and pathologization of natural processes that involve the loss of autonomy over our bodies and sexuality. 

Since then, governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Costa Rica have all passed legislation using the language of OV, laying out the rights of people at the time of labor and delivery.

Mexico’s Next President Is the Country’s First Woman, First Jewish President—And a Feminist

Mexico just elected its first woman and first Jewish president: former Mexico City Governor Claudia Sheinbaum.

She bested her opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, winning between 58.3 percent and 60.7 percent of the vote, according to the National Electoral Institute. Gálvez had between 26.6 percent and 28.6 percent.

Thanks to three decades of political innovation in Mexico, Sheinbaum, Gálvez and hundreds of other women received the chance to run for and serve in office.

For the Women Who Accused the Trump Campaign of Harassment, It’s Been More Harassment

At least four women of color involved in the 2016 Trump campaign are embroiled in legal fights over workplace harassment, discrimination or violations of nondisclosure agreements. They have been subjected to scorched-earth tactics.

Trump is a well-known bully who has belittled and sought to dominate political rivals. It turns out that Trump’s campaign used similar bullying tactics against its own workers. These fights have been waged out of the public eye against women with few resources to stand up against the campaign’s battery of lawyers, paid from a seemingly bottomless trove of campaign money.

‘A Virtual Abortion Doula in Your Pocket’: Aya Contigo Helps Latinas Find Abortion Care

U.S. abortion bans impact 6.7 million Latinas in the United States—the largest group of women of color impacted by these bans. Many lack insurance, cannot travel and face language and cultural barriers to reproductive healthcare. 

To address these barriers, two Canadian physicians—Dr. Roopan Gill and Dr. Genevieve Tam—co-created Aya Contigo, an app with an embedded live virtual chat to help people access contraception and abortion. Ms. spoke with Dr. Gill, an OB-GYN with advanced training in complex family planning about her work with Vitala Global and Aya Contigo.

We Must Stop Catholic Hospitals From Closing More Labor and Delivery Units

When I became a registered nurse two decades ago, I chose to work at my local Catholic hospital: Ascension Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita, Kansas. This Mother’s Day provides a bleak reminder of the stark contrast between my Catholic employer’s public image and the reality inside its hospitals.

Ascension is one of the largest and wealthiest nonprofit and Catholic hospital systems in the United States. Ascension cut a quarter of its labor and delivery units, just in the last decade.

The Catholic health ministry boasts the mission of giving “special attention to those who are poor and vulnerable.” Act like it.

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation: The Rise of Women in Sports and Politics; ‘Democracy Works Best When Every Eligible Voter Votes’

Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. 

This week, delve into FairVote’s efforts to champion voter access, discover a new documentary highlighting young women empowered within our political system, celebrate the historic viewership of the women’s NCAA championship game, and explore initiatives taken by some states to address disparities in maternal health for Black women.

When Every Miscarriage Is a Murder Scene, Poor Women Pay the Highest Price

The Alabama Supreme Court recently shocked the nation when it held that the word “child” includes frozen embryos. Treating an embryo as the equivalent of a child upends the fertility industry, as it threatens to end in vitro fertilization (IVF) services and puts the status of embryos already in storage in serious question.

While these implications are important to untangle, the brunt of the effects of fetal personhood will fall not upon families with the resources to undergo IVF, but rather on poor and non-white women. Every decision made by a pregnant person could be second-guessed by the government. Every step outside of the most risk-averse approach to pregnancy puts the pregnant person under the microscope of the state.

Who Runs the World? Women Mayors.

As St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones told Ms., “Men run for office to be somebody; women run to do something.”

More and more, women serving as mayors are part of the feminist frontline for advancing equal rights and are leaders on issues of concern to women voters. 

As seen throughout history, women mayors focus on feminist issues that many tend to overlook. Let’s bring intersectional issues to the forefront, and elect more women mayors to push forward our agenda.