Throughout his life, President Jimmy Carter truly cared about the challenges women face and how people can implement programs to help end discrimination.
May all of us continue to carry his inspiration and commitment in our hearts and actions.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Women’s Independence, Credit Cards and Economic Power: Celebrating 50 Years of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 enabled women to get credit cards or a mortgage without a co-signer, making it a pivotal milestone for women’s financial independence. The 50th anniversary of ECOA being signed into law by President Gerald Ford fell just a week ahead of the recent presidential election, considered by many to be a referendum on women’s rights in a political climate still reeling from the revocation of Roe. That critical landmark for women’s autonomy was overturned by the Dobbs decision in 2022, one year short of reaching its own half-century observance.
By focusing on women’s independence through the lens of economic power over the last 50 years, a new Smithsonian exhibit—”We Do Declare Women’s Voices on Independence,” commemorating ECOA’s passage—hones in on another essential factor in women’s ability to achieve freedom, security and power: financial independence.
Conservative Supreme Court to Rule on Right to Be Trans, Medical Care, Parents’ Rights, Constitutional Sex Discrimination—and the Right to Be Different
“I’m here to stand up for my kid,” Brian Williams told me outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. Williams and his wife Samantha have been fighting for their daughter—known as L.W. in the legal papers the ACLU filed to challenge Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for minors—for years.
Though difficult to sit through, the two-plus hours of argument in United States v. Skrmetti—a challenge by trans youth, their families, the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the Biden administration to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors—was a nearly perfect distillation of this moment in our gender politics.
The ‘Woman in Charge’: Diane von Furstenberg’s Lifelong Commitment to Empowering Women, Fashion and Philanthropy
Though her fame as a designer came through the success of her iconic wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg has said, “I don’t think I had a vocation for fashion; I had a vocation to be a woman in charge.”
Towards the end of the exhibit—on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles until Aug. 31, 2025—a QR code directs visitors to sign up for her more recent innovation: the “InCharge platform,” which serves as “a place to rally, where we use our connections to help all women be the women they want to be.” Its aim urges women to make “first a commitment to ourselves” by “owning who we are” and then to use the platform to “connect, expand, inspire, and advocate.” It is her latest project in a lifetime of advocacy meant to strengthen women.
Rest in Power: Lilly Ledbetter, Trailblazing Icon for Women’s Equal Pay
Lilly Ledbetter, an equal pay activist whose legal fight against her employer led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, died this weekend. She was 86.
“One of the next steps in reaching pay equity is the Paycheck Fairness Act—a bill that would amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to give workers stronger enforcement tools and remedies to help close the pay gap between men and women once and for all,” wrote Ledbetter in an op-ed for Ms. in January. “But things have been frustratingly stagnant in Congress.”
The Feminist Fight for Gender Equity: Lisa Ann Walter and Advocates Renew Push for ERA Ahead of 2024 Elections
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the battle to restore abortion rights has been front and center. Less visible are efforts to enshrine women’s equality into the Constitution—the continuation of a campaign that conservatives thought they killed more than 40 years ago. Not true.
Champions of the ERA have been working tirelessly to get Congress to publish the 101-year-old measure that would ban gender-based discrimination. Although women have made considerable strides over the last century, a constitutional right is the only guarantee they will make further gains and keep them in perpetuity.
Dropping the ‘Respectfully’ in Dissent: What ‘Trump v. U.S.’ Means for the Country’s Future
The Supreme Court majority’s extreme belief in Trump v. U.S. that our president is above the law is anathema to the history of our nation.
In almost every case, the dissenting justices write, “I respectfully dissent,” but both Sotomayor and Jackson omit the “respectfully” in their dissents in Trump v. U.S. There is little to cling to in this decision. It is as un-American as can be.
Arizona Finally Repeals its Total Abortion Ban: ‘The Eyes of the World Are Watching’
The Arizona Supreme Court revived an 1864 pre-statehood ban on abortion (although the law will not go into effect immediately).
To quote the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the way of thinking embedded in these zombie laws from the 19th century reflects “ancient notions about women’s place in the family and under the Constitution, ideas that have long since been discredited.” The Arizona Supreme Court does not expressly traffic in these deeply gendered stereotypes that are contemporaneous with the abortion ban it has resurrected from the dead—but they are silently lurking in the margins of the opinion.
As Attorney General Mayes put it, the decision is “unconscionable and an affront to freedom… and will go down as a stain on our state.”
War on Women Report: Unprovoked Attacks Against Women in New York City; Texas Medical Board Refuses to Clarify State Abortion Ban
U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report: The Protect Victims of Digital Exploitation and Manipulation Act aims to ban the production and distribution of non-consensual, deepfake pornography; an award created to honor the life and accomplishments of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being awarded to four right-wing men (and Martha Stewart); the Texas Medical Board refused to further specify the rules around the state’s highly restrictive ban on abortion; police made their first arrest in connection to an onslaught of unprovoked attacks against women in New York City; and more.
Why the ERA Is Needed—Even With the 14th Amendment
For years, critics have claimed that women don’t need the Equal Rights Amendment because the Supreme Court has secured women’s rights under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
At the time it was ratified in the 19th century, no one thought that the 14th Amendment protected women; its purpose was to end slavery. Thanks to pioneering lawsuits by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 1970s, women did gain a measure of equal rights under the 14th Amendment, but lawyers know that those victories were limited.
(This essay is part of “The ERA Is Essential to Democracy” Women & Democracy collection.)