Take Action

Stories that call on readers to take a specific action.

Back to School Means Back to Sex Ed. Fathers Need to Be Part of the Conversation.

PUBLISHED 8/22/2026 by

For generations, patriarchy has conditioned women to view motherhood as their ultimate calling and primary responsibility, placing the burden of raising healthy, mature adults squarely on their shoulders. Despite hard-won progress toward gender equality and a more equitable division of domestic labor, we know that society still disproportionately places the weight of parenting onto mothers. 

While modern fathers are more involved than previous generations, the equity gap remains: In most heterosexual partnerships, men shoulder significantly less of the daily labor of parenting. This persistent imbalance has led to high rates of maternal burnout.

As families settle into the back-to-school season—and teenagers encounter new classes, friendships, relationships and pressures—the work of guiding adolescents through questions about sex, consent and relationships becomes especially visible. Too often, that work still falls primarily to mothers.

To disrupt this gendered imbalance and foster healthy sexual development for adolescents, we must actively engage fathers in the work of talking to their teens about sex, consent and relationships.

Want to Protect the Vote? Become a Poll Worker

PUBLISHED 8/13/2026 by

For months now, hundreds of active and caring friends and supporters have been writing and calling us with a version of the same question: In addition to sending money, what else can I actually do?

Here’s one suggestion—and it may be the most useful thing you can do between now and Tuesday, Nov. 3: Show up as a poll worker, and get your friends to show up too.

We’ll keep calling out this war on women. But calling it out is not the same as helping to end it. The voter standing in a four-hour line in a shuttered-precinct district does not need our concern. She needs someone at the check-in table who showed up.

Let that someone be you—and your friends.

The People’s Bill of Rights 250 Invites Americans to Reimagine the Constitution

PUBLISHED 7/29/2026 by , and

A new online public platform—The People’s Bill of Rights 250—invites Americans to propose, discuss and vote on ideas they believe belong in the Constitution. As the U.S. marks 250 years, the bold, interactive project asks Americans not only to reflect on the nation’s founding, but to help shape its future.

The nonpartisan organization The People and executive director Katie Fahey, alongside a coalition of civic, advocacy and cultural leaders, spearheaded the People’s Bill of Rights 250. It invites Americans to answer a simple question: What freedoms, rights and protections should every person in the country be guaranteed over the next 250 years?  

From now until Friday, July 31, Americans are encouraged to vote and share their own ideas at the People’s Bill of Rights 250’s website.

Trump Escalates Pressure to Pass the SAVE America Act Before Senate Recess

PUBLISHED 7/6/2026 by | UPDATED 7/28/2026 at 8:11 A.M. PT

President Donald Trump is pressuring Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act before lawmakers leave for their August recess, even calling on them to abolish the filibuster if necessary.

Despite the pressure, Republicans still don’t have the votes to move the legislation forward. But after four failed attempts in two years, they’re once again looking for a legislative vehicle to make it law.

About 80 percent of women who marry change their last names, meaning millions could be forced to produce additional paperwork to prove both their identity and citizenship before registering to vote or updating their registration. Students, military families, naturalized citizens, voters with disabilities, Americans who have recently moved, and trans Americans who have changed their names would also face new barriers to casting a ballot. And all of it is aimed at solving a problem that election officials and researchers have repeatedly found is extraordinarily rare.

Once voters understand those consequences, support for the legislation drops sharply. Polling shows that while “proof of citizenship” sounds popular in theory, support falls into net opposition once Americans learn that many eligible voters would need to track down documents like passports or birth certificates just to register or update their voter registration.

Nevertheless, Republicans continue searching for a path to enact the SAVE America Act. Will millions of eligible Americans, especially women, soon face new obstacles to exercising their fundamental right to vote?

This story is updated regularly as Congress and the Trump administration continue efforts to enact the SAVE America Act.

May 21 Virtual Event: Tackling Patriarchy and Power (With Anna Malaika Tubbs, Aisha Becker-Burrowes and Danielle Robay)

PUBLISHED 5/20/2026 by

The Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. have partnered with Women’s Foundation California to invite you to a national virtual conversation with Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs that turns our attention toward the system that has kept us from achieving true democracy for the last 250 years: patriarchy. 

Drawing from her latest book (and New York Times best-seller) Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us, Tubbs traces the ruthless logic that has organized American life for 250 years—always bound to race, always rooted in a binary that decides who counts and who does not.

The event is Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 5:30 p.m. PT / 7:30 CT / 8:30 ET. RSVP today!

Tubbs will be joined in conversation by Aisha Becker-Burrowes, co-founder and co-executive director of FEMINIST—a nonprofit media company serving a global community of over 6 million—and interviewed by TV host, journalist and content creator, Danielle Robay.

There Is Danger in Silence: How to Mobilize Your Friends and Neighbors Into an ‘I Will Not Be Quiet’ Chapter

PUBLISHED 5/12/2026 by

In 2016, just after Donald Trump was elected to his first term, a small group of women gathered in a Brooklyn apartment to talk through what they had been afraid to say out loud. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, balancing mugs in their hands, they created a space not for debate, but for listening. What emerged from those conversations became —a growing network of talking circles designed to help people find their voice in uncertain political times.

“It felt like a dam had been broken, and all this fear and anger was pouring out into the open,” said co-founder Adrianne Wright. “But underneath all of that noise, I noticed that there was something else: this impenetrable silence. It was a silence of people who didn’t feel safe enough to say I don’t really know, or I don’t know everything about this topic.” Over time, the circles expanded across the country, from Seattle to Atlanta, creating spaces where people could process political fear, connect with others and channel those conversations into action—from voter outreach to rallies supporting survivors of gender-based violence.

Wright says the idea behind the circles is rooted in a long history of collective organizing. “From Black churches during the Civil Rights Movement, to women’s groups in the 1960s, these spaces helped people name what they were living through and turn that into collective action,” she explained. “There’s a real pattern there: When people are given the space to speak truthfully about their lives, movements begin.” Today, the organization encourages anyone to start a local chapter using its free toolkit. “If we don’t feel like we belong, we can’t speak up,” Wright said, “and if we don’t speak up, it’s very hard for us to realize our power.”

Civil Rights Groups Launch Southern Voting Rights Mobilization Following Supreme Court’s Callais Decision

PUBLISHED 5/11/2026 by | UPDATED 5/14/2026 at 2:21 P.M. PT

Civil and voting rights organizations across the South are launching a wave of rallies, trainings and grassroots mobilizations in response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which decimated one of the last meaningful protections against racially discriminatory voting maps.

Over the next two months in Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, as well as online, organizers will mobilize against the top-down national assault on Black political representation and multiracial democracy itself.

The actions come amid growing fears that the Court’s ruling will make it dramatically harder for Black voters and other voters of color to challenge discriminatory district maps in federal court.

Civil rights groups are calling for mass organizing and voter engagement, laying a groundwork for rebuilding the country through “sustained effort over time.” They also urge states to adopt their own Voting Rights Acts to help fill the vacuum left by the weakening of federal protections.

Upcoming actions include rallies at the Missouri Supreme Court, a National Day of Action in Alabama featuring events at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the Alabama State Capitol, and the nationwide “John Lewis Good Trouble Lives On” mobilization planned for July.

FAQs About the SAVE America Act and Its Impact on Voters

PUBLISHED 3/2/2026 by and | UPDATED 3/25/2026 at 11:57 A.M. PT

As the SAVE America Act heads toward a Senate showdown, Republican leaders are preparing marathon debate sessions that could stretch late into the night. The legislation, backed by Trump, would require Americans to present documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, in order to register to vote in federal elections.

As the political fight intensifies, confusion about what the bill would actually require has spread widely online and across social media. Supporters describe the measure as a simple election-integrity policy, while critics warn it could create sweeping new barriers for millions of eligible voters who do not have ready access to the required documents—including many women whose current legal names may not match the names on their birth certificates after marriage.

To cut through the noise, Ms. has put together this guide to the SAVE America Act, answering common questions about what it would do and how it could affect your right to vote, including: Does a Real ID count? What if I can’t find my passport? And why are Trump and Republicans pushing so hard for this bill?

Iranian Feminists Urge World to ‘Join Hands With Us’

PUBLISHED 1/17/2026 by

A powerful call from a collective of Iranian feminists in the diaspora:

“‎‎We, a group of Iranian feminists, at a time when the Islamic Republic has cut off the internet and all channels of communication with the outside world while carrying out a brutal massacre of protesters, extend our hands to feminists around the world. We call on the global civil society and feminists to stand with the people of Iran and to use all available independent national and international mechanisms to stop the regime’s machinery of killing and repression.”