Title IX

Title IX was passed in 1972 and prohibits sex (and pregnancy, gender identity or sexual orientation) discrimination in any higher education institution receiving federal funding. It guaranteed equal opportunities in sports for women and girls in higher education. It also provided resources and protections against sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Keeping Score: Feminists Denounce Supreme Court Anti-Trans Ruling; Trump Tries to Hijack America 250; Camp Mystic Will Not Reopen; Birthright Citizenship Safe for Now

PUBLISHED 7/16/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship, but also allowed discrimination against trans student athletes. “When politicians convince the public that any girl could be ‘the wrong kind of girl,’ they invite harassment, intimidation, invasive questioning or even an inspection of their body by a total stranger,” warns Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign.
—Feminists mark four years without Roe.
—Trump continues to push voter suppression tactics through any means necessary.
—Young women who receive the HPV vaccine are at almost zero risk of dying from cervical cancer.
—A weekend of action on voting rights will take place from July 17-19.
—Olivia Rodrigo launches all-women music festival to raise money for organizations centered on women and girls.
—Ninety-seven percent of single moms experienced housing hardships in the past year, and 85 percent reported food insecurity.
—Federal agents shot and killed Joan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas, during traffic stops by ICE. Both men had been living in the U.S. for years with their partners and children.
—Feminist Majority Foundation president and publisher of Ms. Ellie Smeal won the National Organization for Women Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring her decades of feminist activism and organizing.
—The inhumane “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center has closed.
—Camp Mystic in central Texas won’t reopen this summer, a year after the tragic flood that killed 28 people, primarily young girls.
—Ahead of their wedding, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce donated a total of $26 million to 20 charities, including food banks, children’s hospitals, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and other education nonprofits.
—Aviator Wally Funk died at age 87. She was the first female flight inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration and taught more than 3,000 people how to fly.

… and more.

The Biggest Threat to Women’s Sports Isn’t Trans Athletes. It’s the Trump Administration’s Failure to Uphold Title IX’s Promise of Equal Opportunity.

PUBLISHED 7/13/2026 by

The politicians who have spent years claiming to “protect women’s sports” have been remarkably absent when it comes to enforcing the law that actually guarantees women equal athletic opportunities. W

hile the Trump administration has devoted enormous energy to policing transgender participation, Title IX complaints involving unequal opportunities, funding and treatment have languished. The result is a political performance that invokes women athletes while doing little to address the inequities they continue to face.

The real defenders of women’s sports are the athletes themselves.

This month alone, women at Christopher Newport University and California Lutheran University successfully used Title IX to force their schools to reverse decisions that eliminated athletic opportunities for women. Their victories are a reminder of what Title IX was designed to do: expand opportunity, not fuel culture wars.

If we truly care about women’s sports, we should celebrate the athletes and advocates who are making the law’s promise of equality a reality—not those who merely claim to speak in their name.

The Supreme Court Decided Who Gets to Be a Girl. We Disagree. 

PUBLISHED 6/30/2026 by

On Tuesday, June 30, in a complete distortion of federal laws requiring equal opportunities in education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to further the Trump administration’s political agenda to persecute, ostracize and erase transgender students. This decision allowing states to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports, is not about Title IX or equal opportunities for girls. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

To enforce these bans, someone has to decide which girls look female enough to compete. Schools and athletic associations must actively investigate students who don’t fit a sufficiently feminine profile.

We have watched this machinery run before. It is the same machinery that told women they were too aggressive for the boardroom, too strong for the field, too mannish for the ballot box. It has always been used to shrink what women and girls are allowed to be.

Women’s rights and trans rights are not competing causes. They never were. They share a common enemy: the rigid gender hierarchy that has always used “protection” as a cover story for control.

None of us are free until the category of “woman” is big enough to hold all of us.

A (Brief) History of Women’s Rights, 1600 to Present

PUBLISHED 6/3/2026 by and

From the Haudenosaunee women who successfully challenged warfare in the 17th century, to today’s feminist organizers defending democracy, reproductive freedom and civil rights, the struggle for women’s equality has never been a straight line. It is a story of persistence, resistance and collective action spanning centuries.

Compiled by editors at Ms. and researchers from the National Women’s History Alliance, this women’s history timeline traces the interconnected histories of feminism, abolition, labor organizing, civil rights, reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ liberation and democratic participation.

No timeline can fully capture more than 400 years of feminist history, let alone every movement, leader, victory and setback that has shaped the ongoing fight for equality. Rather than offering a comprehensive account, this chronology highlights pivotal moments and turning points that help tell the story of how women have expanded the boundaries of freedom, democracy and human rights in the United States and beyond.

The timeline is part of Ms. magazine’s FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists project, a multimedia essay series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by examining the women and feminist movements that have worked to make the nation’s founding promises more fully realized. Through reported features, essays, interviews and historical analysis, FEMINIST 250 explores not only where we have been, but where we must go next to achieve true equality.

FEMINIST 250’s Parts 2 and 3—Feminist Lessons and Feminist Futures—drop this month on MsMagazine.com.

Trump Administration Launches a Legally Bogus Investigation into Smith College

PUBLISHED 5/8/2026 by and

The Trump administration claims its investigation into Smith College is about defending women. In reality, it is an attack on the rights of women at Smith to define their own community, values and mission without political interference from Washington.

The Department of Education argues that by admitting transgender women and allowing them access to campus housing and facilities, Smith may have violated Title IX. But that argument collapses under even a basic reading of the law. Title IX simply does not apply to admissions at private undergraduate colleges like Smith.

The administration’s complaint is also striking because it is not based on evidence that Smith students have been harmed or excluded from campus life. There is no public record of students filing complaints about the college’s housing, bathrooms or locker rooms policies. Instead, this investigation grew out of pressure from a conservative advocacy group determined to use federal power to impose its ideological agenda on colleges and universities.

Smith’s campus policies were shaped over years by students, faculty and administrators themselves—including cisgender women students who pushed the college to open admissions to transgender women more than a decade ago.

At its core, this investigation is about far more than one women’s college. It reflects the Trump administration’s broader campaign against trans rights, higher education and liberal arts institutions that encourage critical thought, inclusion and intellectual independence.

Congress passed Title IX to expand educational opportunities for women. Now, the administration is attempting to weaponize that same civil rights law to undermine women’s education and bully colleges into abandoning their own principles.

A New Playbook for College Athletes: Consent, Intervention and Prevention

PUBLISHED 5/5/2026 by

June 2026 will mark the 54th anniversary of Title IX, the 1972 federal law barring sex-based discrimination in education, ensuring equal participation in sports and prohibiting sexual violence in educational programs receiving federal funding.

But even though Title IX passed more than half a century ago, and significantly more women now go to college than men, gender-based violence is still rampant among college students. Thirteen percent of U.S. college students experience rape or sexual assault during their time on (or off) campus. For women, that number doubles: 26.4 percent of women (and 6.8 percent of men) undergraduates experience sexual violence. Young women are especially vulnerable, compared to older grad students, and women college students aged 18 to 24 are three times more likely to experience gender-based violence than women in general.

Most colleges and universities have standard anti-sexual violence training during freshman orientation (often just required videos or something students click through online), but this information is often quickly forgotten or not practical enough for students to easily apply to their own lives and interactions. The nonprofit sexual assault prevention organization It’s On Us is seeking to change that with the The Playbook 2.0, a research-based workshop series for college athletes.

Abandoned by the Department of Education, Advocacy Organizations Demand Action on Student Sexual Violence

PUBLISHED 4/1/2026 by

In a powerful rebuke, 112 gender equity and survivor advocacy organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly M. Richey on Feb. 23 condemning the Department of Education for “neglecting to protect students from actual sexual violence while pursuing an ongoing dangerous and unlawful campaign of discriminating against transgender students under the guise of preventing sexual violence.” 

The heart of this crisis is the weakening of Title IX enforcement by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights. OCR oversight has been essential in compelling schools to respond appropriately to sexual harassment and assault. Federal enforcement elevates school districts’ Title IX awareness and compliance, reducing barriers to reporting, and motivating schools to adopt preventive action. For the vast majority of students, the federal complaint process has been the only mechanism to seek redress beyond local decision-makers.

“We finally had hope,” said Elizabeth Stewart-Williams, who filed an OCR complaint claiming sex and race discrimination under Title IX and Title VI at her daughter’s Texas high school. “But it wasn’t very long before we learned that the OCR office was closed. It is crushing. It is cruel. The OCR complaint process was our only pathway for help. If the department and its investigative and protective roles are diminished, what remedies do our children truly possess?”

Could This Be the Last Women’s History Month?

PUBLISHED 3/27/2026 by

Since 1987, the United States has celebrated Women’s History Month every March.

We have used this month to correct the record. To make sure that the women who built this nation—who are often systematically written out of history books and erased from the stories we tell ourselves about who we are—are named out loud and recognized. It is a national reminder that women are not a footnote to the American project. We are central to it.

But today, just shy of its 40th anniversary, Women’s History Month celebrations are quietly disappearing. Not because communities stopped caring—but because an administration decided that honoring women is a threat.

Harriet Tubman did not free herself and stop. Fannie Lou Hamer did not survive a Mississippi jail cell to just go home. Shirley Chisholm did not run for president, unbought and unbossed, so that we could sit down now.

It’s up to us now to saddle up and make sure that future generations of women and girls can not only know about the incredible shared history of the bad ass women that helped shape the world, but can feel the full freedom of it—which means we now have work to do. 

We ride at dawn.

Women’s History Month: Looking Back on How Far We’ve Come and the Hill That Lies Ahead

PUBLISHED 3/6/2026 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:
—Primary season marks few advances for women.
—Donald Trump’s endorsements were overwhelmingly male, and they mattered.
—LA Charter Commission recommends ranked-choice voting.
—German women oppose online hate speech.

… and more.

Democracy Is Not Self-Executing: How We Shape a Better Government Through Laws, Institutions and Culture

PUBLISHED 2/27/2026 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:
—The SAVE Act would block women, young people and low-income people from voting.
—Crowded Illinois primaries call for ranked-choice voting.
—The American women’s hockey team wins gold at the Winter Olympics in Milan.
—An election in Denmark could extend women’s leadership

… and more.