More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Zoe Weissman remembers how it felt to be 12 years old on Feb. 14, 2018, terrified of what sounded like gunshots ringing out from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. She was at Westglades Middle School right next door thinking that no kid should feel the way she felt at that moment. Something had to change.
Today, Weissman is among those making that change.
As terrorist attacks escalate, Afghan women are again the canaries in the coal mine. Is anyone listening?
“How many times am I supposed to yell and scream and say, ‘World, pay attention to us—we are dying’?”
50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION (Alfred A. Knopf) will be released in September and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with our readers—and with the entire world.
In Iran, control over women was a key part of the platform of the Islamist regime that officially took power in 1979, and their laws remain in effect today—for now. Here are some of the most egregious ones on the books.
Among employees ages 18 to 34, 47 percent of women and 44 percent of men believe they won’t have the career they’d planned, hoped for and dreamed of because politicians are now in control of their personal reproductive decisions.
“We’re looking to future generations of business leaders and managers and employees and we have nearly half of them saying, ‘I don’t think I will have the career I planned because of the decision by the Supreme Court,’” said Heather Foust-Cummings, Catalyst’s senior vice president for research
Meet the diverse group of progressive women being sworn in this month. (Aaaany day now, boys.)
“Finding Ms. felt like coming home—to myself, to my voice, to my intuition, to my knowing.”
We asked what Ms. means to you—and we were moved by your replies. Ms. magazine has been at the forefront of feminist journalism for half a century. The magazine was a brazen act of independence in the 1970s. Our readers recognize the impact Ms. has made over the past 50 years.
(This essay is part of the “Feminist Journalism is Essential to Democracy” project—Ms. magazine’s latest installment of Women & Democracy, presented in partnership with the International Women’s Media Foundation.)
“Mightn’t a publication—say, a newsletter—serve to link up women, and to generate income as well? … a publication created by and controlled by women that could be as serious, outrageous, satisfying, sad, funky, intimate, global, compassionate, and full of change as women’s lives really are.”
—’A Personal Report From Ms.‘, 1972
When it launched 50 years ago, Ms. magazine was a brazen act of independence—demonstrating the untapped potential for journalism that centered news and analysis on women and their lives and made a feminist worldview more accessible to the public.
Ms. continues to be the place where feminists find information and inspiration. And we thank you, our loyal readers, for these past 50 years—and the next 50! As the earliest editors of this magazine wrote, “Ms. belongs to all of us.”