Tag: Women in Media

Keeping Score: Michelle Yeoh Is First Asian to Win Best Actress Oscar; Progress on Male Birth Control; Parenthood Harms Mothers’ Earnings But Benefits Fathers

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: Biden’s new budget excludes Hyde Amendment but protects other abortion coverage bans; Michelle Yeoh becomes first Asian woman to win the Oscar for best actress; Weill Cornell Medicine rolls out research on non-hormonal male birth control alternatives; Jennifer McClellan is the first Black woman elected to represent Virginia in Congress; South Carolina approves an all-male state supreme court; fathers’ salaries benefit from parenthood, while mothers are penalized; Gen Z women have lower salary expectations than men; and more.

It’s Not Just at the Oscars Where Women Filmmakers Are Left Out

This weekend’s Oscar awards have generated headlines about the lack of diversity among nominees—notably, this year, no women were nominated for Best Director. In fact, in the Academy’s 94-year history, it’s nominated just seven women in the category.

Whether the stories told are fiction or nonfiction, there continue to be considerable obstacles for women and nonbinary filmmakers when attempting to break the glass ceiling of storytelling on the big screen. This weekend’s awards ceremony only highlights how much further we still have to go.

Keeping Score: Governors Band Together to Support Abortion; Anti-Abortion Ads Target Low-Income Women

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: Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Florida on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade; MSU devastated by mass shooting; New York Times contributors stand up to poor coverage of trans youth; Sen. Dianne Feinstein announces retirement after 30 years; anti-abortion ads target low-income women; police responsible for 5 percent of U.S. homicides; and more.

On the Power of Choice and Imagination: The Ms. Q&A with ‘Women Talking’ Producer Dede Gardner

Already showing in select theaters and releasing nationwide on Jan. 27, Women Talking is both beautiful and harrowing: an ideologically captivating drama about how a group of women with very little agency navigate making a choice that will have profound effects on their lives, their children’s lives and their community. This extraordinary film features an equally extraordinary ensemble cast, including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Judith Ivey, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.

The film takes place in 2010 in an isolated religious community, where it’s been discovered that men and boys have been drugging and raping the women and girls while they sleep; the story concentrates on the small group chosen to make a crucial decision for all the women and girls in the colony: stay and fight back, or leave. Ms. had the opportunity to speak with producer Dede Gardner about her work on the film and its reflection of the power of community, of choice, and of imagination.

Rest in Power: Barbara Walters—Legend, Inspiration and Friend

The death of Barbara Walters is such a loss. We were professional colleagues and towards the end of our sometimes overlapping journeys as women in media, we became friends … not the kind of ‘share everything with’ friend, but a friendship based on the recognition that we had faced similar challenges and learned along the way the importance of showing up for other women.

I never aspired to ‘be’ Barbara, but like every woman in media then and now, I benefited from the battles she took on, the challenges she met and overcame, and the sacrifices she made to do the work she loved. I miss her on television and in my world.

‘Dear Ms.’: What Ms. Magazine Means to Readers, Over the Decades

“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.)