Women in Politics

Ms. spotlights stories of women making political change by holding office and pioneering legislation all over the world, from the local to the federal level—despite the sex discrimination they often face in their positions.

The Trump Administration is Targeting Ilhan Omar to Send a Message to Immigrants

PUBLISHED 10/16/2026 by

When ICE agents raided Representative Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) home in Washington, D.C. this week, they didn’t just invade her privacy to further a politically motivated attack on one of Donald Trump’s staunchest critics. They were also sending a message to immigrants: when a high profile, elected official who came to the U.S. as a child and naturalized more than 25 years ago can be threatened with deportation, no one is safe. Immigrant women, Muslim immigrants, refugees and even naturalized citizens can’t help but wonder who will be next.

Keeping Score: Women Marines Pass Tougher Fitness Standards; Congressional Candidate Hopes Rape Survivors ‘Have the Baby’; Sotomayor Questions Colleagues’ Understanding of First Amendment

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 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:
—”That is my greatest fear: that people don’t understand our system of government. They don’t understand what the First Amendment means. Some of my colleagues don’t either, by the way. And I’m not joking about that,” said Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
—A congressional candidate hopes rape survivors “have the baby.”
—Almost 70 percent of American women have experienced sexual violence, and 61 percent reported intimate partner violence (IPV).
—California passes new law finally banning child marriage.
—Mothers of young children remain dramatically underrepresented in government: Only 7.2 percent of Congress members are moms with minor children, compared to 18 percent of the adult population.
—Harvey Weinstein is resentenced to 15 years in prison in New York.
—Amazon accused of discriminating against pregnant employees using reasonable accommodations or medical leave.
—Public pressure led a district attorney to reopen cases against the “Cornell 7” fraternity members accused of gang raping a fellow student.
—Trump flip-flops opinion on mail voting ahead of the November election.
—Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear calls for Democrats to be a “party of compassion and empathy” towards trans students.

… and more.

Where Are Men’s Voices in the Conversation About Jane Doe and the Cornell 7?

PUBLISHED 10/13/2026 by

Imagine a 4-year-old boy scraping his knee and starting to cry. What if his caregiver scolded, “Big boys don’t cry.” It still happens.

We must intervene before boys get the message to toughen up and harden their hearts.

Cornell fraternity men were once 4 years old. What were they taught about expressing their feelings, about bullies, about respecting girls—and themselves?

We spend billions responding to men’s violence and almost nothing studying where it starts.

Former Arkansas Farmer Hallie Shoffner Lost Her Family Farm. Now She’s Running to Unseat Sen. Tom Cotton.

PUBLISHED 10/13/2026 by

Hallie Shoffner grew up in the Arkansas Delta, left to earn a bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt, then came home to become a farmer. She followed her parents into a business that had been in the family for 150 years.

In 2025, she was forced to close the farm.

Now Shoffner, 38, is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, mounting a long-shot bid to unseat two-term Republican Tom Cotton. Her experience in agriculture is central to a campaign focused on rural economic distress and on her argument that federal policy is failing families like hers.

The Cornell Rape Case Has Sparked a National Outcry. Can That Anger Shape the Midterms?

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by

A dam has broken for women, stemming from the case of the Cornell student who was allegedly gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.

In the 1980s, Ms. published the first national study of sexual assault on college campuses. What our researchers found was, at the time, shocking—at least, to the college administrators: Over half of women surveyed had experienced “some form of sexual victimization,” and one in eight women had been victims of rape—though of those women, nearly three-quarters didn’t identify their experience as rape.

“The details of what happened to Jane Doe are horrifying, but at least they are now being reported and considered credible. This has not always been the case,” wrote Ellen Sweet, former Ms. magazine editor and coordinator of the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault in a recent New York Times letter to the editor. “Now there is a public outcry for transparency and accountability that can’t be ignored. Let’s hope colleges and law enforcement finally learn their lesson.”

We know that in this moment, young women are fed up and deeply, deeply angry. The midterms offer an opportunity to channel that anger into tangible, meaningful change.

‘It’s OK to Talk About It’: Arizona Congressional Candidate Shares Her Rape Account; AOC Considers a White House Bid

PUBLISHED 10/10/2026 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!

—Friday, Oct. 9, marked 115 years since the men of California went to the polls to decide whether the women they lived alongside would be permitted to join them there.
—Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic nominee in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District with a real chance to upset her opponent, was reportedly raped while fixing one of her yard signs. “She chose to share her story because she knows many survivors struggle in silence, and she hopes that by speaking about her experience, others will know they are not alone,” said a campaign spokesperson.
—Pew Charitable Trust reports that 37 percent of Americans now believe a woman will not be elected president in their lifetime. I urge women like AOC to seriously consider a presidential bid in 2028.
—The poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for her genre-defying work. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded 122 times to 104 men and just 18 women.

… and more.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs Work. So Why Is Trump’s HHS Cutting Them?

PUBLISHED 10/10/2026 by | UPDATED 10/13/2026 at 7:40 A.M. PT

Across the U.S., teen pregnancy rates have fallen to historic lows—the result of decades of investment in evidence-based prevention, improved access to information and sustained support for young people.

Yet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently terminated 53 of the nation’s 67 teen pregnancy prevention grants, abruptly cutting off support for programs serving thousands of young people across the country. There was no wind-down or warning.

These programs are often described as efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, but that description understates what young people actually receive from them. They teach healthy relationships, consent, communication and decision-making. They help young people recognize abusive situations and connect with medically accurate information and trusted adults.

The grant terminations aren’t simply a funding cut—they represent a decision to walk away from proven strategies that improve young people’s health and well-being.

Two months after HHS’ cut to these programs, there is now a glimmer of accountability.

Why Does Getting Menopause Care Still Require So Much Work?

PUBLISHED 10/8/2026 by

Around her 50th birthday, Oprah Winfrey began having heart palpitations so frightening she thought she might die. She went to five doctors; none connected her symptoms to menopause.

She happened to pick up a book that finally gave her a possible explanation. “Heart palpitations and sleeplessness were indications that The Change was coming,” Winfrey writes. “But no one, including my trusted doctors, had warned me (did they even know?), and when my symptoms showed up, we looked for the most dire explanation—heart disease—instead of the most likely.”

Later, a friend’s experience prompted Oprah to ask her doctor about getting on an estrogen supplement. “After I started hormone therapy, the world returned to technicolor. … For the first time in years, I was sleeping the whole night through.”

That sequence—doctor, book (or article), friend, doctor again—will sound familiar to many women who have had to assemble their own understanding of this major health transition that remains underfunded and underdiscussed, despite affecting 51 percent of the world’s population.

It also runs through two new books arriving this month: Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s When in Menopause: A User’s Manual and Citizen’s Guide and The Book of Menopause: Real Talk, Real Science, Real Strategies for Your Next Chapter, from the editors of Oprah Daily.

Making It Count: The Women Redefining Philanthropy

PUBLISHED 10/6/2026 by

This is a pivotal moment for philanthropy focused on women and girls—not only because our rights are actively under attack in the U.S. and globally, but because we’re on the cusp of an unprecedented opportunity to shape the future.

More than $100 trillion in assets will be passed down over the next two decades from baby boomers and the Silent Generation, including nearly $40 trillion to female spouses and $47 trillion to women in younger generations. By as soon as 2030, around two-thirds of private wealth in the U.S. will be held by women.

“We have a lot of women who are going to be coming into resources through AI and crypto and all these other new windfalls that are around the corner. We’re thinking about the full ecosystem,” says Sarah Haacke Byrd, CEO of Women Moving Millions.