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.

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.

The Ranked Ballot Is the Pro-Women, Pro-Voter, Pro-Democracy Reform America Needs

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by

For 250 years, the story of American democracy has been a story of expanding who holds power and who gets to decide who yields it.

The 15th Amendment, the 17th, the Voting Rights Act, the 19th Amendment and the 26th—each was a structural intervention, a deliberate redesign of the rules to bring more people into the democratic process. And at each iteration, a bet was made on the same proposition: Democracy works better when more people have real power within it.

We are overdue for the next chapter.

Women make up 51 percent of the American population and hold fewer than 29 percent of seats in Congress. That gap is not a product of insufficient ambition, inadequate candidates or a thin pipeline of viable women. It is the product of an electoral system that was designed before women could vote, and has never been fundamentally redesigned since.

Ranked-choice voting changes that. The ranked ballot is the single most powerful, best-documented structural reform available for advancing women’s political participation, and it serves every voter, at every level of government, on every ballot.

In a ranked-choice voting election, voters rank candidates in order of preference—first choice, second and third—and if no candidate wins a majority outright, the candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes are redistributed until someone reaches a winning threshold.

Under this system, voters can express a genuine preference without fear of wasting their vote on a candidate who can’t win, and qualified women candidates can run without fearing splitting the vote.

(This is part of a new series FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of U.S. democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.)

10 Must-Read Stories on Women in Politics This Week: Title IX Anniversary, AI’s Anti-Women Bias and Ranked-Choice Voting Victories

PUBLISHED 6/26/2026 by

Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a weekly 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! Published every Friday.

—This week marked the 54th anniversary of Title IX.
—As the Taliban approaches the five-year mark of its return to power this August, a rare protest in western Afghanistan last week laid bare both the brutality of its rule and the resilience of those living under it.
—A woman will replace Eric Swalwell in California … but for not two more months.
—A study of 133 AI systems found that 44 percent demonstrated gender bias, and more than a quarter showed both gender and racial bias.

… and more.

Keeping Score: Abortion Bans Cost $140B Per Year; Federal Courts Protect Trans Youth and Incarcerated Trans Women; Feminists React to FBI Raid on Ohio Voting Rights Organization

PUBLISHED 6/24/2026 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:
—Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) is working to get Republicans on the record on the Right to Contraception Act.
—ICE has already reported the deaths of 18 detainees this year, on pace to surpass the highest number of deaths in decades.
—Abortion restrictions could cost the U.S. economy $140 billion annually in lost earnings.
—”I love the inflation,” says Trump.
—The EEOC will no longer require federal agencies to report on race, ethnicity, sex or gender identity.
—83 percent of American voters agree that emergency contraception should be easily accessible.
—Abortion ban states are slowly losing a generation of women medical students and doctors.
—More than 770,000 children have already lost access to SNAP benefits after last year’s funding cuts.
—A new study found trans women athletes have no significant physical advantages over cis women.
—Missouri has restored access to medication abortions after a Jackson County judge struck down key state restrictions, allowing clinics to resume providing the service and marking the first time medication abortion has been available in Missouri since 2018.
—Republicans passed a reconciliation bill that provides roughly $70 billion for ICE and CBP, sending it to President Trump’s desk. (This is on top of more than $140 billion Republicans already provided for those agencies last year.)

… and more.

The Majority Has Spoken on Abortion. Now We’re Sharing the Lives Reproductive Freedom Made Possible.

PUBLISHED 6/21/2026 by

Four years after Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, the evidence is overwhelming: Reproductive freedom is not a fringe issue. It is a majority value.

You, or someone you love, has benefited from contraception, sex education, maternal care, assisted reproduction, miscarriage care or abortion. This isn’t a privilege we ask permission for. It’s a right millions of us exercise every day—legal or not, restricted or not, named or not.

On the fourth anniversary of Dobbs, Ms. is joining reproductive justice movement partners Center for Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Freedom for All to launch The Majority, a storytelling campaign centered on a simple question: What did access to reproductive choices give you the freedom to build?

One woman credits birth control with helping her manage PMOS (formerly PCOS) and pursue the education and career she dreamed of. A mother was able to raise the children she already had because she was not forced into a pregnancy she did not choose. Another mother received emergency reproductive healthcare and lived long enough to see her daughter grow up. A sister got to grow up alongside her younger brother because their mother had access to reproductive healthcare when she needed it. Young women were able to build lives on their own timeline—not one dictated by circumstance, politics or chance.

The campaign’s call to action is simple: Add your voice to the record and share the life you built. Then, once you’ve shared, use #TheLifeIBuilt to tell your story. Follow #TheMajority to hear from others doing the same.

The Untapped Power of Post-Menopausal Women

PUBLISHED 6/14/2026 by

Melinda French Gates announced last week a historic $215 million commitment to women’s health, including a $10 million gift to the Menopause Society. It is a beautiful and necessary act of generosity.

It arrives on the same day a new Mayo Clinic study showing hormone therapy use among menopausal women has dropped to a historic low of 1.7 percent—even as evidence of its safety has grown.

We are moving backward and forward at the same time.

French Gates put a spotlight on the fact that women’s health has been inexcusably underfunded. The questions to add to that conversation: What would medicine look like if it saw menopause not as nature’s mistake, but as evolution’s investment? What would our economy look like? What would our communities look like? What problems might we finally solve?

The science exists. The economic case is clear. And the legislative momentum is building. What is missing is the cultural shift that allows medicine, policy and society to see post-menopausal women not as a problem to manage, but as a resource we cannot afford to waste.

This Week in Women’s Representation: LA’s Next Mayor Will Be a Woman; Ranked-Choice Voting in Maine May Help Elect Back-to-Back Woman Governors 

PUBLISHED 6/12/2026 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!

—Los Angeles is sure to keep a woman as mayor, after City Council member Nithya Raman secured a spot in a runoff, currently holding 29 percent of the vote compared to Karen Bass’ 34 percent.
—June 11 marked the birthday of former U.S. Rep. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to federal office in the U.S.
—On June 16, Washington, D.C., will hold its first primary elections with ranked-choice voting.
—Liberation playwright Bess Wohl is the first American woman to win the Tony for Best Play since 1989.

… and more.

Keeping Score: Threats Against Abortion Clinics Doubled in 2025; Sounding the Alarm on ‘Horrible Conditions’ of Delaney Immigration Center; Pride Celebrations Around the U.S.

PUBLISHED 6/10/2026 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:
—”Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries,” observes AOC.
—Two-thirds of abortion clinics reported violence or harassment in 2025.
—The TAKE IT DOWN Act (Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act) took effect last month. It requires social media sites to take down non-consensual sexual imagery within 48 hours.
—Members of Congress visited the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center after detainees started a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions.
—The Trump administration announced an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who Trump sexually abused and defamed.
—Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape trial resulted in another mistrial.
—A North Carolina bill would allow deadly force against patients seeking abortion care.
—Healthcare premiums have skyrocketed, forcing 21 percent of HealthCare.gov enrollees to lose coverage.
—Women freelancers charge an average of 19 percent less per hour than men.
—Americans are struggling to access disability benefits after cuts to the Social Security Administration.
—Social media platforms are enabling anti-LGBTQ hate and censorship.
—Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act to ban the death penalty at the federal level. Last month, the DOJ announced they would bring back firing squads and potentially electrocution and lethal gas for executions.
—A comprehensive calendar shows all the Pride parades this month, across the country and globe.

… and more.

Feminist Lessons From the 1990s: How Women Became a Political Force

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The 1990s began with feminists determined not to surrender the ground they had fought for in the Reagan era—and almost immediately, the stakes became impossible to ignore.

In October 1991, millions of Americans watched Anita Hill testify before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee about sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Outside the hearing room, seven women members of Congress marched to the Senate in protest. Inside living rooms across the country, conversations about workplace harassment that had long been dismissed or ignored suddenly became national news.

When Thomas was confirmed anyway, many women responded not with resignation, but with political action.

The result was the 1992 “Year of the Woman.” At the start of the decade, only two women served in the U.S. Senate. Then voters elected four new women senators in a single election cycle, including Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman ever elected to the Senate. Women candidates flooded congressional races, and women voters helped decide the presidential election.

Once in office, this new generation of lawmakers translated representation into policy, championing landmark legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Violence Against Women Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Women also won expanded investments in women’s health and services for survivors of violence, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the Supreme Court and women entered Cabinet positions in unprecedented numbers.

Yet the decade’s gains unfolded alongside mounting threats. Antiabortion violence escalated, with clinic bombings, arsons and murders targeting providers and staff. Conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh built audiences by mainstreaming misogyny and resentment, helping create the foundation for today’s right-wing media ecosystem.

But despite those forces, feminism entered the mainstream: By the mid-1990s, large majorities of both women and men identified with feminist values.

The lesson of the 1990s is that political power matters. When women organize, vote, run for office and govern, they do more than change who holds power—they change what government can accomplish.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.

Feminist Lessons from the 1970s: How Feminists Transformed American Life

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

In 1972, when Ms. first hit newsstands, abortion was illegal in most of the country. Women could be denied credit cards, mortgages and loans without a husband’s signature. Newspapers still segregated job listings into “Help Wanted: Male” and “Help Wanted: Female.” There were no federal protections against pregnancy discrimination, no domestic violence shelters in most communities, and only a handful of rape crisis centers nationwide. Just 15 women served in Congress, and none sat on the Supreme Court, served as governors or held Cabinet positions.

For millions of women, inequality was not abstract—it was written into law, policy and everyday life.

Yet the 1970s also became one of the most transformative decades in modern American history. Through organizing, protest, journalism and political action, feminists forced issues long dismissed as private matters into the national spotlight. The inaugural issue of Ms. featured the groundbreaking “We Have Had Abortions” petition; a year later, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. The decade brought new access to higher-paying jobs, new financial independence through the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, workplace protections through the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and growing public recognition of domestic violence and sexual harassment as systemic problems demanding public solutions.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.

The lesson of the 1970s is that social change can happen faster than it seems. Rights that once appeared politically impossible became mainstream demands. Conversations that had been confined to kitchens and consciousness-raising groups reshaped laws, workplaces and institutions.

Feminists did more than win a series of reforms—they transformed what Americans believed women could expect from their democracy.