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 Wrong Kind of Girl’: Feminists Warn of Fallout After Supreme Court Says States May Exclude Trans Girls From School Sports Teams

PUBLISHED 7/16/2026 by

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Tuesday, June 30, that states may prohibit transgender students from participating in school sports consistent with their gender identity, holding that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment does not prohibit such bans. The decision leaves in place laws already enacted in 27 states and marks another major setback for transgender rights after months of escalating attacks on LGBTQ+ communities.

Feminist organizations, reproductive justice advocates, physicians, civil rights leaders and lawmakers swiftly condemned the ruling, arguing that it harms transgender youth, undermines Title IX’s protections against sex discrimination and fits into a broader campaign targeting marginalized communities.

Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson argued the ruling would fuel suspicion and harassment not only toward transgender athletes but toward girls more broadly.

“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. While we know this administration and other anti-equality politicians won’t stop obsessing over trans kids, we must all call on states to adopt inclusive policies so that no one gets left behind for being their authentic selves. We must show up in large numbers for every school board, local and state and federal election to be sure our communities are heard. We must continue this fight with full force until freedom, justice and equal opportunity are not flimsy promises but nationwide guarantees.”

The Most Popular Supreme Court Justices Are Women

PUBLISHED 7/10/2026 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!

This week:
—Knowing that whoever is nominated will face intense scrutiny for potential sexual misconduct, a woman could be Maine Democrats’ safest choice.
—”It’s worth remembering that in moments of past darkness we have triumphed not by moderating our opinions or softening our asks, but by dreaming big and daring boldly,” writes Janai Nelson.
—The justices who have most visibly pushed back on executive overreach, including on birthright citizenship and Trump’s tariffs, happen to be the three women on the liberal wing. And they are also, by a significant margin, the most popular justices in the country.

… and more.

Can You Believe They Put This in Writing? The Wildest Quotes From Heritage’s ‘Project 2026’

PUBLISHED 7/8/2026 by , , , and

The Heritage Foundation has once again taken it upon itself to craft a plan for how to supposedly save America. The report—”Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years”—focuses on marriage, family and the American Dream, and has become widely known as “Project 2026,” a follow-up to Heritage’s infamous Project 2025 blueprint.

Project 2025 clocked in at 900 pages; the sequel is around 150. We read the whole thing and pulled out the passages that gave us chills, made us laugh out loud, compelled us to suddenly need to take a long walk and hug our dogs, or inspired another donation to our local abortion fund.

This isn’t intended to be a fact-check or a line-by-line rebuttal. It’s intended to show you how some of the country’s most influential conservative thinkers are talking about feminism, contraception, abortion, LGBTQ+ people, higher education, marriage, motherhood and the role government should play in all of it—because you’re probably too busy to read hundreds of pages of anti-feminist slop.

And because, as former Vice President Kamala Harris famously said about Project 2025: “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?” They did—twice now!

This is the roadmap they’re offering. These documents tell us how their authors understand the country, the family and women’s place in both. We should know what it says.

The Mask Is the Message

PUBLISHED 7/7/2026 by

Most of us have seen the photograph by now.

I keep coming back to the masks.

Masks have always carried meaning. A surgeon wears one to protect a patient. Someone recovering from an illness wears one to protect themselves and others. A firefighter wears one to survive long enough to save someone else.

But when someone covers their face while intimidating another person, threatening a community, or committing a crime, the purpose isn’t protection. It’s concealment. It’s a way of saying: I want to do this, but I don’t want anyone to know it was me. That’s why Patriot Front marches with their faces covered.

Federal immigration agents carrying out arrests in public places wear face coverings for the same reasons: They create anonymity. They make accountability harder. They allow participants to disappear back into ordinary life once the march is over. They make denial easier.

I’ve participated in protests and marches over the years alongside hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people. Not one of us wore a mask. We stood behind our words and convictions. We accepted that our names belonged with our beliefs.

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.