Women in Television

Fewer Teen Births Is Good, Unless You’re the Patriarchy

PUBLISHED 4/17/2026 by

How on-brand for the federal government to announce that U.S. birth rates are falling—just as The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, dropped on Hulu.

In the fictional nation of Gilead, first envisioned by Margaret Atwood in her 1985 dystopian novel and expanded on screen for nearly a decade now, declining fertility catalyzed a Christian nationalist revolution in modern-day America, spawning a society rooted in patriarchal dominance and state-sanctioned violence. The Testaments, now three episodes in, is making a deliberate appeal to Gen Z and young viewers, featuring the spectacularly savvy Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday among Gilead’s tradwife-in-training rebels.

Doubly fascinating then, that it is the real-life status of teen birth rates in particular now driving the news. In a drop considered “extraordinary” by statisticians, the number of babies born to mothers between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by 7 percent in 2025.

Nevertheless, many on the right jumped directly into the fray to publicly lament that teens are having fewer babies.

Sinead O’Connor Was Right: It’s Time to Revisit Some of Pop Culture’s Most Maligned Women

PUBLISHED 3/24/2026 by

An excerpt from Allison T. Butler’s The Judgment of Gender: How Women Are Centered and Silenced in Pop Culture, published March 8, 2026:

While Sinead O’Connor was roundly criticized for ripping up the picture of the pope, the passage of time has revealed: She was right.

O’Connor was labeled a pop star, but she never saw herself that way. From Rememberings: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I’m a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”

Kathy Spillar on ‘Velshi’: A Warning About the Right’s Agenda for Women

PUBLISHED 3/16/2026 by

This weekend on Velshi with MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) anchor Ali Velshi, Kathy Spillar—executive editor of Ms. and executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation (publisher of Ms.)—joined to discuss a sweeping new policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that lays out a vision for reshaping American family life and rolling back women’s independence.’

Velshi summarized the underlying logic of the proposal starkly: “You cut off opportunities outside the home. You make the public sphere hostile to women’s independence. You create a system where the only viable path left for women is dependence on a man for survival. In other words, you drag the country back to a time when women had fewer choices.

“Women today have opportunities their grandmothers could only dream of. From the perspective of the new right, that’s the crisis.”

Spillar said the report spells out a broader political strategy. “They are determined to use whatever levers of power they have under the Trump administration—to change tax laws, to provide incentives for women to have more children, to get married younger and to stay married, even in bad relationships,” and added the proposed policies primarily target heterosexual, middle- and upper-income families.

“This is the game plan of an authoritarian regime,” she said. “It’s designed to support an authoritarian government that has control over its women—and therefore over its men as well, making men more compliant because they now have larger families who depend on them economically.”

The Best Feminist Fiction Films and TV Shows of 2025

PUBLISHED 12/22/2025 by

From devastating dramas to sharp satires and genre-bending thrillers, this year’s feminist fiction on screen refused easy answers—and demanded our attention. These films and series center women’s agency, ambition and survival, offering stories that linger long after the credits roll. Here are some of the standout feminist fiction watches of the year.

Aviva Dove-Viebahn reviews the top fiction feminist watches from the past year including The Substance, Ironheart and The Better Sister.

Women, Christianity and the Politics of Submission in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘The Righteous Gemstones’

PUBLISHED 6/14/2025 by | UPDATED 6/20/2025 at 8:08 A.M. PT

The popular and critically acclaimed series The Handmaid’s Tale and The Righteous Gemstones each recently wrapped a successful series run.

When placed in conversation, The Righteous Gemstones and The Handmaid’s Tale expose the dangerous consequences of women participating in the cultural backlash against feminism. The tradwife ideologies that Amber and Judy negotiate, and that Serena Joy embraces in theory, become a totalitarian nightmare for women in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Fifteen Years of Galentine’s Day: A Celebration of Women, Friendship and Power

PUBLISHED 2/14/2025 by

Galentine’s Day, first introduced in Parks and Recreation 15 years ago, has become a powerful celebration of female friendships, mentorship, and support. More than just a fun tradition, it highlights the importance of women uplifting each other in a world that often overlooks these bonds. This day reminds us that when women come together—whether in friendship or leadership—they create meaningful change. As we celebrate, we reaffirm our commitment to empowering women and fostering a more representative democracy.

Hollywood’s Role in Perpetuating the ‘Angry Black Woman’ Trope

PUBLISHED 10/30/2024 by

After Vice President Kamala Harris recently completed an interview with a combative Fox News host, pundits agreed she “gave a master class on what it means to be a Black woman in politics” by demonstrating cool, calm, effective leadership. The Grio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor noted she avoided the “angry Black woman” trope—a stereotype that not only permeates politics but has deep roots in the entertainment industry. 

In recent years, a more diverse and empowering portrayal of Black women on the big screen has celebrated complexity and identity. For nearly all of its existence, though, Hollywood has been anything but inclusive, often illustrating one-dimensional perspectives of Black women. The history of inadequate representation—and certainly positive representation—helped form the “angry Black woman” stereotype, among other false narratives.