More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Military families face unique financial challenges and are thus vulnerable to food insecurity. This is felt acutely among women veterans, veterans of color and military spouses, who are typically women.
Not only has hunger among military families and veterans been a problem for years—rising to new heights during the pandemic—policymakers have repeatedly failed to take even the most basic action to respond to it.
Vanessa Guillén’s case has become a turning point in the long campaign to address sexual assault in the military. The case moved Republican Senator Joni Ernst to join Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to introduce the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act.
This week: Biden administration speaks on Black maternal health; all U.S. adults are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination; Derek Chauvin is convicted for murdering George Floyd; Senate passes bill to address anti-Asian crimes; Biden pledges to cut emissions in half; and more!
The limitations on women’s hair that remain aren’t practical; they’re patriarchal. If they’re entrusted to guard national security, even in a small way, then they should be trusted with another inch of ponytail if that helps them feel better about themselves and improves their job performance.
President-Elect Biden’s platform for women promises to be the most ambitious presidential agenda yet addressing issues that affect women and girls. This is the first of a multi-part series covering the agenda.
The health care prong of President Elect Biden’s agenda for women includes protecting and strengthening access to reproductive health care, expanding access to high-quality, affordable health care, addressing maternal mortality and tackling health inequities. The platform focuses in particular on developing health care protections for LGBTQ+ women, women with disabilities, incarcerated women, women veterans and Native women.
The War on Women is in full force under the Trump administration—and each week, we publish a day-by-day account of it. We refuse to go back, and we refuse to let the administration quietly dismantle the progress we’ve made. We are watching.
And OH what a week it’s been…
This week: Trump’s patronizing comments about fallen U.S. soldiers.; Trump ends federal agencies’ anti-racism trainings; Cohen calls Trump a racist, “sordid, mob-like figure”; Trump uses the DOJ (and taxpayer money) to fight E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case; and Trump admits to criminal negligence on tape.
From Jane Vialle—such an expert at coding that the Nazis couldn’t uncover her secrets—to Nancy Wake—who killed a Nazi with her bare bands—there are so many extraordinary women of the WWII era who we have not heard enough about. These women rejected the entrenched prejudices of gender, race, disability and religion, to achieve incredible feats.
With the upcoming release of the live-action version of Mulan on Disney+, an op-ed written by Vice President Mike Pence has resurfaced. In the op-ed, Pence makes a variety of dubious claims, from suggesting Mulan is liberal propaganda to arguing he was “victimized” by the film.
Right before her death, Vanessa Guillén told her family that she had been sexually harassed by superiors. She didn’t report it, fearing retribution. Reporting sexual harassment and sexual assaults in the military goes up the chain of command—particularly useless if the perpetrator is a superior.
Since Guillén’s murder was confirmed, current and past service members who experienced sexual assault and harassment have shared their own stories with the viral #IAmVanessaGuillen.
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 in this biweekly round-up.
This week: support for female service members and veterans; first Black woman named senior vice president and publisher at Simon & Schuster; Mary Trump’s bombshell tell-all; the first female Green Beret—and more.
