Women’s History

Official histories have deliberately left important stories of women and marginalized groups out of textbooks, museums and elite institutions. Learning women’s history implores people today to acknowledge how long feminists have fought for equality—and the ongoing challenges they’re still resisting today.

A Historic U.N. Choice, a Surge of Black Women Candidates and the Fight for Representation

PUBLISHED 9/26/2026 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:
—A woman may finally become the new U.S. secretary general.
—Secretary General António Guterres’ powerful and motivating remarks: “At the current pace, it will take us 171 years to reach gender equality. I don’t think any one of us wants to wait that long.”
—the remarkable rise of Black women candidates in Georgia
—No group of donors has had quite the impact on electing more women than EMILYs List, whose “early money is like yeast” philosophy has contributed to women being poised to become the majority of Democratic lawmakers in state legislatures this year.

… and more.

Amid Reproductive Rights Rollbacks, a New USPS Stamp Honors Sarah Orne Jewett, Who Imagined Lives for Women Beyond Marriage

PUBLISHED 9/24/2026 by

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) issued a new stamp late last month honoring 19th-century writer Sarah Orne Jewett—putting a woman whose work centered on female independence and unconventional lives, into mailboxes and collection books across the country.

The stamp, the 35th in USPS’ Literary Arts series, was unveiled in Jewett’s hometown of South Berwick, Maine. Its portrait of Jewett appears against the Maine coast, a reference to her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs. USPS says renewed interest in Jewett’s writing has been driven partly by her strong female characters.

In 2025, Ms. selected Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade, edited by Karen Weingarten, as one of the most anticipated feminist books of the year. The published collection brings together literature documenting abortion before Roe v. Wade, including an excerpt from Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Jewett never explicitly writes the word “abortion” in the published passage. Instead, one of the novel’s central characters, Mrs. Todd, is an herbalist who gathers plants and receives women who arrive privately at her door seeking remedies and whispered instructions. Weingarten said she included the passage because abortion exists in its subtext, reflecting a period when reproductive knowledge could be encoded in language about women’s networks of care.

That history makes the timing of Jewett’s stamp particularly striking. More than four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion remains banned outright in 13 states, with additional states enforcing early gestational limits. Battles over reproductive healthcare continue at both the state and federal levels—from access to medication abortion, to funding for family-planning services.

Jewett’s face is now traveling through a postal system caught up in that debate, across a country still contesting reproductive freedom. The stamp itself makes no claim about voting or reproductive rights. But there is something notable about a federal institution commemorating a woman whose work has become part of the literary history of abortion at the same moment reproductive autonomy is again being fiercely contested.

No Liberation Without Community: In One of Her Final Interviews, Gloria Steinem on Her New Memoir, Chosen Family and the Future of Feminism

PUBLISHED 9/24/2026 by

“Feminism is positive, widely embraced and global. It is spreading and growing. That gives me hope.”

In one of her final interviews, the late Gloria Steinem discusses her new memoir and the optimism that fueled her feminism.

“The written word has always been magic to me,” Gloria Steinem—celebrated writer, feminist activist and cofounder of this magazine—observes in her charming new memoir, An Unexpected Life. “One of my greatest pleasures has always been opening a book and finding a friend.”

In this posthumous release, she gives us exactly that: a volume that is wise and witty, intimate and inspiring. It’s a chance to get to know her not as an icon, but as a friend.

Gloria and I chatted about the book the month before her death.

Iranian Women’s Rights Activist Nasrin Sotoudeh Remembers Gloria Steinem: ‘Our Fate and Fortune Is Tied Together’

PUBLISHED 9/11/2026 by

Nasrin Sotoudeh is an Iranian human rights lawyer and activist who, along with her husband Reza Khandan, has been repeatedly arrested for her women’s rights activism and spent six years in prison. In the wake of Gloria Steinem’s passing on Sept. 2, Soutoudeh shared these words with Ms.

“Gloria Steinem’s extraordinary life and activism has touched, elevated and inspired women all over the world.

“I can attest to her deep influence on me and countless other women’s rights activists here in Iran, including my husband, Reza Khandan.

“As women, we know that whether we are in America or India, Europe or Africa, Iran or Afghanistan, our fate and fortune is tied together. The rights that we achieve or lose in one corner of the world have a direct bearing on another. In a very real sense, when it comes to persecution or emancipation, our minds, bodies and spirits are one.”

What Did Gloria Steinem Mean to You? Share Your Story With Ms.

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

Ms. has created a new digital tribute to Gloria Steinem, bringing together memories and reflections from friends, colleagues, fellow activists and readers around the world.

We invite you to add your voice by answering one question: What did Gloria mean to you?

Gloria was the people’s feminist. She made people feel seen, heard and capable of changing the world. She famously reminded us, “The Constitution does not begin with ‘I, the president.’ It begins with ‘We, the people.’”

So we invite you—the people—to help tell the story of her extraordinary feminist legacy.

Perhaps you met Gloria at a march, lecture or organizing meeting. Perhaps you grew up reading Ms. or discovered her writing decades later. Maybe her words helped you recognize an injustice, leave a harmful situation, find your voice, raise a feminist child, begin organizing or imagine a life beyond the limits prescribed for you.

Your tribute does not need to capture the whole of Gloria’s life or legacy. It only needs to tell your part of the story.

Share your memory, reflection or story about Gloria Steinem.

Gloria Steinem in Her Own Words: On Trump, Roe v. Wade, and the Birth of the Modern Women’s Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 9/4/2026 by and

As we grieve the passing of Gloria Steinem, Ms. founder and feminist visionary, we’re looking back at some of our favorite quotes from Steinem’s 50+ years of speaking and activism across the U.S. and throughout the world. She was sharp, funny and infinitely quotable, and many of her interviews from over the years combine deep feminist insight with some snappy one-liners.

The two most famous quotes attributed to Steinem are possibly, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” and, “If men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament.” However, while Steinem said and popularized both, she made it clear that neither quote originated with her; the first is attributed to Australian writer and activist Irina Dunn, and the second, according to Steinem, was originally said by her speaking partner Florynce Kennedy.

Steinem still had no end of wise, funny, inspiring sayings of her own that other feminists will keep quoting for years after her death. Below are some of our favorites.

Gloria Steinem: The People’s Feminist

PUBLISHED 9/3/2026 by

Lately I’ve been in a groove that has me up before the sun most days. Though I try resist the impulse to pick up my phone, this morning I opened Instagram at 4 a.m. and saw Gloria Steinem’s account—a somber post that she died peacefully overnight at age 92. It took several hours before the media started reporting on it, and in those quiet moments, I reflected on the myriad ways her words and deeds have impacted the world we inhabit and altered my own world view.

As Contrarian readers may know, I am also proudly part of the team at Ms. magazine—one of Gloria’s many legacies, and which still thrives as an essential feminist news and storytelling hub today. Her words, her wisdom, her exclamations of “fan-fucking-tastic,” even her very physical appearance—honey hair, ever-cool aviators, low-slung belts—swirl in my psyche every day.

By mid-morning, my social media feed had exploded into a wall of tributes—photos, anecdotes, news clips. I surely knew how much she meant to women of all ages—it seems everyone can quote a pithy on-the-mark phrase attributed to Gloria Steinem—but what I found so riveting was how many have an intimate firsthand interaction to recount, a prized selfie to share, a sense of real connection and meaning when it comes to Gloria. My Ms. colleague Roxy Szal refers to her as the “people’s feminist”—a pairing of words that may seem simply strung together, but represent a depth of generosity, compassion, savvy and social intelligence and skill that is rare.

Dolly Parton’s Unique Feminist Power, as Told by Gloria Steinem (January 1987)

PUBLISHED 8/27/2026 by

(As the world mourns Dolly Parton, Ms. is revisiting Gloria Steinem’s tribute to the country music legend, originally published in the January 1987 issue, when Parton was named one of Ms. magazine’s Women of the Year. Steinem celebrated Parton not only as a gifted songwriter and magnetic performer, but as a shrewd businessperson who transformed femininity into a source of humor and power—and used her success to lift up working women, poor communities and the mountain people of her native Tennessee.)

If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.

Her strength and capacity to dream seems to have been born into Dolly, as one of 12 children of a poor family in those mountains.

By the time she was 7, she was playing the guitar, reading books and dreaming of a world beyond the poverty and beauty of the Smoky Mountains.

By the time she was 10, she had coaxed support from her free-thinking mother, braved the opposition of her protective father, and earned her first public applause by singing before live audiences at a radio station in Knoxville. With that taste of success, she vowed to conquer the larger world beyond the mountains, but never to betray the country way of life that had nurtured her.

After Dobbs, the ERA Offers a New Path to Abortion Rights

PUBLISHED 8/25/2026 by

For 250 years, women have been fighting for inclusion in the nation’s founding promise of equality. The Equal Rights Amendment would finally guarantee that equality under the U.S. Constitution—and could give Congress and the courts powerful new tools to address discrimination in education, employment, healthcare and safety. It could also provide a constitutional basis for challenging abortion bans and restrictions as forms of sex discrimination.

But feminists do not have to wait for federal recognition of the ERA to put equality guarantees to work. State constitutions are already providing a path forward.

In Nevada, advocates successfully challenged the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion under its Equal Rights Amendment; in Pennsylvania, courts have opened the door to treating restrictions on abortion funding as sex discrimination; and in Colorado, feminist lawyers are arguing that parental-notification requirements impose unequal burdens on young women while placing no comparable restrictions on young men.

At a moment when abortion rights no longer have federal constitutional protection, state ERAs offer feminists another constitutional path—not only to challenge abortion restrictions, but to confront the stereotypes and unequal burdens beneath them. Building strong interpretations of equality at the state level can protect women now while laying the groundwork for the expansive vision of sex equality a federal ERA could one day deliver nationwide.

(This essay is part of FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, the series taps the thought leaders of today to debut game-changing ideas for the next 250 years.)

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize: Building a Future Beyond Roe

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

Nearly 50 years after Roe came, it went.

The Dobbs decision brought a devastating reversal—but it simultaneously ushered in a moment akin to 1972 … the opportunity to reimagine bodily autonomy and build something better.

And now, in 2026, we have begun to see glimmers of such vision emerge in the law by way of more expansive court rulings and bolder legislation.