More Than A Magazine, A Movement
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.
“The entire infrastructure by which women have been excluded from real participation in decision making and power — that continues,” the legal scholar explains in the first episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward.
Hear more from Suk and other feminists on the newest Ms. podcast, Looking Back, Moving Forward—the first episode is out now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
For our Summer 2025 issue, Ms. is going retro. The cover for the latest print issue is an homage to the October 1975 issue, which offered a “Special Issue on Men.” Both covers, 50 years apart, show a man in jeans and a T-shirt (the 1975 model was, no joke, Robert Redford) with a rolled-up issue of Ms. in his back pocket, honing in on the idea that women’s rights is a men’s issue too.
It’s the perfect time to remember Bea Feitler, the early Ms. art director who designed the 1975 men’s issue cover. Despite being a prominent designer (she art-directed Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines throughout the 1960s and ’70s), Feitler is largely unknown today.
In honor of her incredible legacy, which inspires Ms. staffers to this day, here are some of our favorite facts about Feitler and her remarkable life and work.
Pollster and leading Democratic strategist Celinda Lake has been examining the data on women and feminist voters for decades. I talked to her about what Americans really want. (Spoiler alert: It’s not Project 2025.)
“People think that feminism is a dirty word. In fact, it’s a very strong word. Particularly for progressives and Democrats—feminism is highly correlated with voting for Democrats. Half of Independents consider themselves feminists; when you describe it, a third of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats do. Our voters consider themselves feminists. It is a very quiet movement out there that is really underestimated. …
“Feminist issues, however we define them, are doing quite well. What we don’t have is we don’t have enough of them out front. We don’t have enough leaders taking them on.”
Multiple men have been arrested in at least three states since President Donald Trump’s inauguration for allegedly posing as immigration enforcement officers to perpetrate sexual violence against immigrant women.
The Trump administration is emboldening and reinvigorating such violence by providing more tools to harm women of color, including both systemic tools (mass detention and deportation) and a cover for any man looking to kidnap immigrant women in broad daylight.
Imagine you’re a pregnant teenager in 1972. Abortion isn’t an option, and you’re not ready to get married… so you might turn to a maternity home for unwed mothers. You’ll live there until the baby is born, then give it up for adoption to redeem yourself from the so-called sin of premarital sex.
On June 23, podcast studio Wondery released the new series Liberty Lost, which investigates the well-kept secret of Liberty University’s Godparent Home, which opened in the 1980s and is still operating today. In the podcast, reproductive rights journalist T. J. Raphael explores the history of the maternity home on the campus of Liberty University, a private evangelical college in Lynchburg, Va. There, staff members coerce young girls into surrendering their babies for adoption by affluent Christian parents in exchange for a full-ride scholarship at Liberty.
“Maternity homes are on the rise,” Raphael told me. “There might be one near where you live, and maternity homes play a larger role within the wider antiabortion movement.”
In the first episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward, Richie Terrell talked to Ms. consulting editor Carmen Rios about the vision of democracy she’s inspired by, practical strategies for advancing gender balance in politics, and what she considers the “gold standard” for equitable voting.
“It’s no coincidence that the 50 top countries for women’s representation all have either a form of gender quotas, legislative or party-based, or constitutional, or they have a proportional voting system.”
We can’t cede the United States or our collective notion of patriotism to President Trump and his MAGA supporters.
Almost 200 years ago, Frances Wright, an early feminist, abolitionist and utopian visionary, gave a Fourth of July address that celebrated true patriotism as the embrace of change, moving always toward the improvement of humanity. In 1828, women didn’t speak in public—and when they did, it was only for other women. Wright was one of the first to break those barriers, giving lectures championing women’s rights, opposing slavery and championing knowledge and science over religion.
She worried that America praised “patriots” without understanding patriotism.
New Mexico state Sen. Angel Charley’s journey to elected office began with feminist organizing. Now she’s centering Indigenous women’s rights during a historic moment for gender representation in New Mexico politics.
“I’m a mom. I’m a daughter of parents that are getting older. I’m a wife and a partner, but I’m also an Indigenous woman. I’m a Native woman before I’m anything else in this world. … I’m constantly asking: How is this going to affect tribes, nations and pueblos? Have we consulted with them?”
Hear more from Charley and other feminists on the newest Ms. podcast, Looking Back, Moving Forward—the first episode is out now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Donald Trump has insisted that he has a “mandate” from voters to peddle his wildly unpopular policies—and, apparently, to stop at nothing to enforce them. But in reality, Americans by and large want a feminist future.
I talked to experts in gender and politics about the promise of a truly representative democracy—and what it will take for feminists to build one. The first episode of the brand-new Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward digs into the history and future of the feminist fight for both political representation and political power. The experts I spoke to for the episode reminded me that feminists have the power to redefine our democracy—and that rumors of our defeat have been greatly exaggerated.
Listen to the newest Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward—available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!
This week:
—This Friday marks the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The journey for women’s equal representation remains unfinished.
—Zohran Mamdani looks poised to join 36-year-old Boston mayor Michelle Wu as part of a new generation of leadership in the U.S. Northeast. It’s time for more aging men like Cuomo to step aside and let more women step up. And if New York City is any indication, the voters may take matters into their own hands.
—St. Paul in 2023 elected an all-women city council in its ranked-choice voting elections. There’s now a vacant seat, and three women are among the four candidates running in an Aug. 12 special election.
—Jacinda Ardern’s new book, A Different Kind of Power, highlights the shifting dynamics of power, how women are redefining what leadership can be, and the impact of fairer election systems for creating openings for new voices like her own.
… and more!