Young Women and Girls

Is the Cornell Rape Case a Turning Point for Men?

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

What allegedly took place at Cornell was a preventable tragedy. One young man with the guts to say, “This is wrong!” might have stopped it from happening.

It’s a crying shame that didn’t happen. But a silver lining in this sorry tale is that a growing number of men seem to grasp that their silence has contributed to the problem.

Programming with boys and young men should go beyond awareness-raising and behavior-change messaging, to address the gender norms, power relations and social structures that sustain violence.

This means giving young men the opportunity to talk with each other, as well as with their female peers, about what it means to be a man.

This means allowing them to ask and answer the following sorts of questions:

—If you’re a guy, what does it mean to be one of the guys?
—Are you willing to compromise your values for the sake of fitting in?
—What is the price of being part of the brotherhood?
—Is other men’s approval more important than treating women with respect and dignity?

After a Long Campaign, California Finally Banned Child Marriage. Survivors Made It Happen.

PUBLISHED 10/14/2026 by

I grew up around women who were wed while they were still children. My grandmother was married at just 10 years old and my aunt at 16. At school, friends of mine married. I watched their schooling stop, pregnancies that came too soon, choices made for them rather than by them. Relatives would ask, gently but pointedly, when I intended to do the same, as though delaying it only put off something inevitable.

What haunted me then still haunts me now is how ordinary everyone around us made it seem.

That ordinariness is how child marriage has survived for so long in the United States. California has now banned it.

On Sept. 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed bill AB 1267, setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage with no exceptions.

California has just shown that what was once treated as ordinary does not have to remain inevitable. Eighteen states have now drawn a clear line.The rest of the country should follow. No child’s right to safety, freedom and a future of their own choosing should depend on the state in which they happens to live.

The Cornell Rape Case Has Sparked a National Outcry. Can That Anger Shape the Midterms?

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by

A dam has broken for women, stemming from the case of the Cornell student who was allegedly gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.

In the 1980s, Ms. published the first national study of sexual assault on college campuses. What our researchers found was, at the time, shocking—at least, to the college administrators: Over half of women surveyed had experienced “some form of sexual victimization,” and one in eight women had been victims of rape—though of those women, nearly three-quarters didn’t identify their experience as rape.

“The details of what happened to Jane Doe are horrifying, but at least they are now being reported and considered credible. This has not always been the case,” wrote Ellen Sweet, former Ms. magazine editor and coordinator of the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault in a recent New York Times letter to the editor. “Now there is a public outcry for transparency and accountability that can’t be ignored. Let’s hope colleges and law enforcement finally learn their lesson.”

We know that in this moment, young women are fed up and deeply, deeply angry. The midterms offer an opportunity to channel that anger into tangible, meaningful change.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs Work. So Why Is Trump’s HHS Cutting Them?

PUBLISHED 10/10/2026 by | UPDATED 10/13/2026 at 7:40 A.M. PT

Across the U.S., teen pregnancy rates have fallen to historic lows—the result of decades of investment in evidence-based prevention, improved access to information and sustained support for young people.

Yet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently terminated 53 of the nation’s 67 teen pregnancy prevention grants, abruptly cutting off support for programs serving thousands of young people across the country. There was no wind-down or warning.

These programs are often described as efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, but that description understates what young people actually receive from them. They teach healthy relationships, consent, communication and decision-making. They help young people recognize abusive situations and connect with medically accurate information and trusted adults.

The grant terminations aren’t simply a funding cut—they represent a decision to walk away from proven strategies that improve young people’s health and well-being.

Two months after HHS’ cut to these programs, there is now a glimmer of accountability.

Offline and Overlooked: Why Girls’ Internet Access Is a Feminist Issue

PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by and

Last summer, our Girls Learn International chapter set out with a mission to support girls in finding their own voices to lead their communities on issues they cared about. We organized an international public speaking webinar with Sierra Leone Rising, which helped us reach 40 girls in villages in Sierra Leone.

Even with nonprofit backing, internet barriers strained our capacity to communicate regularly, blurring the vision that had seemed so “doable” in writing. As students in well-resourced suburban towns, we had taken reliable internet access for granted.

Our surprise turned to anger: How could something so basic, so essential to daily life in the modern world, remain out of reach for so many school-aged children around the globe? In what world could a student in a small, remote village be promised equal opportunity without access to the digital tools other students take for granted?

Tools of the Patriarchy: What Book Bans Take From Women and Girls

PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by

Tools of the Patriarchy is a column on the tools that establish men’s dominance in society, or, in other words, uphold the patriarchy. Whether or not these tools are used intentionally, they contribute to a world in which women are not equal to men.

The books disappearing from shelves are not random. Censorship campaigns continue to sweep up stories about women’s sexuality, sexual violence, reproductive autonomy and girls coming of age, alongside books about LGBTQ+ people and people of color.

Stories are also one of the places girls first encounter women who leave, resist, desire, survive, refuse motherhood, question authority or name the harm done to them.

Another gendered aspect of the censorship story: the people expected to absorb the backlash. Librarians are trusted to help children find books and create welcoming spaces … until their professional judgment includes a book about queer identity, reproductive autonomy or sexual violence. Then the helpful librarian can quickly become an “activist.”

For Louisiana librarian Amanda Jones, speaking against censorship at a public library board meeting turned her into a target. She was accused online of promoting pornography to children and subjected to harassment and threats. Her experience shows how quickly a librarian defending access to books can be recast as the danger herself—especially when a woman in a feminized profession refuses to quietly enforce someone else’s definition of what is “appropriate.”

Female Student-Athletes File Title IX Lawsuit Against UC Davis for Sex Discrimination, Condemn Treating Women Like ‘Second-Class Citizens’

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

On Sep. 29, 19 former members of UC Davis’ recently-eliminated female equestrian team filed a sex discrimination class action against the school.

The students allege the school discriminated against all its female student-athletes by depriving them of equal athletic financial aid, in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

“We were devastated when UC Davis eliminated the equestrian team, which was successful and thriving,” said Anna Donovan, a UC Davis senior and award-winning former equestrian team member. “Then, we were stunned even more when the school tried to defend its decision by releasing a consultant’s report showing it was depriving women athletes annually of hundreds of thousands of dollars in equal athletic financial aid.”

The Difference Between His Safety and Hers

PUBLISHED 10/7/2026 by

I recently saw a social media post that I can’t stop thinking about: “If a man was severely intoxicated around seven women, he would actually be in the safest place he could possibly be. He’d be taken care of on every level. He’d be hydrated, fed, given meds and a cozy place to lay down. I can’t stop thinking about that difference.”

Neither can I.

I am tired of women being hurt, watched, harassed, questioned and doubted. I’m tired of women being handed an ever-growing list of precautions, then asked what we did wrong when we’re harmed.

Women don’t need another lesson in how to protect ourselves. We’ve had a lifetime of them.

Imagine if instead of teaching our daughters how to stay safe from men, we could trust men not to harm them and to help keep them safe. Isn’t that the world we want—one where our daughters won’t have to think about this difference at all? It’s time for men to step up and take responsibility.

War on Women Report: ICE Lost Count of Detained Women’s Miscarriages; Sexual Assault Still Rampant on College Campuses; Post-Dobbs Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths on the Rise

PUBLISHED 10/2/2026 by , and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—On Wednesday, Sept. 2, Gloria Steinem, feminist, social activist and cofounder of Ms., died in her New York City home. She was 92.
—The family of Tierra Walker, who died in 2024 after she was refused a medically necessary abortion under Texas’ abortion ban, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and several of Walker’s doctors and nurses in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.
—House Republicans have formally censured Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) for his documented inappropriate conduct toward women staffers, including excessive unwanted attention and gifts ranging from flowers and purses to personalized handguns.
—Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, spent a decade as part of a cult that trafficked and sexually exploited children and young women, former members allege.
—Almost 200 women have died in the U.S. due to an ectopic pregnancy between 2020 and 2025.
—“Jane Doe,” a former Cornell University student, has filed a lawsuit alleging she was coerced into taking incapacitating drugs, then gang-raped by seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers over a period of several hours at their fraternity house in October 2024. The plaintiff is suing Cornell University, several fraternity and sorority organizations and the seven Chi Phi members: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar.
—A jury in Lima, Ohio, has indicted a 22-year-old woman for “abuse of a corpse” after she was arrested in February when she suffered a miscarriage and placed the fetal remains in the trash.
—The same month the details of the Cornell case emerged, a student at Louisiana State University is seeking criminal charges against a student football player for allegedly sexually assaulting her in October 2025. A Title IX investigation at the university level has found that the student-athlete is “responsible” for “sexual assault” and “forcible rape.” However, an appeals judge reduced his punishment from suspension to probation.

… and more.

Survivors Describe How Epstein Used Their Modeling Dreams to Abuse Them

PUBLISHED 10/2/2026 by

Jeffrey Epstein “used the modeling industry as a lever to try to get girls into his orbit,” says survivor Lisa Phillips.

Phillips describes how Epstein operated: He asked about her career, about how often she talked to her father (she told him not often), and he specifically wanted to know about her goals as a model. She told him her “big dream” was to work for Ford Models. He told her that she and the other model had to stay over on the island, then assaulted her later that night.

Months later, she says, he called to say he had arranged a meeting with his “great friend” Katie Ford, the CEO of Ford Models. Phillips met with Ford and became a model for the agency.

“Models were being sent to every charity event, every modeling party,” she says, “everything organized through Katie Ford and agents. … It was always us younger girls and older men. We [felt] our bodies weren’t ours and we would just have to put up with it to keep [our] career.”

Part 1 of The Pipeline to Predators, a four-part Ms. investigation into the modeling industry’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and survivors’ fight for accountability.