Young Women and Girls

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.

‘To Catch a Predator’ at Cornell

PUBLISHED 9/28/2026 by

Feminists on the internet are erupting in rage and recognition after a former Cornell University student filed a lawsuit alleging she was pressured to take ketamine and was subsequently gang-raped for seven hours at a Cornell fraternity house.

At the same time, A24’s new blockbuster Primetime just hit theaters. And as pedophiles and predators continue to occupy the highest echelons of the U.S. government and walk free at universities across the country, Primetime captures why public exposure can feel like the only recourse left when institutions fail to act.

The Cornell case now has a consequential new development: This week, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says his office is reopening its investigation and acknowledged his office relied on campus police’s investigation rather than conducting its own.

Public outrage helped bring the case back into view, but it cannot be the primary way that we seek justice. What matters now is whether Cornell and law enforcement answer the questions raised by Doe’s lawsuit … and whether the next student who comes forward has to wait for the Internet to demand those answers.

As World Leaders Gather at the U.N., the Push to Recognize Gender Apartheid Gains Ground

PUBLISHED 9/21/2026 by

Nearly 130 heads of state and government are expected to attend the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level week in New York. From Sept. 22 to 28, world leaders will gather for the General Debate of the 81st session under the theme, “Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.”

For Afghan women and girls living under the Taliban’s systematic oppression, whether the United Nations can deliver is not an abstract question. It requires the international community to recognize gender apartheid for what it is: a crime against humanity.

The support for recognizing forced marriage and reproductive violence, while stopping short of naming “gender apartheid,” presents an opportunity for feminist organizations to continue advocating for the full breadth of gender-based oppression to be recognized by the United Nations.

Why Blaming Sydney Sweeney Misses the Point

PUBLISHED 9/19/2026 by

If you follow the mainstream press and social media, you would assume that Sydney Sweeney is an amazingly powerful 29-year-old woman. With her new hypersexualized ad for Novig, she stands accused of single-handedly debasing women, especially female athletes, and has, according to The New York Times, reversed decades of progress.

But if Sydney Sweeney refused to do the ad, thousands of other women would have happily taken her place.

It’s much easier to blame the individual woman—as we see in the media frenzy against Sydney Sweeney—than the real culprits: the violently misogynistic porn industry.

The Perfect Victim Is a Dead Woman

PUBLISHED 9/17/2026 by

This is a story about choices that are not really choices. It is a story about impossible circumstances propelling us down pathways we believe unimaginable. You always believe it could never happen to you, until it does.

“Our last encounter was him trying to choke me, and me stabbing him.” Naomi sighs and leans against the passenger seat of my car, ending the story of the night she killed her abuser.

A grand jury indicted her for second-degree murder. A year later, she pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Initially facing five to 25 years in prison, her sentence was reduced under New York state’s Domestic Violence Survivor Justice Act to three years’ incarceration, with five years of post-release supervision. Even the District Attorney’s office acknowledged Naomi was a victim of domestic violence, which “was a significant contributing factor” to her behavior.

When the options available to her were kill or be killed, why was she even indicted?

We live in a world that punishes survivors and creates more victims with generous latitude inexplicably afforded to men who have proven themselves dangerous to society. It seems that the only perfect victim is a dead one, a woman who can’t talk back.

Activists Have Fought for Disability Justice. So-Called ‘Sickfluencers’ Still Face Medical Sexism.

PUBLISHED 9/16/2026 by

Mainstream legacy media in the U.K. has found a new target: young disabled women.

Last week, Telegraph editor Poppy Coburn published “How having a disability became cool,” arguing so-called “sickfluencers” are “turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend.” Just a month earlier, Times of London columnist Kathleen Stock suggested the disproportionate number of Gen Z women diagnosed with what she called “vague syndromes” may be experiencing “social contagion.” Both pieces cast suspicion on young disabled women and the ways they discuss chronic illness and use mobility aids, reflecting a growing strain of far-right rhetoric that treats disabled women’s accounts of their own bodies with suspicion.