More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Ahead of Election Day on Nov. 7, I’m reflecting on the women on the ballot in our local elections, as well as my mom’s own run for political office in 2010 when I was 8.
Regardless of the election outcome, your decision to run will have a huge impact on the women around you—especially young women and girls.
Fa Guzmán, a nonbinary student, was thrilled to join a sorority in August 2022. Thus, they were shocked in April 2023, when the national sorority organization decided to interpret their policies differently: Fa was banned, kicked out of the sorority with no opportunity to appeal, due to being nonbinary.
Gender nonconforming, nonbinary and transgender children, teens and adults have been increasingly subjected to restrictive legislation and policies that deny their gender, their bodily autonomy and their agency. On college campuses, sororities could offer close friendships and a deeper sense of belonging on campus—if it weren’t for national policies that often restrict membership based on sex assigned at birth.
In honor of International Day of the Girl, the White House Gender Policy Council celebrated 15 young women leaders leading change in the U.S.
Kriti Bharti founded her nonprofit, Saarthi Trust, in 2011 to fight child marriage and empower women and girls. Since then, she has helped legally annul 49 child marriages and prevented 1,700 more from being “solemnized” in ceremonial engagements. She has aided in the rehabilitation of 20,500 children and women, and has conducted orientation programs that resulted in 35,000 villagers taking oaths to resist child marriages.
“One day,” she said, “we should be able to say, ‘Once upon a time, there was something called child marriage.’”
(This article originally appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get Ms. in print delivered straight to your mailbox!)
The world is letting girls fall behind at an alarming rate. This International Day of the Girl, the world must reassess its commitments to girls everywhere—for a flourishing world and, most importantly, for the individual health, rights and well-being of each girl, no matter what.
Girls will reach their fullest potential when global governments comprehensively prioritize their education, safety, health and autonomy.
As a young girl in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran, I never expected to be fighting for democracy in the United States.
We are linguistic and ethnic strangers, yet we are family and are at home in the United States. And we are one among many here. That spirit of welcome is the spirit that should propel us toward the new democracy we want—and need. It’s what should animate us as we build a new democracy that we can all call home.
Crisis pregnancy centers—which counsel women against getting abortions—began to pop up in the late ’60s, as states passed laws legalizing abortion. Today, Texas has the most crisis pregnancy centers of any state.
These groups’ sex ed efforts are widespread: More than 35 of these centers are involved in dozens of school districts across Texas. Within these programs—offered for free to school districts—students are taught if they have sex before marriage, emotional risks include depression, guilt and anxiety. They’re taught that condoms do not keep them safe from pregnancy or STDs. These approaches aren’t effective in preventing or changing behavior. Instead, they can cause students to stop absorbing information that might help them make informed decisions about sex in the future.
Professor Viki Peer was hired in the fall of 2022 to teach a course for the New College of Florida’s gender studies program. Instead, what unfolded before her and the student body was a complete conservative takedown of the institution by the Board of Trustees.
“The spirit of critical thinking, compassion and creative resistance is still alive at New College among the faculty, students and staff who remain.”
With a recent Supreme Court ruling gutting affirmative action, parents and students find themselves navigating a landscape where the rules have shifted with little notice.
A high-schooler about to apply for college, and his mom, join their voices: “Both of us feel whiplashed by the constant yo-yo between our identities and contributions. It is in these sudden changes that we stand together, searching for understanding. In our shared experiences of marginalization, two generations can transcend difference, because we both know what it means to be made invisible, and we each feel the well-intentioned pressure to get it right the first time because of insider information and academic achievements.”
On Jan. 23, 2023, Jaahnavi Kandula was crossing the street when she was brutally struck by a police cruiser going 74 miles per hour. It is difficult to believe that we aren’t hearing this story until nine months later, but that’s how it goes.
Jaahnavi Kandula was a 23-year-old graduate student at Northeastern University’s Seattle campus raised by a single mother in Andhra Pradesh, India. She was due to graduate in three months with a masters in information systems. In a demographic analysis, Kandula and I are no different.
Our lives will always be worth more than a few thousand dollars.