feminism

Mary Wollstonecraft's Diagnosis of the Prejudices Holding Back Girls' Education Remains Relevant Today

by Victoria Bateman

Since Wollstonecraft's 1792 condemnation of the strictures of modesty and sexual purity as unjust impediments to the education of girls and women, they remain principal justifications for keeping girls out of school. 

Ignorance of Its Achievements Contributes to Feminism's Bad Rap

by Elizabeth Cobbs

Slanders of American feminism as disruptive and disloyal go back to John Adams. But advances in freedom from education to abolition, suffrage to labor rights, have reflected the work of feminists to claim a public role for women as citizens. 

Femicides are Increasing in America; History Says we Shouldn't be Surprised

by Kimberly A. Hamlin

The term "femicide" is rarely used to describe the killing of women by men (often intimate partners), but it's an apt description for the way that gendered and sexual violence have been part of the fabric of the nation's history and constitute a systemic, not a personal, danger to women.

Ms. Magazine Turns 50

The current editors of Ms. consider the publication's legacy as a maker, not just a reporter, of news. 

Pioneering Black Feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes Dies at 84

Along with cofounding Ms. Magazine, she was a leader in connecting women's liberation to social welfare policies, child services, and domestic violence. 

Just Wear Your Smile: The Gender Politics of Positive Psychology

by Micki McElya

Positive Psychology, a supposed science of producing happiness, is part of a multibillion-dollar publishing market. Unfortunately, it's helped enshrine patriarchal values into the popular practice of psychology. 

Barbara Ehrenreich's Legacy is More than "Nickel and Dimed"

by Lynne Segal

The late writer's contributions to keeping a current of socialist radicalism in the feminist movement deserve recognition, too. 

Stories of Women's Comeuppance Expose Cruelty at Heart of Modern Society

by Sarah Horowitz

Like Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes today, the 1909 trial of Marguerite Steinheil in Paris focused on an ambitious woman as a villain, but revealed a wider climate of impunity and self-dealing among elite men. 

A Return to the 1960s "Abortion Handbook for Responsible Women"?

by Lina-Maria Murillo

Women acting on principles of mutual aid have worked to make information about reproductive health, including terminating pregnancies, available even at risk of legal punishment. 

Feminism Can't Ignore the Power of Sexual Freedom

by Nona Willis Aronowitz

A half century later, the "sex wars" that split second-wave feminists remain resonant in a society where the display of sexuality sits uneasily with women's ability to pursue desire on their own terms. 

Eve Babitz's Archive Reveals the Person Behind the Persona

by Kevin Dettmar

"What could the personal documents of a writer who was so public about her private world teach us about her work? How much of that persona was a performance and how much a reflection of her real anxieties and ambitions?"

How Toxic is Masculinity, and Whose Job Is it to Fix It?

Historian Ivan Jablonka's history of the idea of patriarchy suggests that feminists should recognize the current wave of male grievance as an opportunity to renegotiate the entire social compact of gender that has been built up over centuries of male power. 

"Mrs. Frank Leslie" Grew a Media Empire and Bankrolled the Women's Movement

Betsy Prioleau's book details the scandalous life and political impact of Mrs. Frank Leslie, who legally changed her name to that of her late husband and built a publishing empire. 

Targeting the Marginalized for Political Gain is Nothing New in Texas Politics

by Nancy Beck Young

Minority groups have often had a perilous existence in Texas, but that hasn't stopped politicians from attacking them as dire threats to the state's moral fabric. 

Restore the Radical Origins of International Womens Day

by Tiana U. Wilson

International Women's Day didn't always center on tech executives issuing platitudes from Dubai. The needs of women today require recovering the day's roots in international labor and anticolonial movements. 

Hating Motherhood

by Judith Levine

Feminist thought that has questioned "the inexorable tie between mothers and children" and imagined women's lives without motherhood have been the "demon texts" of the movement; 

How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Arguments in the Dobbs case have privileged the concerns of affluent, professional women – hardly the Mississippians whose lives will be affected by the state's draconian abortion bans. The abortion rights movement needs to return to its roots in racial and economic justice. 

Women in Tech have been Pulling the Second Shift for Decades

“The greatest trick that capitalism ever pulled was convincing the world that what women do in the home isn’t work,” says Joy Rankin, a historian of computing.

Nevertheless, She Lifted: A Feminist Revisionist History of Exercise

Danielle Friedman's new book on exercise culture reads against the grain to argue that fitness has allowed women to exercise strength and push against social limits. A reviewer finds this compelling but only half the story. 

Abortion isn't a "Choice" without Racial Justice

by Sara Matthiesen

The recent failure of the broad social spending initiatives of Build Back Better and the impending judicial overthrow of Roe are connected, and signal the need for a movement for reproductive freedom that goes beyond "choice" to address systemic inequalities.