"We are just as interested and focused on people having healthy, safe, joyous birth outcomes as we are on people's ability to have safe terminations of pregnancy," said Kwajelyn Jackson, the executive director of The Feminist Center Georgia Initiative.

The post ‘Not Just About Abortion’: Amidst Federal Attacks on Planned Parenthood, Georgia Clinics Fight Maternal Mortality and Postpartum Neglect appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This week: News from Gaza, Thailand, Canada, and more.

The post Ms. Global: Starvation’s Effects on Women in Gaza, Gisele Pelicot Awarded France’s Legion of Honor, Taliban Enforces Dress Laws for Women, and More appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

However, companies like Verizon are part of the private sector—executive orders do not directly apply to them, meaning, they have no obligation to roll back on DEI. 

The post Investing in Inclusion: How DEI Initiatives Uplift Both Companies and Consumers appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The post ‘Girl on Girl’ Examines How Culture Determines Our Desires—and if We Can Reclaim Them appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Policing women’s sexual choices should never be the goal of this discourse. Our personal sex lives are rich with context, and I hope that most people who enthusiastically interact with violent sexual acts, such as choking or hair-pulling, have felt comfortable enough with their partner to talk them through and have a truly consensual experience.

But we can monitor the way we speak about sex—especially expressions that lack that personal context, like album covers—and our tendencies as feminists to defend them in any light, no matter how troubling, for fear of restricting women as opposed to liberating them. 

We do not need to be OK with violence. Each of us has the personal autonomy to consider it, be conscious of it, oppose it, or even play with it. But when we look at an image of a woman having her hair pulled like the leash of a dog, it is only human—and important—that we feel uncomfortable.

The post The Problem With Sabrina Carpenter’s Album Cover Is Not Sex—It’s Violence  appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

This week: News from Nigeria, South Australia, Canada, and more.

The post Ms. Global: Climate Change Linked to Increases in Cancer for Women, U.K. Parliament Votes to Decriminalize Later Abortions, and More appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

In addition to its Medicaid and SNAP cuts, MomsRising members in attendance on June 25 said they were concerned about the bill’s immigration provisions (it aggressively funds ICE), its impact on education, its reproductive healthcare cuts and its decimation of gun control measures.

The post Moms and Caregivers Protest Proposed Medicaid, SNAP Cuts Amidst Disapproval for Budget Reconciliation Bill Measures appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

Upon my first glance at the article, I found myself instinctually grasping for some feminist argument of the campaign, which Sweeney claimed to be fulfilling her fans' persistent and frankly invasive requests for her bathwater. However, the way our commercial society and the broader marketplace are structured encourages women to market themselves towards those often degrading desires and enables men to continue acting as if treating women as objects is acceptable. And the solution is not restructuring what we construe as feminism, but rather, resisting the urge to accommodate one’s power to what seems like inevitable exploitation.

Defending bathwater products in the name of feminism will not lead us to the kind of liberation we could want for ourselves.

The post Sex Sells … Even in the Soap Aisle: What Does Sydney Sweeney’s ‘Bathwater Soap’ Say About Our Porn-Dominant Culture? appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

The way the U.S. understands, or refuses to understand, maternal health makes even asking for care a baffling proposition. Dawn Huckelbridge, founder of Paid Leave for All, recounted the moment she truly became “fired up and fed up” after giving birth to her first child. Huckelbridge was prepared in every sense: She had a supportive partner, health insurance and parents who could help her out. Upon delivering her baby, what she recalls as a traumatic experience for her mind and body, she was given even more resources for the baby: diapers, blankets, instructive care literature. 

And when she asked her doctor, “Well, what about me? What do I have to do to take care of my body?” he replied, “Things just have a way of healing.” That was the official prescription for a mother who had been carrying a baby for 40 weeks and had only given birth a moment ago.

“I’d hate to believe that it’s because we don’t care about mothers and that we don’t want to see them in power," said Erin Erenberg, co-founder and CEO of the Chamber of Mothers.

The post ‘What About Me?’: Bringing Women’s Well-Being to the Forefront of Motherhood appeared first on Ms. Magazine.

It’s not that saving money is bad, but when frugality becomes a moral performance, especially for women, it’s worth asking who this trend really serves.

The post The Fantasy of Underconsumption: Truly Productive or a Tradwife Pipeline? appeared first on Ms. Magazine.