The Ms. Q&A Archives - Page 2 of 40

‘It Was The Most Important Thing I Could Do’: Ellie Smeal Reflects on a Lifetime of ERA Activism—And What Comes Next

PUBLISHED 9/5/2025 by Carmen Rios

Ellie Smeal helped architect the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. In the final episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, she shares stories from the frontlines and offers lessons—and optimism—for the fight ahead.

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “The Feminist Fight For The Equal Rights Amendment Is Far From Over—and More Urgent Than Ever (with Pat Spearman, Ellie Smeal, Carol Moseley Braun, Kathy Spillar, and Ting Ting Cheng)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘I’m Not Going to Tolerate Being Treated as a Second-Class Citizen’: Carol Moseley Braun Isn’t Giving Up on the Fight for Constitutional Equality

PUBLISHED 9/3/2025 by Carmen Rios

“The expectation of equality is the most important cultural thing that we can achieve, and we have to keep holding up that light.”

Carol Moseley Braun became the first Black woman elected to the Senate after her involvement in the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. In the fifth and final episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, more than 40 years later, she asked a simple question: “Why haven’t we gotten this right yet?”

What Feminist Scholar Jane Caputi Believes History Can Teach Us About Taking on Male Supremacy—and Building a Future Without Femicide

PUBLISHED 8/27/2025 by Carmen Rios

The professor and The Age of Sex Crime author explained in the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward why the backlash we’re facing is proof that we’re winning—and urged feminists not to abandon their utopic visions for a world without misogyny.

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “How Feminists are Breaking the Cycle of Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (with Ellen Sweet, Jane Caputi, Vanessa Tyson, Victoria Nourse, and Debra Katz)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘A Patriarchal, Male-Dominated, Use-of-Violence Society Is Not Good for Anybody’: Ellen Sweet on the Historic Ms. Study of Campus Rape, 40 Years Later

PUBLISHED 8/25/2025 by Carmen Rios

The former senior editor and writer for Ms. coordinated what became the first-ever national survey of campus sexual violence. In the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, Sweet assesses what she learned from the study about rape, activism, and backlash—and what has and hasn’t changed since it was published.

“When and Where Do We Get to This Place Called ‘Fair?’” What Political Scientist and Survivor Vanessa Tyson Wants the Feminist Future to Look Like

PUBLISHED 8/22/2025 by Carmen Rios

The professor, advocate and veteran of multiple political campaigns reflected in the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward on her journeys to both survivor advocacy and politics—and the ways in which our political structures reinforce the injustices survivors face writ large across the country.

Victoria Nourse Helped Write the Violence Against Women Act. She Knows Policy Change Matters in the Struggle to End Gender-Based Violence.

PUBLISHED 8/21/2025 by Carmen Rios

On the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, the Georgetown Law professor and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reflected on how VAWA has shifted culture when it comes to gender-based violence—and what tools activists can use now to continue the work.

“No one would’ve thought someone like me would’ve been able to do the kinds of things I’ve done. My older sisters didn’t have the opportunities I have … but the world opened up. Things can change quite quickly in politics.”

“There’s just many, many reasons why ERA is something not to let go of. … They never really say women are unequal. They believe women are equal, but they say, ‘Oh, but transgender,’ ‘Oh, but something else,’ and so, they divide us. It’s really important for all of us to be united because Congress can change the deadline [in the preamble of the ERA].”

‘We Have to Be Relentless’: #MeToo Champion Debra Katz Is Confident ‘There Will Be Wins’ for Survivors in the Days Ahead

PUBLISHED 8/18/2025 by Carmen Rios

In the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “the feared attorney of the #MeToo movement” assesses the legal landscape facing survivors—and how activists can continue to hold people in power accountable.

‘Care Is Baked Into a Healthy, Functioning Economy’: Economists Lenore Palladino and Rakeen Mabud on How to Advance Economic Justice

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by Carmen Rios

The experts and Ms. contributors assessed the state of the U.S. care crisis and women’s economic inequality in the latest episode of the Ms. podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward—and broke down why investing in women and care workers is good policy.

Rakeen Mabud: “We’re at a really pivotal moment and a really complicated moment. We have conservative, pronatalist voices, with more institutional power than they have ever had, at least in modern times. They are advancing an agenda of deep progressive patriarchy, whiteness—and wealth, frankly, is the third prong of that. And they are co-opting progressive policy ideas to do it.”

Lenore Palladino: “There are schools, and there are childcare centers, and there are hospitals being shut down right now. Investing in those would be a really important way to move this whole conversation forward. … Within economic policy, there’s such bifurcation. There’s tax policy over here. There’s care over here. It’s still a women’s issue.”

“Economics is still seen as a man’s game. Women actually make most financial decisions in households, but men are the ones who are seen as the experts, and our financial system is shaped around their life cycles.”

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “Women Can’t Afford to Wait for a Feminist Economic Future (with Premilla Nadasen, Rakeen Mabud and Lenore Palladino, Aisha Nyandoro, Gaylynn Burroughs, and Dolores Huerta)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘In Whose Interests Are We Fighting?’ What Historian Premilla Nadasen Learned About Economic Justice from the Domestic Workers’ Rights Movement

PUBLISHED 8/10/2025 by Carmen Rios

Nadasen, who teaches history at Barnard College, offered lessons from the domestic workers’ movement for the current moment in the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward. “We, as feminists today, like domestic workers in the 1970s and in the early 2000s,” she told me, “need to think outside the box.”

‘If You’re Not Centering the People Who Are Most Impacted, Your Policy Solution Will Fall Apart’: Gaylynn Burroughs Is Fighting for Economic Justice at the Intersections

PUBLISHED 8/8/2025 by Carmen Rios

Burroughs, the vice president of education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, connected the dots between poverty, policy and culture change in the latest episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward. “Once you start seeing these problems as being problems that policy can solve,” she told me, “a whole world opens up.”

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