When the future empress of Japan entered the country’s elite diplomatic corps in 1987, a year after a major equal employment law went into effect, she was one of only three female recruits. Known then as Masako Owada, she worked long hours and had a rising career as a trade negotiator. But she lasted just […]
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In bars tucked away in alleys and at salons and bookstores around Shanghai, women are debating their place in a country where men make the laws. Some wore wedding gowns to take public vows of commitment to themselves. Others gathered to watch films made by women about women. The bookish flocked to female bookshops to […]
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It was not exactly urgent to get the rug, but the larger question the rug had to answer was urgent enough. That’s why, on a bright afternoon at the end of March, Miranda July and I were driving toward Irvine, Calif., where she planned to meet a man about a listing on Facebook Marketplace. She […]
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The Russian Army is gradually expanding the role of women as it seeks to balance President Vladimir V. Putin’s promotion of traditional family roles with the need for new recruits for the war in Ukraine. The military’s stepped-up appeal to women includes efforts to recruit female inmates in prisons, replicating on a much smaller scale […]
Read MoreThe Republican Party, of course, is still very much the party of abortion bans. This week, Florida, the third most populous state, began prohibiting the procedure at six weeks. In an interview with Time magazine, Trump said he wouldn’t try to stop states from prosecuting women who have had abortions, and refused to say whether […]
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On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” and in a lighthearted moment, explained — as she did during the last presidential election cycle — that in her blended family, her stepchildren affectionately call her Momala. Barrymore responded that we all need “a tremendous hug” right now and told Harris, “We […]
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Women replied quite differently, with 68 percent saying Trump does not respect women (24 percent “not much,” 44 percent “not at all”) and 31 percent saying Trump does respect women (15 percent “a lot” and 16 percent “some”). Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of “Generations: The […]
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Citing rising breast cancer rates in young women, an expert panel on Tuesday recommended starting regular mammography screening at age 40, reversing longstanding and controversial guidance that most women wait until 50. The panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, finalized a draft recommendation made public last year. The group issues influential advice on preventive […]
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Landing by helicopter at a women’s prison where the Vatican has mounted its pavilion for the Venice Biennale international art exhibition, Pope Francis on Sunday told the women incarcerated there that they had a “special place in my heart.” “Grazie,” one woman called out. Others applauded. Many of the women had participated with artists in […]
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They don’t tell you beforehand that it will be a choice between having a career in science or starting a family. But that’s the message I heard loud and clear 17 years ago, in my first job after completing my Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. During a routine departmental meeting, a senior academic announced that pregnant […]
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The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the sale of an antibiotic for the treatment of urinary tract infections in women, giving U.S. health providers a powerful new tool to combat a common infection that is increasingly unresponsive to the existing suite of antimicrobial drugs. The drug, pivmecillinam, has been used in Europe for […]
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The abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday featured vigorous questioning and comments, particularly by the three liberal justices. At issue is whether Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion is so strict that it violates a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient, including providing abortions for pregnant women in dire situations. A ruling […]
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The abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday featured vigorous questioning and comments, particularly by the three liberal justices. At issue is whether Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion is so strict that it violates a federal law requiring emergency care for any patient, including providing abortions for pregnant women in dire situations. A ruling […]
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Helen Vendler, one of the leading poetry critics in the United States, with a reputation-making power that derived from her fine-grained, impassioned readings, expressed in crystalline prose in The New Yorker and other publications, died on Tuesday at her home in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She was 90. The cause was cancer, said her son, David […]
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In the weeks after the Supreme Court dismantled a constitutional right to abortion in 2022 and returned the issue of access to the states, a new series of court battles began. After the Biden administration announced it would protect access to abortion under emergency situations through a decades-old federal law, conservative states pushed back, leading […]
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At a family counseling center in Verbania, a leafy lakefront town in northern Italy, employees not only explain to women the rules for getting abortions, they have also distributed leaflets supplied by a local anti-abortion group. “Are you pregnant?” reads the flier from the “Center for Assistance to Life” in the town. If you think […]
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The Justice Department said on Tuesday it would pay $138.7 million to resolve 139 claims by young women, including many top female gymnasts, who were abused by the former U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Lawrence G. Nassar. The far-reaching settlement, which had been expected, stems from the failure of Federal Bureau of Investigation officials to promptly investigate […]
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The first draft of Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, “Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk,” was 600 pages long. As she worked to cut the manuscript, Hanna found herself excising page after page of male violence. “It’s pretty sad, if you read the book, because there’s still a lot in there,” she told me. “I […]
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Caroline Mullet, a ninth grader at Issaquah High School near Seattle, went to her first homecoming dance last fall, a James Bond-themed bash with blackjack tables attended by hundreds of girls dressed up in party frocks. A few weeks later, she and other female students learned that a male classmate was circulating fake nude images […]
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The sheet-pan chicken and roasted broccoli are out of the oven, and white rice is steaming on the stove. Virginia Sole-Smith, who has spent a decade writing about how women think and feel about their bodies — and how they pass along those feelings to their children through food — is about to serve dinner […]
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Mammograms can miss tumors in women with dense breast tissue. So for these patients, doctors often include a second scan — ultrasound, for example, or an M.R.I. — which are more likely to turn up cancers at early stages. But some older patients are running into an unexpected twist. Though many women see the extra […]
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The Biden administration issued new rules on Friday cementing protections for L.G.B.T.Q. students under federal law and updating the procedure schools must follow when investigating and adjudicating cases of alleged sexual misconduct on campus. The new rules, which take effect on Aug. 1, effectively broadened the scope of Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex […]
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Cheers thundered across a packed arena in Ottawa as fans stood and shouted support for the home team and vitriol at the visitors. “New York sucks!” they chanted. Young girls in peewee jerseys, bearded bros in Ottawa red and women holding signs with slogans like “Girls Supporting Girls” all lent voice to the mounting excitement. […]
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Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions of promised doses of the HPV vaccine this year. Merck has notified Gavi, the international organization that helps low- […]
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One of Kamala Harris’s most memorable moments during the 2020 presidential election cycle was when, during a Democratic primary debate, she sharply criticized Joe Biden for working with segregationists in the Senate in their shared opposition to busing. She personalized her criticism, saying: “There was a little girl in California who was a part of […]
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Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering whether Donald Trump is afraid. Does he think he’ll go to jail? Lose his fortune? Does he sleep easier after ranting in ALL CAPS on Truth Social? Surely I’m not the only one losing sleep over the threat this man poses to the country. But lately, as I […]
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Leah found out she was five weeks pregnant on the same day that the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions in the state. The law is not expected to take effect until June, but Leah, 29, worried that the state’s abortion clinics might be overwhelmed by an influx of patients […]
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Saratu Dauda had been kidnapped. It was 2014, she was 16, and she was in a truck packed with her classmates heading into the bush in northeastern Nigeria, a member of the terrorist group Boko Haram at the wheel. The girls’ boarding school in Chibok, miles behind them, had been set on fire. Then she […]
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In December 1994, investigators from the Los Angeles County prosecutor’s office drilled open a safe deposit box that had belonged to Nicole Brown Simpson. In it, they found Polaroids of her with a battered face and letters from O.J. Simpson apologizing for abusing her. “The message in the box was clear,” wrote Marcia Clark, the […]
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Rebecca Gau, a self-described “reasonable Republican” in Mesa, Ariz., is conflicted about many things that her party promotes. But she knows exactly what she thinks about Arizona’s new — or rather, very old — Civil War-era abortion ban. And about the idea that Republicans like her might be happy with the outcome. “Are you nuts?” […]
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For years now, I’ve had advocates who work with survivors of domestic violence tell me that two events in 1994 changed entirely the landscape for victims’ services in their field: the passage of the Violence Against Women Act and the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. In fact, many advocates cite her death in June of […]
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