Tag: Women and Girls

For Black Mothers, Birthing Centers, Once a Refuge, Become a Battleground

Gabrielle Glaze felt scolded and shamed when she delivered her first son in a Birmingham, Ala., hospital, forced to observe strict rules about lying stationary through her contractions and enduring countless cervical checks from “total strangers” who seemed disappointed by her body’s progress. So when Ms. Glaze, 33, gave birth to a second son in […]

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America’s Black Cemeteries and Three Women Trying to Save Them

The child’s headstone is inscribed simply “Nannie,” marking the grave of a 7-year-old girl who died on May 18, 1856. She is buried in one of Washington’s oldest Black cemeteries, in a neglected corner of Georgetown. For years she has touched visitors who have left toys, dolls and birthday cards at her grave. This year […]

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A New Border Crossing: Americans Turn to Mexico for Abortions

The text message Cynthia Menchaca received this summer was one she was seeing more and more: A woman living in Texas said she had left a violent relationship only to discover she was pregnant, and she desperately wanted an abortion. The woman had learned that Ms. Menchaca could send her abortion pills from Mexico, where […]

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A Chinese Journalist Gave #MeToo Victims a Voice. Now She’s on Trial.

After two years in detention, a Chinese journalist who spoke up against sexual harassment stood trial on subversion charges on Friday along with a labor rights activist, the latest example of Beijing’s intensified crackdown on civil society. Huang Xueqin, an independent journalist who was once a prominent voice in China’s #MeToo movement, and her friend […]

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‘Only God Can Thank You’: Female Health Workers Fight to Be Paid

On a given work day, Misra Yusuf might vaccinate a child against polio, inject a woman with a long-acting contraceptive, screen a man for tuberculosis, hang a bed net to protect a family from malaria and help dig a pit latrine. Over the past few years, she has administered some 10,000 coronavirus vaccines in her […]

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Vassar College, a Gender Equity Pioneer, Is Sued for Paying Women Less

Vassar College, one of the first institutions of higher learning for women in the United States, prides itself for being a pioneer in women’s education and deeply committed to equality between the sexes. And yet, Vassar, a liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where tuition this year is $67,000, has systematically paid its female […]

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How Coco Gauff Embodies the Biggest Story in Sports

What perfect timing. That thought flashed through my mind as I sat courtside at Arthur Ashe Stadium last week, watching Coco Gauff poleax the backhand passing shot that sealed the U.S. Open and her first Grand Slam title. My thoughts were as much about the in-sync way Gauff struck that last ball as how the […]

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Mahsa Amini Profile: Her Family Remembers Her a Year After Her Death in Iran

Her face has lit up a billboard in Times Square, and been painted on murals in Paris and Berlin. It has been splashed on the Barcelona soccer team’s private jet and commemorated on T-shirts with the red, white and green colors of Iran’s flag. Vienna and Los Angeles have even named streets after her. At […]

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‘An Innocent and Ordinary Young Woman’

Her face has lit up a billboard in Times Square, and been painted on murals in Paris and Berlin. It has been splashed on the Barcelona soccer team’s private jet and commemorated on T-shirts with the red, white and green colors of Iran’s flag. Vienna and Los Angeles have even named streets after her. At […]

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After Rubiales’ Restraining Order, Spain’s Women’s Team Makes Demands

Shortly before the roster was due to be announced for the Spanish women’s first international soccer match since their World Cup victory, the Royal Spanish Football Association postponed the event until further notice. It became clear why five minutes later, when Spain’s star players made public a list of demands for a top-to-bottom reorganization of […]

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The Parallel Memoirs of Ruth Simmons and Drew Gilpin Faust

Crucially, both women were born in an era when nobody would have imagined their careers to be possible. Simmons calls this turnabout “the unpredictability of opportunity.” In her book, “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey,” she recalls a colleague telling her “there would be no place for me in the profession I was so keen to […]

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Spain’s Female Soccer Players Call Off Wage Dispute Strike

Players in Spain’s women’s soccer league have called off a strike that delayed the opening of the season after reaching an agreement with the league over minimum salaries, a rare moment of harmony in what has been an acrimonious period in Spanish soccer. The agreement, confirmed early Thursday, would raise the minimum salary for players […]

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Book Review: ‘50 Years of Ms,’ edited by Katherine Spillar

Still, the book contributes a lot more to the conversation than it ignores. For one thing, there are the pictures. Reprints of the magazine’s art chart the publication’s evolution, from stories about feminists’ supposed lack of humor to the 2022 repeal of Roe v. Wade. On Page 59, a tasteful female nude accompanies a provocative […]

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A Tradition Going Strong: Brides Who Take Their Husbands’ Name

When Irene Evran, formerly Irene Yuan, married Colin Evran three years ago — in a civil ceremony on Zoom during the depths of the pandemic — the decision to take his name felt like a natural one. Her mother had kept her maiden name, as is traditional in China, where they are from. But Ms. […]

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America Already Knows How to Make Childbirth Safer

The Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights may lead to still more maternal deaths, by further limiting access to reproductive care in the United States. The concern is particularly acute in states like Mississippi, which have among the highest rates of maternal deaths in the country and have enacted near total bans on abortion. Research […]

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Rubiales Quits, but Women’s Soccer in Spain Is Still Troubled

After three weeks of protests and calls for his resignation, Spain’s soccer chief, Luis Rubiales, has quit, but the problems that surfaced in the wake of his forcible kiss of a player after the Women’s World Cup remain. The player, Jennifer Hermoso, has filed a criminal complaint of secual assault against him. During the last […]

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Amid U.S. Open Fanfare, U.S.T.A. Fights Questions of Its Handling of Sexual Abuse

For several months, the United States Tennis Association has positioned this year’s U.S. Open as a key moment to celebrate its 50-year record of leadership on women’s equity and empowerment, tied to its payment of equal prize money to its top players. At the same time, it has been litigating its handling of accusations of […]

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Why Mothers Feel Touched Out

My husband became an outcast in our own home, second fiddle to me, the primary source of nourishment and comfort, but also to the institution of motherhood, to which my body also now belonged. I sensed his disappointment because a mother, too, is meant to belong to her husband. But I frequently found myself “touched […]

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Russian Torture of Ukrainians Amounts to State Policy, Expert Says

Torture perpetrated by Russian officers against Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war has reached such a level that it is clearly a systematic, state-endorsed policy, a United Nations expert on torture said Saturday. Witnesses shared accounts that were credible, said Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, and that confirmed a consistent pattern […]

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In Post-Roe America, Nikki Haley Seeks a New Path on Abortion for G.O.P.

In May 2016, Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina walked down the aisle of the statehouse, beaming and shaking hands, after signing legislation that would largely outlaw abortion in the state after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Still, she wanted to be sure social conservatives knew where she stood. So her office arranged a second, entirely […]

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Affirmative Action Is Still in Effect. For Men.

The number of women seeking higher degrees started soaring in the 1960s and ’70s, and by the early ’80s, more women were attending college than men. The trend continued upward, so much so that by 1999 some universities had admissions policies that explicitly favored men. At the University of Georgia, admissions officers automatically gave male […]

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The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show Returns. But Not as You Knew It.

The last time Victoria’s Secret had a fashion show was 2018. For more than 20 years, the show had been an annual event, an extravaganza of babes in thongland, like “Barbie” through the lens of Paul Verhoeven. Broadcast in more than 100 countries to millions of viewers, it got evermore absurdist until the #MeToo movement […]

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Mexico’s Next President Will Be a Woman

Mexico’s governing party chose Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City, as its candidate in next year’s presidential election on Wednesday, creating a watershed moment in the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, with voters expected to choose for the first time between two leading candidates who are women. “Today democracy won. Today the people of […]

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Mexico’s Supreme Court Decriminalizes Abortion Nationwide

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion nationwide on Wednesday in a sweeping decision that builds on an earlier ruling giving officials the authority to allow the procedure on a state-by-state basis. The court struck down the federal penal code that criminalized abortion, deeming it “unconstitutional” and making abortion legally accessible in all federal health institutions across […]

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