The “cockroach” movement in India grew from educational reform to the demand to transform the country’s “democracy.” This new youth movement is fighting to make this a turning point, rather than allow the government’s concessions to disarm it.
women
Women World Wide: July 2026
July 28, 2026Takes up: Colombia’s legislation against female genital mutilation; women protecting the Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary in Nigeria; and England’s National Health Service inquiry into serious issues at the maternity departments of Nottingham University Hospitals.
Review: ‘Reproductive Wrongs: A Short History of Bad Ideas About Women’
July 22, 2026This book by Sarah Ruden traces propaganda against reproductive rights through Western history. It shows that we can resist by exposing the history of these false claims and the damage they have caused.
Review: ‘The New Age of Sexism’
June 29, 2026This book reveals how global society’s failure to eradicate misogyny has allowed abuses and prejudices against women to be perpetuated through computer-based technology.
Women World Wide: June 2026
June 21, 2026Takes up: Afghan Women United recognized by FIFA as Afghanistan’s official national women’s team; the life of Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French author, film director and actor; and a demonstration in Nairobi, Kenya, against inefficient investigations of femicides and child disappearances.
Review: ‘Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption, and the Privilege of American Motherhood’ by Gretchen Sisson, PhD
May 30, 2026This book cuts through myths about adoption as an alternative to abortion, revealing that while women are pressured to choose adoption, that choice often had a negative impact on their lives.
Irán, un país de revolucionarios
May 21, 2026Traducción al español de Essay “Iran—a country of revolutionaries” by Terry Moon.
Women World Wide: May 2026
May 16, 2026Takes up: The tenth anniversary of the French law abolishing prostitution; La Cité Audacieuse, a feminist space in Paris, France; and England and Wales decriminalizing abortion.
Massive UK marches challenge misogyny, racism, far right
May 1, 2026Report of the Million Women Rise and Together Alliance marches in London on March 7 and March 28. These demonstrations drew record numbers of people to protest increasing violence, misogyny, racism, and authoritarianism in the UK and worldwide.
Women WorldWide: April 2026
April 15, 2026Takes up: a yearly 2.5% increase in self-harm cases among people aged 24 and under; proposed UK ban of pornography depicting incest where one person is pretending to be under 18; and the situation of pregnant women and girls in ICE custody.
Review: ‘Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care’
April 8, 2026‘Beyond Limits’ by M.D. Shelley Sella is a book informed by her experience as the first woman doctor in the U.S. openly providing third-trimester abortions. It includes testimonies of her patients and addresses frequently asked questions revealing the necessity of legalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy.
Women World Wide—February 2026
February 25, 2026Takes up: the life of U.S. mathematician Gladys Brown West; and the insufficiency of laws punishing rape in cases in London, Germany and France.
What is femicide?
February 8, 2026A discussion of what femicide really is, triggered by a definition of the word in the bourgeois press.
Women WorldWide: January 2026
January 30, 2026Takes up: the first woman-led campaign by Workers Defense Project protesting the working conditions of housekeepers; Canada cancelling the caregiver permanent residency program; and women filing a lawsuit regarding unnecessary medical procedures by gynecologist Javaid Perwaiz.
Essay: Iran—a country of revolutionaries
January 25, 2026The essay traces the recent massive revolt in Iran, highlighting the importance of the thoughts of the participants, Iran’s revolutionary history, and the role of a philosophy of revolution and the people’s confidence in their own ideas.
Review: ‘Abortion in the Age of Unreason’
January 10, 2026A physician who performed abortions for over 50 years describes his patients’ experiences and the evolving political situation. It reminds activists to be unapologetic about fighting for abortion rights: “Opposition to and psychological warfare against abortion is the principal organizing tool in America for imposing a totalitarian state.”
Women WorldWide: December 2025
December 23, 2025Takes up: spread of the Nordic Model in Europe, i.e., decriminalizing victims of prostitution while criminalizing pimps and customers; and 2025 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Free Ibtissame Betty Lachgar!
December 8, 2025Appeal to help free Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, a Moroccan feminist and human rights defender imprisoned for a peaceful act of expression.
Handicap This!: December 2025
Takes up: UK stories of artists and activists living with disabilities; women in Moldova and Armenia helping women with disabilities be independent; and Sylvain LeMay receiving the Canadian Union of Public Employees National Disability Rights Activism Award.
Women World Wide: November 2025
November 29, 2025Takes up: Mary “May” McGee, who won a 1973 Irish Supreme Court case legalizing contraceptives; Despite a Nov. 6 protest of over 10,000, the Latvian parliament voted to exit the Istanbul Convention against violence against women; Women for Change in South Africa organized a protest against a femicide rate five times higher than the global average.
Review: ‘We Choose To: A Memoir of Providing Abortion Care Before, During, and After Roe’
November 22, 2025Authors Dr. Curtis Boyd and Dr. Glenna Halvorson-Boyd describe experiences in providing abortion care. The book provides hope that we can defeat authoritarianism and create a compassionate, connected society.
Women WorldWide: October 2025
October 25, 2025Takes up: the life of anti-gender violence activist Susan Xenarios; South Korean women suing the U.S. military for maintaining a network of prostitution; World Women’s March in Canada; and an anti-femicide march in Argentina.
Women in Afghanistan stand defiant
October 19, 2025Four years after the Taliban took over Afghanistan women have been reduced to non-persons with no future possible under their fascist rule. But women continue to fight, declaring: “the fall of Afghanistan was not the fall of our will.”
World in View: Bangladesh one year after
August 8, 2025A year ago, a massive student-led movement overthrew the dictatorial rule of Sheikh Hasina. One year on, where does Bangladesh stand? Women’s experiences show that Bangladesh has a long way to go.
Women World Wide: June 2025
May 24, 2025Takes up: A UN Women report about women-led and women’s rights organizations in humanitarian crisis zones; an ongoing epidemic of hundreds of domestic violence cases, including eight femicides, in Nova Scotia, Canada; and UK modernizing its voyeurism laws to keep up with abuses of advances in technology.
Woman as Reason: What overturning abortion unleashed
May 21, 2025Revoking the right to abortion relegated women as less than full human beings. All human rights are up for grabs, and women’s hard-won rights were deemed easy to destroy. Trump has acted accordingly but is running into “the resistance,” with women leading the way.
Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part I: The sound of bootheels
May 2, 2025From immigrants to Transgender people, from workers to students to women, no one is safe. Attacks on many fronts are part and parcel of what is widely recognized as a Trump/Musk coup, but is usually portrayed as normal politics in the media. Institutions cannot be trusted to save us and they need to feel the pressure from people fighting back.
Women World Wide: April 2025
April 5, 2025Takes up: the life of feminist philosopher Sandra G. Harding, who coined the term “standpoint theory”; researched effects of online misogyny on British primary and secondary school students; and increasing global rates of incarceration of women.
Lead article: Women fighting fascist rulers–from Iran to the USA
March 27, 2025In many countries misogyny is state policy, be that in the U.S. where abortion bans are killing women or Iran where the new hijab law has draconian punishments. It’s doubtful if Trump et al comprehend the rage and power that opposes their deadly drive for power and riches.
200,000 women march in Mexico City on IWD
March 12, 2025More than 200,000 women took to the streets on March 8 in Mexico City. It was a day of protests, marches and conviviality that lasted more than 15 hours. This was the largest International Women’s Day march in the city in recent years.
Grooming Gangs
February 19, 2025“Grooming gangs” in England have lured thousands of girls into prostitution. Only a few abusers have been convicted. Studying successful tactics and groups created by survivors gives us confidence to replace exploitation with a compassionate society.
Woman as Reason: In Memoriam: Maria Teresa Horta
February 17, 2025Maria Teresa Horta, one of the feminist authors of “The Three Marias” who were freed in the Portuguese Revolution, died on Feb. 4. The book was explicitly revolutionary and made clear that to change women’s lives revolution would have to be so deep as to transform human relationships, including sexuality.
Trump grabs power, spreads hate, stirs resistance
February 3, 2025President Donald Trump is encouraging deadly hate toward women, Blacks, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and immigrants. It is grassroots responses and mutual aid that can block Trump’s power grab. More forms of revolt will erupt in the face of the downward spiral of this capitalist world in crisis.
Women WorldWide: January 2025
February 1, 2025Takes up: International Criminal Court prosecutors investigating the Taliban’s horrific laws oppressing women as war crimes; the formation of a “morality police” to enforce new restrictions on women in Libya; and “deepfake” porn targeting girls in Toronto, Canada.
انتخابات ایالات متحده بهمثابه جلوهای از ضدانقلاب
January 13, 2025Farsi translation of the lead article “The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution.”
A review: Peregrina—Heartbreak and Joy
January 6, 2025Susan van Gelder reviews ‘Peregrina,’ a multimedia 80-minute one-woman performance, telling the story of femicide in Mexico and the movement of Mexican women to combat it.
Women WorldWide: December 2024
December 31, 2024Takes up: Sixteen days of activism in Ivory Coast opposing violence against women; a demonstration against violence against women in Kenya; technology intended to monitor wildlife in Northern India being misused to harass and intimidate women; and the European Court of Human Rights rejects the challenge against France’s anti-prostitution law.
Lead-editorial article: The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution
December 6, 2024Counterrevolution is the guiding principle of the Trump campaign and the dominant characteristic of politics worldwide. Although revolution does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. or in most other countries, capitalism is stumbling through a global crisis, both economic and ecological, psychological and communal.
Women WorldWide: November 2024
November 30, 2024Takes up: Students in Seoul protest plans by Dongduk Women’s University to become co-ed; London conference by the feminist organization Nordic Model Now!, debunking the sex industry; and a mass demonstration in Rome against violence against women.
A poem by Sunshine Lombré
November 22, 2024Poem read by the author, Sunshine Lombré, at an abortion rights demonstration in Evanston, Illinois.
Women WorldWide: Gisele Pelicot ignites a movement
The trial of Dominique Pelicot, who arranged for 82 men to rape his wife, Gisele Pelicot, over 200 times began in September. Gisele successfully fought for the judges to open the trial to the public, igniting a new wave of a women’s movement fighting mysogyny and sexual violence worldwide.
Handicap This!: November 2024
November 4, 2024View of the struggle and rights of people living with disabilities: an art series depicting youth with disabilities in Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal; a seminar for women with disabilities in Tanzania; Disability Pride in the U.S. and Canada; a protest in Brussels against segregation in residential care homes.
Woman as Reason: A battle we must win
October 31, 2024The fundamentalist, sexist, anti-gay convictions of J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley and Harrison Butker reveal that their movement not only wants to end abortion but control what women think, what we feel, in fact who we are.
Review: ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’
August 28, 2024After Roe v Wade was overturned after nearly fifty years, what will it mean to be a woman in America and what kind of country is it becoming? This is what the book ‘The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America’ explores, reviewed by Adele.
Detroit Dispatch #11
July 23, 2024Retired women in Detroit speak for themselves about Project 2025, whose authors are connected to Trump.
World in View: Kenyan youth storm the system
July 19, 2024On June 25, young protesters stormed the National Assembly in Kenya protesting a bill raising taxes and prices on imported staples. The protests forced the president to cancel the bill. Grave contradictions exist in this supposedly “stable” country, including multiple dimensions of revolt.
Woman As Reason: Anti-abortion fanatics yearn to repeat ‘Communist’ Romania’s horrors
June 19, 2024If Republicans are able to institute their white Christian Nationalist dream of forced pregnancy and no birth control, the kinds of fascist practices women in Romania suffered under Nicolae Ceausescu will be imposed on women in the U.S. Not only women, but children too will suffer and die.
Handicap This!: June 2024
June 11, 2024Takes up: employees at a hospital in Japan sexually abusing patients with severe disabilities; the push to enforce Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act in the U.S.; ‘Menopause and Me,’ a video for women with autism and learning disabilities; and an update of the situation of people with disabilities in Russia.
Women WorldWide: June 2024
June 5, 2024Takes up: In memoriam Faith Ringgold, a seven-decade Black American artist; research by Dr. Debby Herbenick about violent sexual behavior among college students; a paper by the Snow Leopard Trust about “Applying a Gender Lens to Biodiversity Conservation in High Asia”; and the documentary ‘You Are Not Alone: Fighting the Wolf Pack’ (2024) about the trial inspiring Spain’s #MeToo movement.
Mujeres en lucha contra el feminicidio
May 19, 2024El feminicidio (el asesinato de una mujer por ser mujer) está aumentando en todo el mundo, al igual que las manifestaciones en su contra. En esta lucha se puede ver algo de la visión de futuro implícita en este movimiento: una sociedad en la que las mujeres sean comprendidas como seres humanos libres. La clave está en la “totalidad y profundidad del necesario arrancar de raíz”.