Women World Wide: June 2025

May 24, 2025

Takes 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.

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Woman as Reason: What overturning abortion unleashed

May 21, 2025

Revoking 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.

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Draft Perspectives 2025-2026, Part I: The sound of bootheels

May 2, 2025

From 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.

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Women World Wide: April 2025

April 5, 2025

Takes 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.

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200,000 women march in Mexico City on IWD

March 12, 2025

More 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.

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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.

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Woman as Reason: In Memoriam: Maria Teresa Horta

February 17, 2025

Maria 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.

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Trump grabs power, spreads hate, stirs resistance

February 3, 2025

President 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.

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Women WorldWide: January 2025

February 1, 2025

Takes 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.

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Women WorldWide: December 2024

December 31, 2024

Takes 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.

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Women WorldWide: November 2024

November 30, 2024

Takes 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.

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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.

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Handicap This!: November 2024

November 4, 2024

View 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.

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Woman as Reason: A battle we must win

October 31, 2024

The 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.

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World in View: Kenyan youth storm the system

July 19, 2024

On 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.

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Handicap This!: June 2024

June 11, 2024

Takes 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.

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Women WorldWide: June 2024

June 5, 2024

Takes 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.

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Mujeres en lucha contra el feminicidio

May 19, 2024

El 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”.

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Woman as Reason: “Trust women” is not the needed rallying cry

May 9, 2024

Vice President Harris and President Biden should stop talking about their “great trust” in women because anti-abortionists too know that women will fight to do what’s right for themselves. This is a fight against forced pregnancy, to keep birth control legal and accessible, for our health and lives to be valued, to be seen as whole human beings.

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Handicap This!: April 2024

April 17, 2024

Takes up: The World Health Organization (WHO) report, ‘Measuring Violence Against Women With Disability’; World Bipolar Day; the “We Are Here” rally in Missouri calling for higher pay for care assistants; and three organizations in Asia sponsoring the UN’s 2024 Project Zero Conference for inclusive education and employment for those with disabilities.

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Women worldwide fight femicide

March 16, 2024

Femicide—the murder of a woman because she is a woman—is on the rise across the world, as are demonstrations against it. In this struggle can be seen some of the vision of the future implicit in this movement: a society in which women are comprehended as free human beings. Key is “the totality and depth of the necessary uprooting.”

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World in View: Thousands protest Argentina’s Milei

February 6, 2024

Argentine President Javier Milei aims to privatize state institutions; eliminate regulations on businesses; prevent strikes; and seek full executive powers. Less than two months after taking office, he was confronted by a one-day mass general strike. What kind of society do Argentinians want to create?

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Women World Wide: January 2024

January 15, 2024

Takes up: In memoriam to Dale Spender, Australian radical feminist activist, author, and broadcaster; a report on U.S. maternal death rates by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and medicine’s #MeToo movement exposing the culture of sexual harassment and assaults by higher ranking male doctors.

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Woman as Reason: The practicality of revolution

December 28, 2023

Reporter Sonia Sodha asked: “Women in revolt achieved so much. Why are decades of progress now being reversed?” The struggle for freedom of all those who have been pronounced as less than human may seem impossible, but as Irish revolutionary James Connolly said: “Revolution is never practical—until the hour of the revolution strikes.”

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World in View: Argentina’s president imposes austerity

December 21, 2023

Argentina’s new President Javier Milei quickly imposed social welfare cuts, while threatening protests. Still, mass resistance from below is developing. Is that enough to break out of the political-economic-social straitjacket that Argentine masses have been living through for decades?

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Readers’ Views: November 2023

November 24, 2023

Readers’ Views on: Israel/Palestine; Revolt in Iran; in Canada for 2SLGBTQIA+; Trump, Biden too old to run; Racism in Tennessee; Prisoners miss ‘N&L’; Memorial for Paul Geist and Dan Bremer; Texas targets pregnant women & refugees; Ohio targets women and democracy; Revolutionary history; and Raining on those with disabilities.

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Handicap This!: November 2023

November 14, 2023

Takes up: The right of disabled people to be part of the reproductive justice discussion; Indigenous Disability Awareness Month in Canada; and European Union countries requiring people to prove their percentage of disability in order to have free access to culture.

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Angela Terrano, 1929-2023

October 17, 2023

Angela Terrano died on Oct. 1. She was the managing editor of ‘News & Letters’ from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s and the co-editor of the 1976 Marxist-Humanist pamphlet ‘Working Women for Freedom’. She made an important contribution to Charles Denby’s 1960 pamphlet ‘Worker’s Battle Automation’.

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Women have Reason and a voice

October 7, 2023

There’s a backlash against the progress of women. Social media allows men to get away with saying outrageous things. Let’s insist the voice of Reason coming from women, not only women’s passion.

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Featured article: Rulers’ fear of revolution won’t stop Iranian masses

October 3, 2023

In the weeks before the anniversary of Jina Mahsa Amini’s murder, the Iranian regime hardened its repression. None fear revolution more than it. But the people of Iran are letting the world know what they are fighting for on “the day after” the revolution. Their demands, if met, would transform Iran into one of the freest, most humane countries in the world.

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