Ms. Magazine recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a party in New York, and as a former staff member I was invited to attend. I went not knowing quite what to expect.
It's a complicated moment for women's rights. The term "feminist" is no longer as contentious as it once was, but recent events, including the exposure of systemic sexual harassment, the pandemic-forced exodus of women from the workplace and, most recently, the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade make it easy to feel that many of those 50 years of progress have been erased.
No such gloom hung over the 200 or so women who gathered in the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice on Sept. 8. Ms., as a website and quarterly magazine, continues to provide information for women seeking abortions in all states as well as doing what Ms. always did — advocate for women in all arenas. (According to executive editor Kathy Spillar, traffic to the site has increased by almost 400% since Roe vs. Wade was overturned.)
