Danish Fantasy TV Becomes Reality–Can It Work Its Magic in the U.S.?

On the heels of the U.S. success of the Danish series Forbrydelsen (remade by AMC as The Killing), Danish television hit Borgen will premiere in the U.S. this weekend. Borgen is billed as a Danish cousin to The West Wing; “borgen” is both the Danish word for “government” and a nickname for the parliament building. As [...]

We Spleen: Michele Bachmann’s Planned Parenthood-Bashing

This past weekend, many conservatives, including several presidential hopefuls, gathered at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., to campaign for the 2012 elections share their values. Speakers included Paul Ryan, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and the consistently deranged always entertaining Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. After insinuating that the U.S. is on the path to [...]

Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Iowa

As the 2012 presidential race begins in earnest over the next few months, expect Iowa to dominate the news. The state’s caucuses on Feb. 6, 2012 are one of the first primaries in the nation, and lend candidates momentum (and donations). As of yesterday, however, there’s another election story coming out of Iowa that deserves [...]

The 2012 Project: Women on Your Marks, Get Set, Run (For Office)!

A longstanding goal of the feminist movement has been to achieve gender balance in elected office. Today, women may be more than half of the population and the workforce, but they still hold only 17 percent of the seats in the U.S. Congress and 24 percent in state legislatures. [PDF] One explanation for this disparity [...]

No Separation of Sex and State in Czech Republic

As of last May’s elections, women now hold a record 44 of the 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament. And if their presence in parliament isn’t enough, the Public Affairs party is now selling a calendar featuring six of its youngest and most beautiful women members posed [...]

Global News Roundup: Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Israel, Kenya

This week: reports of mass rape  in Congo; poison gas at an Afghanistan girls’ school; desperate straits for Pakistani women who survived the floods; Indian women paid to delay pregnancy; Jerusalem’s gender-segregated trains; and a revolutionary constitution for Kenya. CONGO: Last Monday, the mass rape of almost 200 women in Congo was reported. The rapes were carried out systematically [...]

We Heart: WMC’s Plan to End Sexism Against Women Candidates

Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits. Michelle Obama’s shorts. Elena Kagan’s hair. Is any of this relevant to the politics of these women? Absolutely not, says the Women’s Media Center. Today, the WMC, alongside the Women’s Campaign Forum Foundation and Political Parity, launched their ‘Name It. Change It’ campaign to shine a bright light on sexist coverage of [...]

No Comment: “Democrat Women Are Dogs”

Well, this is charming. This highly inflammatory YouTube video, posted in May, was resurrected yesterday when a Minnesota Republican lobbying group tweeted a link to the video–now broken–with the deceptively neutral text, “Republic Women vs. Democrat Women.” The video features glamor shots of Republican women over Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady” and doctored, unflattering photos [...]

From the Stacks: Follow the Leaders

This ad for Newsweek appeared in the pages of the April 1984 issue of Ms.: a roundup of “leaders of the world” without a woman in sight. It seems an unusual ad for a feminist magazine to take, but Ms. was going through a struggle concerning whether to accept paid advertisement (see Gloria Steinem’s article “Sex, [...]

Newsflash: Senate Appoints Elena Kagan to Supreme Court

Today, Elena Kagan became the fourth woman justice appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Ms. has been following Kagan’s path to the court closely. Justine Andronici outlined in May why we need women justices: As Obama and subsequent presidents continue to make selections … we can only hope that they will do so with [...]