Essays from The Persistent | Covering women for a change

A black and white photo shows Margaret Sanger, wearing a hat and belted dress, standing at a table covered with documents.

Abortion

The Complicated Legacy of Margaret Sanger

The founder of Planned Parenthood advanced women's rights immeasurably. But many of her views were far from progressive.

Illustration: a framed picture of a black woman's pregnancy bump, with flowers and a candle on top of a stack of case files.

Maternal Care

Two Years On, The Biden-Harris Effort To Reduce Maternal Mortality Remains—A Start

Maternal mortality is shockingly high in the U.S. What exactly is being done about it?

Abstract illustration of a woman in a wheelchair, pushing herself uphill, against a background of yellows, pinks and reds.

Paris 2024

I Love The Paralympics, But Let's Not Kid Ourselves

The Paralympics is always a wonderful spectacle—but let's be honest: they won't change anything for disabled people.

Wealth Gap

My Fiancé Died Young. Thank God We’d Planned Ahead.

Black women are more likely than any other group to lose a partner. Without proper financial planning, grief can turn very quickly into poverty.

A black and white photo of Febb Burn standing in a garden.

Rights for Women

How to Make Your Mother Proud

History is rife with examples of women who effected change, then vanished into obscurity. When it comes to the story of how the 19th Amendment became a reality—irony be damned—it’s no different.

A photo illustration shows a woman with her arms wrapped around her knees, and an open hand, caught in a web, holding a pill.

Healthcare

Providing Care After Roe, These Doctors Met a Hurdle They Didn’t Expect

Online abortion providers face constant headwinds, even with protections and systems in place.

An illustration of white and grey clouds.

Media

The Case For Drowning Out the News

Social expectations and democracy dictate that it’s our duty to tune in to the news. It’s ruining our health.

A person's wrist sporti a friendship bracelet with a message of support for Vice President Harris.

Persisting Through Politics

‘Unity Is Key,’ They Said. Then Came The Kamala Zooms

White Dudes for Harris, Black Women for Kamala—identity politics is raising millions of dollars for the presumptive Democratic nominee. It’s a strategy no established politico would have recommended.

A collage illustration of Karachi and a woman waiting along the route for the Pink Bus.

World

Inside Karachi’s Women-Only Pink Bus

A new women-only bus route is designed to combat the sexual harassment prevalent on Karachi’s public transit system. The bus is clean, spacious—and unreliable.

A blue and grey collage of women doing various unpaid labor tasks including cleaning, serving food and grocery shopping.

Feminism

Why I’m Saying Yes to (Some) Unpaid Labor

Resisting unpaid labor is a feminist move. In the real world, it’s complicated.

Detail from a work by Jessa Fairbrother showing a woman who appears pregnant holding her belly.

Culture

When Words Fail On Infertility, There is Art

Infertility, so long hidden from view, is finally finding a spotlight in various contemporary art forms.

Six brightly-colored panels show different women staring ahead.

Work

Yes, Women Are Ambitious. Why Is That Such a Surprise?

Employers fall back on the tired old trope that “women lack ambition” in an attempt to paper over what’s really wrong.

An abstract illustration of a woman gazing into a book.

Culture

Men Still Aren’t Reading Women’s Books. Can the Women’s Prize Help?

The author Kate Mosse co-founded the Women’s Prize for Fiction to shrink the gender gap in publishing. Twenty-nine years on, she says her work is far from finished.

An artist's rendering of a woman in a red dress with a set of giant handcuffs behind her.

Justice

The Complicated Relationship Between Justice and Gender

How stereotypes and societal tropes have shaped the trials of women wrongfully convicted of murder.

The 1917 painting by Laura Knight, shows a woman in an orange dress standing on rocks, looking down at the ocean.

Art

Below the Surface of Women’s Art, Centuries of #MeToo, Misogyny

Viewers who take the time to look closely at Tate Britain's "Now You See Us" will uncover a great deal about the plight of professional women artists over the last 400 years.

An illustration made of black and white cutouts of a woman's body, reconfigured in a tangle.

Sex education

School Sex Ed Left Me Feeling Isolated. That’s a Safety Issue.

The sexual disempowerment of disabled women crops up again and again. It starts with non-inclusive sex ed in school.