Dear John,

I’ve been thinking all week about sisterhood—and how by banding together, celebrating our history and never giving up, we can make real and lasting progress toward equality.

Over 100 years ago, the sisterhood that was the National Women’s Party gathered in Seneca Falls to unveil the Equal Rights Amendment. And exactly 100 years later, a new generation of ERA advocates gathered at that same podium this past weekend to celebrate the centennial, and plan for the final push for recognition of the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“This will be the last generation to fight for the ERA because you will get it done,” said Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who helped launch the first-ever Congressional Caucus for the ERA. Advocates like Bush in both the House and Senate are pushing for congressional action to clear the way for the ERA to be recognized as the 28th Amendment—only five more Representatives are needed for approval in the House, and with 53 Senators in support, the ERA could pass a floor vote with a simple majority if allowed under Senate rules.

This kind of persistence and dedication is what defines sisterhood for me. The devotion to freedom—not just for ourselves, but for future generations, who deserve equality just as much as ourselves and our mothers and grandmothers did. Alliances between women have a deep capacity to be revolutionary, as legal scholar Diane Rosenfeld and actor and activist Ashley Judd elaborated on in a recent Ms. Q&A about Rosenfeld’s recent book, The Bonobo Sisterhood. Rosenfeld argues that we can learn a lot from bonobos—some of our closest primate relatives—when it comes to preventing sexual violence.

“The bonobo sisterhood offers a new frame of social relations,” Rosenfeld tells Ms. “Evolutionarily, they have eliminated male sexual coercion. In their social order, an infant will outrank an adult male, and male association patterns are heavily influenced by their relationship with their mothers… They show us that patriarchal violence is not inevitable.”

Another crucial element of sisterhood is righting historical wrongs—and not stopping till women’s historical contributions across culture are properly recognized. This recognition is one of the goals of our series Turning 50: Looking Back at the Women in Hip-Hop, in collaboration with contributing editor Janell Hobson. Despite being pioneers in the genre, women’s contributions to the world of hip-hop music and culture have been routinely overlooked since the genre’s inception a half-century ago. Hobson’s interviews with hip-hop feminist scholars lift up those contributions, and the women behind them, who have long been erased and silenced—at times violently so.

The bottom line is, it shouldn’t take 50 years for women to get the respect and credit they are due. The good news is that we’ve come a long way in the past 50 years—with an outspokenly feminist film like ‘Barbie’ topping the box office this past weekend (a film that was made by an outspoken feminist—Greta Gerwig—no less!). And so it can sometimes be hard to comprehend that we’re living in the midst of a profound backlash to women’s rights. But the will to fight back is stronger than ever. And with a sisterhood as strong as ours—one that marries diverse movements under one banner, with the knowledge that none of us are free till all of us are free—we know we can make change happen.

Onward,

Weekly Digest

Weekly Digest

Letter from an Editor | July 29, 2023

This Week's Must-Reads from Ms.

ERA Centennial Convention in Seneca Falls: Intergenerational, Diverse and Determined

Women Are Hip-Hop’s Culture Bearers: The Ms. Q&A With Elaine Richardson and Kyra Gaunt

The Bonobo Sisterhood: The Ms. Q&A With Ashley Judd and Diane Rosenfeld

Girl Bond Summer: Taylor, Barbie and Power of Collective Joy

‘This Barbie Is a Feminist’: Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Reckons With Her Fraught Legacy

‘Barbie’ Makes Girlhood Great Again