A women's commune sounds like a great retirement option. But I have my doubts | Polly Hudson

Women | The Guardian

Think back to those terrible flatshares in your 20s. Cohabiting with friends can seem like a dream, but the reality is sometimes less Golden Girls – more Young Ones

In most female friendships between women with male partners, the following occurs, sometimes regularly. It usually happens after one of them has delivered a passionate rant – or if not technically a rant, then certainly rant-adjacent. The women’s eyes lock, the instinctive understanding between the two of them undeniable, and then the one who has been complaining about her partner will say: “I wish I could just live with you instead.” If there are more than two women present, the conversation may move on to communes. There are inevitably wistful sighs.

That fantasy could become a reality. “Positive news” platform Upworthy has explored the phenomenon of gen X and boomer women playing the long game and pulling a Golden Girls: rather than living alone, post widowhood or divorce, they are moving in together.

October 25th 2026, 1:29 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: this season’s vibe is lady who lounges - not lunches

Women | The Guardian

Think boucle jackets with low-waisted jeans, silk blouses with masculine trousers, pencil skirts with wellies …

It always makes me feel a tiny bit queasy when looking “ladylike”, as a trend or a vibe or whatever, comes into fashion. How does it make sense to spend our hard-earned paychecks cosplaying as women of lunches and leisure?

You can’t deny these clothes are cute, though. A boucle jacket can make you feel as if the Eiffel Tower might come into view around the next corner, even though you are in the wrong country. A mini-heel lets you imagine you might be having a glass of sancerre with your lunch, when in reality a can of San Pellegrino is as exciting as it is going to get. There is an air of gentle charm, of courtesy, to lady-adjacent style that can take the edge off a tough day.

October 24th 2026, 3:18 pm

Tell us: are you a single woman? We want to know about your relationship to sex

Women | The Guardian

Are you a single woman? We’re interested in hearing about your relationship to sex

When the trailer for Wicker came out in July, it caused a frenzy. The film, which is coming out this month, stars Olivia Colman as a woman who commissions a basket-woven husband, played by Alexander Skarsgard.

Responses to the trailer were unbridled. The idea of a single woman taking control of her sex life - no matter how fantastically - struck a nerve.

October 24th 2026, 3:18 pm

Tell us: what happened after you froze your eggs?

Women | The Guardian

Much is made of the decision to try to preserve fertility but less explored are the choices that come afterwards. We want to hear from people about what happened next

Oocyte cryopreservation, more commonly known as egg freezing, has been around for decades but the procedure stopped being considered experimental in 2012. Since then, elective egg freezing has boomed. Often represented as an insurance policy against age- or illness-related fertility decline, the process can be costly and complex.

While figures vary, research suggests most people who undergo egg freezing never access their eggs and results are mixed for those who do. Long-term storage poses its own costs and questions.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

More celebrities are embracing grey hair. For other women, it can come at a cost

Women | The Guardian

Olivia Colman and Lisa Bonet are among the stars going silver – but workplace ageism means many women still fear ditching the dye

To dye, or not to dye. That is the decision many people, particularly women, face when their hair starts to grey.

This week Olivia Colman joined the growing ranks of women embracing grey hair and ditching the dye. Appearing at Zurich film festival, Colman had swapped her dark signature pixie cut for a grey, curly mane swept to one side.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

Margot Robbie changing her name to her husband’s hurts my beautiful lesbian brain. Here's why | Rebe

Women | The Guardian

I don’t flip a table every time this happens – but I actually do mind when it’s the default decision with no discussion

Being a lesbian in a heretofore heteronormative society means having to go along with lots of things that don’t make sense to your beautiful lesbian brain. One such thing for me is the ongoing expectation that women who marry men should change their surname to their husband’s.

Last week my tolerance was tested again when it was revealed that after a decade of marriage, Margot Robbie has changed her surname to that of her husband, Tom Ackerley.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

Here’s what connects the Cornell alleged rape case to those before: accused men not being held to se

Women | The Guardian

There was progress after #MeToo, but not enough. Certainly not enough to shift the assumptions that still protect men and denigrate victims

If the past is another country, and there is nothing so poignant as the innocence of recent history, then there is a third category of engagement with the era directly preceding our own, encapsulated by the line “that didn’t age well”.

I found myself thinking about this in relation to news of the seven male students accused of gang-raping a 20-year-old woman two years ago in their fraternity house at Cornell University, and now facing a civil suit brought by their alleged victim. Apparent failures by Cornell and the local district attorney to act appropriately at the time have triggered another round of commentary about the “death of #MeToo”, not least with the looming anniversary on 15 October, the date in 2017 when the hashtag first went viral. But the period I find myself thinking about predates even that, when it seemed as if these questions of consent had been largely resolved.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

‘There is no secret agenda’: Nara Smith on home-making absolutely everything, raising four kids at 2

Women | The Guardian

The model, actor and influencer is known for making her own frozen yoghurt, bubblegum or even toothpaste while dressed in immaculate haute couture. But she insists she is not who the internet thinks she is

Nara Smith is not a tradwife, she wants you to know that. Nor is she an ex-tradwife – pace the New York Times who included her in a feature on how ex-tradwives are as popular a movement now as the tradwives were in the first place. Nor was she peddling a tradwife-adjacent lifestyle choice by marrying at 18, having four children by 24, and devoting hours to cooking and documenting it online. Nor is she Mormon, by the way. Although, yes, her husband, the model and former teen heart‑throb Lucky Blue Smith, was raised Mormon, but we’ll get to that. Nor was she telegraphing subliminal religious messages in her content: “There is no secret agenda.” Nor was she abandoning her biracial heritage by wearing her hair in a sleek little bob. Nor was she leaning into a 1950s housewife archetype – even when dressed in a pink and red polka-dot minidress to batch-cook sourdough.

Smith wants you to scrap everything you think you know about her and start again. She also doesn’t care if you don’t. As with her content: “Those that get it, get it. Those that don’t, don’t. And that’s totally fine. I tell people: ‘If you don’t like my content, I won’t see you scroll past me.’ ‘If you need to block me for your own sanity, please do. I promise I won’t know.’ And if you want to stick around, that is beautiful, I’m grateful, welcome.”

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

Esther Rantzen’s Mama was a lifeline for new mums | Letters

Women | The Guardian

Fiona Lindop says she will always be grateful to the TV presenter for establishing the Meet-a-Mum Association

Esther Rantzen (Obituary, 1 October) is rightly remembered and honoured for her wide-ranging charity work, including establishing Childline and the Silver Line. One of the charities that she pioneered was the Meet-a-Mum Association (Mama), founded in 1979. Mama established a network of local groups offering friendship and support for new mothers.

In 1984, I was a young mum with a toddler and a two-week-old baby, and had just moved to Hertfordshire from South Yorkshire. Mama was a lifeline that helped me become part of the new community with access to support, and I joined the local Mama committee soon after.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

A new start after 60: Menopausal and out of work, I sat crying in my car. Now, I’m a standup comedia

Women | The Guardian

When Barbara Scully tried to get a job after years as a stay-at-home mum, no one would hire her. So she made her own work as a writer and broadcaster – and soon found herself on TV and stage

If anyone had told Barbara Scully five years ago that she would soon be enjoying her “sixth career” – this time as a standup comedian, or comic storyteller – she would have laughed in their face. “But once you get to 60, you realise that failure isn’t a big deal,” she says. “As long as nobody’s going to die, that’s grand.”

Scully, who lives in Dublin, is now performing her one-woman show Because I’m Worth It around Ireland to capacity audiences of up to 200 people. “I’m on a mission to try to tell women in particular not to fear getting older, to embrace it, to push back against all the bullshit about how you should be fighting ageing,” she says. “The more women like me who are willing to stand up and say: ‘This is me and I am 64 and I’m not really bothered about spending my time and money and energy on trying to look younger …’” She trails off. “I’m actually spending my time and money and energy doing stuff that makes me happy.”

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

Are my gen X peers the influencers the world has been waiting for? | Emma Beddington

Women | The Guardian

Their careers are peaking, they’re rich in money and time – and young people think they’re cool. But maybe it’s not as simple as that

‘Stop sleeping on gen X.” I heard this on TikTok recently. I misinterpreted it, with a guilty start, as: “Stop sleeping, gen X,” because I am 51 (peak X), so always tired; while not sleeping at the time, I may have been resting my eyes. In fact, Joel Marlinarson, a marketing guru, was suggesting my generation have become a powerful, if underrated, force online.

Aged between 46 and 61, gen Xers with proper jobs are peaking, career-wise (although it’s a different story for those out of work, as a report last month on the struggles of over-50s jobseekers made plain). We’re more likely to own homes than the following generations; we’re emerging from the trenches of childrearing and, the argument goes, ready to indulge in some me-time. “If gen X were a country, it would be the world’s second-largest consumer market,” the World Economic Forum reported last year, with gen X women in particular influencing 70% to 80% of all consumer spending.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

My relationship with food was broken. Then I killed my own dinner

Women | The Guardian

For years, eating was something to control, fear or regret. After I hunted my first deer, I started to see fat, hunger and my own body in a different light

I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was 19 years old and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six-story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was trying, and failing, to hide the emotional war I had decided to wage on my body. Who does that on a family vacation? In Europe, no less?

Pulling tear-soaked strands of hair off my cheeks, I stood in front of a full-length mirror and grabbed the fat of my thighs. If only I could just – I pictured ripping off fistfuls of my body and flinging them out the windows, where they would land on some unknowing French person six stories below. I had this vision often: pulling bits of myself off and casting them somewhere far away from me.

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

‘There’s always been a belittling of African women’: honouring history’s invisible heroines

Women | The Guardian

Congolese photographer Pamela Tulizo uses costume and vivid scenery to celebrate women’s strength and give a new perspective on slavery

Pamela Tulizo’s latest series of photographs started with a question. “I asked myself, why are women in my community in particular, and African women in general, so strong?” says Tulizo, an artist and photographer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Where does this strength come from?”

Growing up in Goma in eastern DRC, Tulizo was informed and inspired by the women she was surrounded by, including her mother, her sisters, her mother’s friends and her neighbours.

Women are placed at the centre of the series of 23 staged photographs

October 12th 2026, 2:46 am

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: pair a little skirt with a chunky jumper for the perfect balancing a

Women | The Guardian

Let your legs enjoy the last of the summer’s breeze while a thick top or jacket keeps away the autumn chill

This is the most enjoyable time of the year to get dressed because clothes can just be clothes. They don’t have to function as a personal air-conditioning and sweat-disguising system, as they did for the summer, nor do they need to double as a portable central heating unit yet. Your outfit does not need to “take you from day to night” until party season starts, and it doesn’t have to jigsaw itself into a hand-luggage-sized capsule wardrobe until next summer. There is little in the way of functional heavy lifting, so you get to just wear nice clothes.

And this benign early part of autumn is more fun to dress for than the equivalent weather in spring, because we still have a bit of summer swagger. The summer habit of wearing shorts and halter tops and even swimwear has gotten us a little loose, a little more laid-back about flashing a bit of skin here or there. It is about more than bare flesh, though. There is something about summer that flexes the flashy dresser in everyone – whether that’s fancy dress for a festival, or just the way that putting on a pair of sunglasses brings out your inner movie star.

September 16th 2026, 11:15 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: lip gloss is back in vogue and these new formulas have me hooked

Women | The Guardian

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of painting on the gloss, but thanks to a range of fresh formats in sophisticated shades and textures, my head – and lips – have been turned

I’m deeply suspicious of people who never change their minds. To be so completely sure of anything as to be permanently entrenched in any position isn’t something I admire, which is why I shove an olive into my mouth every couple of years and hope it finally takes.

I do the same with lip gloss, with historically similar results. Fashion has, until recently, been on my side. Less sophisticated than lipstick, overshadowed by TikTok trending lip oils, less effortless cool-girl than tinted lip balm, gloss has barely had a look-in these past few years, but new formulas steal from other formats for a better user experience and, well, like everything eventually, lip gloss is back in vogue.

September 16th 2026, 5:17 am

Solo autumn walks for women in the UK and Europe: ‘it should be fun, not daunting’

Women | The Guardian

Hiking alone in the countryside can be joyous, but for women it can sometimes feel unnerving. Here’s how to enjoy it safely, plus four stunning routes to walk solo

I did my first solo hike during a sunny September, seven years ago. After a summer of feeding and ferrying four noisy teenagers (and their friends) around, I was exhausted. But despite being bone tired, I had barely moved. I yearned, above all, for time on my own, for the chance to walk without interruption (and at the pace I chose), and for the silence of some empty wilderness.

But I was nervous. Not of being on my own, but of what might happen to me with no one around to help (breaking a bone, encountering a psychopath, being chased by a bull, getting fatally lost). I could have found a companion or joined a group, but my need for silence and solitude outweighed my fears.

September 15th 2026, 5:29 am

Hard truths about solo homeownership – and the tools that made these women DIY pros

Women | The Guardian

Women who have tackled home repairs and renovations share hard-earned tips and tools that helped them patch drywall, refinish floors and build decks

• 11 products our writers rely on to organize and declutter

• Sign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things

I entered homeownership the same way I started driving on the highway: learning on the fly and in a blind panic. I bought my house in my late 20s, with minimal home-maintenance knowledge, a flathead screwdriver, a rubber mallet that had lived through the Carter administration – and the realization that throughout my life, I had been spared from doing the dirty work at the cost of learning how it was done.

Many of my (male) friends growing up had nice power drills their fathers had given them, along with lessons on how to use them safely – an education that, for them, seemed to happen almost by default. As a kid, I prepared for my Girl Scouts troop’s big annual event, the cookie sale, while my brother’s Cub Scouts troop was learning to use coping saws and screwdrivers for the Pinewood derby. As recently as this year, I struck up a conversation with a welder and expressed my longtime interest in learning the skill, only to have him say it would probably be too difficult for me.

September 14th 2026, 2:15 pm

The hill I will die on: Comedians should not be hot | Amy Annette

Women | The Guardian

People making a living from being funny should be exempt from the beauty rules the rest of society plays by

It’s a fact that being funny is an evolutionary trait, developed by the unattractive to entice the very good-looking to mate with them. Yes, that is a fact, and no I won’t look it up. And therefore it is not OK for attractive people to also be funny. And I don’t think that I’m going too far when I say that comedians being hot is a crime against nature.

I use the word “hot” intentionally. Beauty is ineffable. It can be found anywhere and in anyone. Hotness is different. It’s playing the game of society’s beauty norms and winning. Although, by spending any time playing, you have lost (like golf). I’m not ugly, but I’ll never be hot. I simply don’t have it in me. The effort! The commitment! The other day I went to a wedding and thought to myself: “I really like this couple, maybe I’ll shave above the knee.” A hot person would have probably already been professionally hairless, and, if not would have booked in a wax ASAP.

Amy Annette is a comedian

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

September 12th 2026, 6:14 am

‘Courage and contradictions’: what Gloria Steinem meant to feminist writers from around the world

Women | The Guardian

Our global panel of writers reflect on the great legacy of the American feminist and civil rights activist, who died last week aged 92

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

September 9th 2026, 12:54 pm

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: this sweltering summer, I finally stopped giving a tuck

Women | The Guardian

I’ve always cinched my outfits at the waist, but shifting to a looser silhouette has helped me keep my cool in more ways than one

This was the summer of the Great Untuck. The long hot summer of 2026 finally taught me to do what fashion has been nagging me about for years, which is to quit tucking in my shirts and T-shirts. To stop assuming that the top half of an outfit must be neatly cinched by the waistband of the skirt or trousers.

It wasn’t a style epiphany, to be fair. It was just too hot to do anything else. An extended run of hot weather at home changes how you dress. In the old-school type of British heatwave, which lasted about half a week, I was too giddy with excitement at not having to wear a cardigan to think more strategically. But this summer was different. And eventually I discovered what hot-climate cultures have always known, which is that loose, generously sized clothing that maximises sun protection while minimising skin contact is way more pleasant to wear in the heat than anything short and tight.

September 9th 2026, 12:54 pm

‘One day the Taliban will need women to be educated’: three sisters on being forced back to Afghanis

Women | The Guardian

Shallah, Fatimah and Maahi are among hundreds of thousands of Afghan women and girls deported from Iran and Pakistan in the past year to a life of severe restrictions

It was a warm summer afternoon on 15 August 2021 when the Taliban entered Kabul and changed the lives of millions. Shallah*, then 16, watched the news at home on the Afghan TV channel Tolo news. She ran crying to the garden, to tell her mother that Afghanistan had fallen.

Her younger sister, Fatimah*, then 11, was at her cousin’s house, where her aunt told her the news. At the time, she says, she did not understand what a takeover meant, or who the Taliban were. Her elder sister, Maahi*, then 22, was well aware of the consequences and remembers her hands shaking at work as she read the news on her phone, on Facebook pages of Afghan news.

September 9th 2026, 6:28 am

Sali Hughes on beauty: the hero products that kept me cool in the long hot summer of 2026

Women | The Guardian

From face tints and self-tan to summer scents, these lightweight buys saw me through multiple heatwaves

You’ll normally find me looking back on my favourite products of the past 12 months at year’s end. But this summer has been so freakishly hot and sweaty it has required its own toolkit and, by extension, its own list of exceptionally well-performing products that deserve rapturous commendation.

The first is Refy’s Skin Base (£30), a sheer face tint so thin and so lightweight it has been all I could bear to wear since July. It’s suitable for all skin types, but not at all appropriate for those who hate any hint of shine. While the texture is totally ungreasy, breathable and so comfortable as to be imperceptible, it does look unmistakably dewy, so avoid if you’re devoted to matte. Personally, I take the view that, in this heat, one might as well steer into the skid, but I am, admittedly, at an age when a juicier look works in my skin’s favour. Anyway, this is makeup that truly feels like absolutely nothing, and what it lacks in coverage can be made up with concealer where needed. Maximum points from me (I wear shade 140N).

September 9th 2026, 6:28 am

Gloria Steinem’s revolutionary life – podcast

Women | The Guardian

From going undercover as a Playboy bunny to founding Ms Magazine, Steinem brought feminism into the US mainstream. Carter Sherman explains her legacy

By the time she died last week at the age of 92, Gloria Steinem had become almost synonymous with the modern feminist movement in the US.

The arc of Steinem’s life – and activism – was a long one. From going undercover as a Playboy bunny to becoming a radical publisher bringing feminism into the mainstream. She was a fearless reproductive rights campaigner. In Ms Magazine she wrote about having an abortion – and encouraged other famous women, and readers, to do the same to break the stigma around it.

September 7th 2026, 10:10 pm

‘This is what I have to do to survive’: the Sudan refugees forced into sex work

Women | The Guardian

They fled a brutal civil war to reach safety in Egypt, but now many Sudanese women and girls are falling prey to sexual exploitation

Sudanese women who fled to Egypt to escape the war in their country are facing increasing levels of sexual exploitation, with the Guardian told of single mothers forced to sell their bodies to survive and feed their children.

Many of the women have not previously worked in Sudan, where conservative social norms dictate that men are usually responsible for financial support. Without established trades or professions, and with their husbands and other family members dead or missing, many female refugees are struggling to pay for food, medical care and rent.

September 7th 2026, 7:08 am

For Gloria Steinem, fashion was about much more than aesthetics

Women | The Guardian

In an era when feminists were stereotyped as unattractive, the pioneering writer’s style created a Trojan horse

• Gloria Steinem obituary

• Gloria Steinem: A life in pictures

When people wanted to dismiss Gloria Steinem, they spoke about how she looked. Talking about the pioneering activist and journalist who turned feminism into a major civil rights movement, it might seem reductive to focus on her glasses.

But after Steinem – whose death at 92 was announced on Thursday – wore them on the cover of Newsweek in 1971 next to the cover-line The New Woman, the lightly tinted aviators – often worn over her hair – became an accidental form of self-branding that made her instantly recognisable. They were as indelibly linked to her legacy as Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s jabots or even Anna Wintour’s sunglasses. They also became one of her greatest weapons.

September 4th 2026, 10:10 am

Share your tributes and memories of Gloria Steinem

Women | The Guardian

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of Gloria Steinem – whether you met her, or appreciated her work

Gloria Steinem, the American feminist and journalist whose activism helped push through greater rights for women around the world has died, aged 92.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of Gloria Steinem – whether you met her, or appreciated her work.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

The opposite of ‘damsels in distress’: how TV fell in love with female gangsters

Women | The Guardian

The ruthless female characters of The Gentlemen, Beef and Peaky Blinders bring new depth to the evil matriarch stereotype

Television loves a gangster story – and apparently so does the Duchess of Sussex. This week, Netflix’s The Gentlemen – Guy Ritchie’s latest addition to the gangster canon, which stars Theo James as a distractingly handsome aristocrat who becomes embroiled in the world of organized crime – returns for its second season. And in August, the show hit the headlines after rumors that Meghan was reportedly in early talks to join its third season when she and Prince Harry made their highly unexpected return to the UK.

At first, Meghan’s potential role seemed like a random pivot for the former Suits star, who now seems far more at home holding a jar of her Montecito-made jam than brandishing a gun. But really, these casting rumours are indicative of a wider shift in the traditionally machismo-fueled gangster genre, where it’s now more common to see women stealing the spotlight – and calling the shots.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Hillary Clinton leads tributes to Gloria Steinem: ‘Her activism was rooted in optimism’

Women | The Guardian

Ex-secretary of state joins Nancy Pelosi, Jill Biden, Roxane Gay and others in heralding groundbreaking feminist

• Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92

• ‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes

Leading figures from politics, entertainment and wider society led glowing tributes to Gloria Steinem on Thursday, with Hillary Clinton hailing the American feminist icon who died at 92 at home in New York as “one of the architects of the entire structure of women’s equality”.

Clinton, a former US secretary of state, presidential candidate and first lady, was among the first to jump in with praise early on Thursday when she appeared on the CBS Mornings TV show to share her respect and gratitude for Steinem.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

It’s not easy to show my scars. But I am proud to break the deadly silence around breast cancer in N

Women | The Guardian

I was told to keep my diagnosis private but I am determined to show the reality of breast cancer and reject the stigma that prevents women seeking treatment

‘Madam, this looks like breast cancer, and if it is, we will chop off your breast.” That was how the doctor welcomed me into the chaotic world of cancer in 2017 when I was 32 years old. He had his back to me, but kept on talking, peering into the specimen bottle.

For a moment, I could no longer hear him. I thought of my three children, the university degree I had just bagged and the future I had envisaged. If I was going to die, what was the point of it all? I had invested everything I had to obtain that degree, subjecting my children to days of absence while I spent my nights in the university library.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Gloria Steinem: A life in pictures

Women | The Guardian

The writer, publisher and activist spent a lifetime advocating for greater rights for women around the world and brought feminist discourse into the mainstream

• Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Gloria Steinem obituary

Women | The Guardian

Unflinching campaigner for women’s and civil rights who galvanised a generation of activists

Gloria Steinem, who has died aged 92, was a writer, community organiser, political campaigner and a charismatic feminist activist who called herself “an entrepreneur of social change”. She spent much of her life on the road, often accompanied by equally committed fellow campaigners. Steinem loathed public speaking, but during two years travelling in India in her 20s, she moved from village to village, with “a sari, a cup and a comb” in a group countering religious intolerance. She said she learned then, as Gandhi taught, that a message was all the more powerful delivered “eye to eye”.

Steinem, unlike some of her contemporaries, never recanted or modified her many causes, which included civil rights, violence against women, and the struggle for equality. She continued to argue that every economics course ought to start not with production but with reproduction, and an understanding of the patriarchal instinct to restrict a woman’s right to contraception and abortion.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

A sun goddess, hundreds of devotees – and polluted water: the Nigerian festival threatened by gold m

Women | The Guardian

Each year, people from across the world gather in a grove sacred to the Yoruba goddess Osun to be healed, conceive or realise their deepest wishes. But toxic lead, mercury and cyanide is leaching into the river

7Devotees in white clothing line the riverbank, praying as they carry offerings of fruit, kola nut and sacrificial animals in supplication to Osun, the Yoruba goddess of fertility, beauty and healing, whose carved form stands with arms outstretched a few metres away in the Osun River.

It is the final day of Nigeria’s annual Osun Osogbo festival in honour of the African deity, in a tradition that has existed for hundreds of years and draws people from across the diaspora.

Yeye Omifunto Ojo performs a sacrifice at the Osun River

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92

Women | The Guardian

Prolific author campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, pornography and the Vietnam and Gulf wars

• ‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes

• Hillary Clinton leads tributes to Gloria Steinem: ‘Her activism was rooted in optimism’

Gloria Steinem, the American feminist and journalist whose activism helped push through greater rights for women around the world has died, aged 92.

Steinem “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her”, a statement shared to her Instagram page said.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Daisy Chain Fields review – Olivia Rodrigo’s women-led festival is electric amid extreme heat

Women | The Guardian

Great Park, Irvine, California
Performances from Rodrigo, Stevie Nicks, Chappell Roan and Sarah McLachlan raise $20m for charity yet are marred by poor planning for heatwave

Shortly after singing the closing notes of her indie pop gem LES Artistes on Saturday afternoon, Santigold gazes out at the sweat-laced crowd at the Daisy Chain Fields festival – a benefit concert hosted by Olivia Rodrigo for charities focused on women and girls – in disbelief. “I can’t believe she pulled this shit off!” Santigold cries into the microphone, beaming.

The inaugural festival, in Irvine, California’s Great Park, has drawn in 45,000 people to see artists as varied as the legendary punk agitators Bikini Kill, kicky pop phenom Chappell Roan and kinetic superstar rapper Doechii, all of whom agreed to perform for free; Rodrigo herself closes out the night with a career-spanning setlist and starry guest appearances. The festival raised $10m to be distributed evenly among 10 non-profits, including Baby2Baby, which distributes supplies to children and parents in need, and the National Women’s Law Center. Later that night, Melinda French Gates joins Rodrigo on stage and matches the fundraising, bringing the donated total to $20m.

August 30th 2026, 4:52 pm

‘We’re at a crisis point’: Chappell Roan, Shirley Manson and Eli on playing Olivia Rodrigo’s female-

Women | The Guardian

Ahead of playing Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields, artists explain why female-first festivals are due for a resurgence

When I first saw the poster for Olivia Rodrigo’s inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival in June, I assumed it was AI. Chappell Roan, Doechii, Mitski, the Breeders, Bikini Kill and Garbage, all arranged in a neat line – and this was before I got to the words “special guests”. Karen O, Sarah McLachlan. And, to top it all off, Stevie Nicks? No.

I saw the post confirmed on Rodrigo’s Instagram, and thought: how?

August 27th 2026, 7:01 am

Feminism for a World on Fire by Natasha Walter review – hope amid the hopelessness

Women | The Guardian

A writer and activist takes stock of women’s rights in these changing, troubled times

It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both refreshing and exhilarating.

In her ebullient 1998 debut The New Feminism, Walter hailed Margaret Thatcher as a trailblazer. In this fiercer, bleaker work, she rips into the “glossy language of aspiration feminism”, “the message that the individual woman can do anything she wants if she only has the necessary courage”. That kind of feminism inspired an “explosion of books and films about pioneers and heroines, about bossy women and gutsy girls” which retold the feminist story as “a succession of isolated campaigns, led by outsize individuals”.

August 25th 2026, 5:46 am

Elouise Eftos: Aphrodite review – ‘Australia’s first attractive comedian’ asks if love is real

Women | The Guardian

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
Heckling herself in character as the Greek goddess, the standup delivers an intelligent, in-your-face show about sex and expectations

You can’t argue with the opening gambit of Aphrodite: “I’ve never been in love and I don’t think it’s real.” Consider me grabbed. This is the follow-up to Elouise Eftos’s fantastically provocative 2025 debut, Australia’s First Attractive Comedian, and it’s another intelligent, in-your-face hour about men and women, sex and expectations. OK, so it doesn’t administer the shock of the new quite like its predecessor, and Eftos’s argument about love is not as authoritative as her impossibly high status requires. But Aphrodite consolidates Eftos as a gripping new presence on the comedy scene.

It starts with a steamy pop video, with the Greek-Australian Eftos in character as goddess of love Aphrodite – who then heckles the comic in interrupting voiceovers for the remainder of the show. Eftos has an Aphrodite side, she tells us, but an Athena too – and she wants to be funny. That’s a combination forbidden to women, she posits, certainly if they want to find love with (whisper it) heterosexual men. That latter disappointing category of human is mocked here for its privilege, its fear of dancing, and because “being a straight man is a little bit gay”.

August 22nd 2026, 7:30 am

Nothing less than radical whole-system change is required to fix the NHS's maternity services | Juli

Women | The Guardian

It’s vital that Yvette Cooper’s taskforce acts on the Amos and Ockenden reports – and puts the needs of women and families at the heart of maternity services

It is hard to find the words to describe the agony for those who have experienced preventable baby loss, injury or maternal death. Understandably, families who have been through this have campaigned relentlessly for local and national investigations. Every family deserves to know what caused their loss or trauma, but current and past reviews have failed to deliver on resolution and accountability.

The vital debate about how to ensure safe maternity care has intensified since the publication of two reports, led by Valerie Amos and Donna Ockenden, and the appointment of Yvette Cooper as secretary of state for health and social care, offering a golden opportunity for system-wide change. “I want to make it a personal crusade to put the cradle back at the heart of the NHS,” Cooper told the Guardian last week, adding that she was committed to introducing a new national maternity commissioner.

Julia Sanders is professor of clinical midwifery at Cardiff University and was an expert adviser to the national maternity and neonatal investigation led by Valerie Amos

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

‘We are impatient’: meet the women protesting for change in India

Women | The Guardian

From student organisers to a model-turned-activist, these women are risking their reputations – and sometimes their lives – to fight against injustice. Plus, actor Imran Khan recommends a classic film

• Don’t get This is India delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

There is much to be said for the extraordinary women living ordinary lives, who nonetheless shaped India. Women have changed public life in the country far more than their presence in formal politics would suggest.

And so, as India marked its 79th birthday over the weekend, I found myself reflecting on the multitude of people’s movements, big and small – as well as the women who helped shape them. During India’s struggle for freedom from British rule, women organised boycotts of British goods, made contraband salt and marched to confront the police, taking on roles usually dominated by men. In the 1970s Chipko movement, protesting deforestation, women put their bodies on the line, wrapping them around trees to stop them being felled, turning a local struggle into a national reckoning over environment and development. More recently, grandmothers in Shaheen Bagh sat to protest the citizenship law, which critics have denounced as discriminatory, creating space for dissent when many thought none existed.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Let’s all get on board with travel etiquette | Letters

Women | The Guardian

Readers add to a guide for handling tricky situations on public transport

Re your article on travel etiquette (The ultimate guide to travel etiquette: how to handle 36 tricky situations, from manspreaders to smelly armpits, 4 August), it’s totally wrong to advise people not to give up seats for a woman any more. Women could be menstruating, in the first trimester of pregnancy (the most exhausting time, and not one you advertise with badges saying “Baby on board”), perimenopausal, menopausal or have endometriosis (excruciating pain). Women live with a level of pain and discomfort as routine, for much of their lives. Yes, of course men can be suffering with specific ailments at specific times, but it is not part and parcel of being a man. Gentlemen, please just do it.
Helen Walker
London

• To your list of dubious travel behaviours, I’d like to add constant sniffing and its more guttural and nauseating relation, snorting. It seems that handkerchiefs, tissues and even the concept of blowing your nose have gone out of fashion. I am frequently nauseated by this on planes and trains, and if I don’t have headphones with me I have to resort to blocking my ears. I have not yet had the courage to speak to a culprit (although I have often been tempted to pass them a tissue).
Judith Milburn
Hartlepool, County Durham

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Sali Hughes on beauty: a shortcut to glass skin? Try these one-step moisturisers

Women | The Guardian

Three new products – and one old favourite – achieve a glazed sheen in one easy application

As you will no doubt have noticed, “glass” skin – that is, a complexion with a smooth, glazed sort of sheen – has been fashionable for ages. Until now, however, it has only come as the result of a meticulous, umpteen-step Korean skincare routine. But the new glass skin moisturisers attempt to mimic the look in one simple application.

Erborian’s Glow Moisturiser (from £9, all skin types) is a Goldilocks’s porridge sort of face cream. Not too heavy, not too light, just dewy enough without looking oily, and with lasting hydration that never becomes wet. I must advise the glimmer-avoidant that it does have a smidge of pearlescence, but I find that flattering.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

‘Feminists need to push back’: how did the women’s movement become so divided – and how can it reuni

Women | The Guardian

Just a few years ago, women would fight for other women whatever their background or politics. Today, many loudly dismiss the struggles of those who are not like them. But the solidarity is still there, if you look hard enough

One June day in 2015, I stood outside Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre near Bedford and heard the women inside singing. “Set her free,” said the graffiti on the walls. “Shut it down.” I had often visited the centre and heard the desperate stories of women who were held inside it. But that day felt hopeful rather than despairing, as hundreds of women – refugees, campaigners, lawyers, members of parliament, actors, writers – gathered around the centre to demand freedom for the women locked up.

When I set up the organisation Women for Refugee Women, I was driven by my faith in solidarity among women. The organisation works with women seeking asylum in Britain to tell their stories and campaign for justice and safety. For years I felt that faith being proved in practice. Women turned up for other women at events and demonstrations; they were volunteering and campaigning, marching and supporting.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Over/Under review – beautiful coming of age story of female best friends set across five summers

Women | The Guardian

There’s an astonishing naturalism about the two leads, navigating the ups and downs of adolescence, bodily changes and learning to use tampons

Practically any woman who had a best female friend in early adolescence will be able to relate to this fragile, thoughtful drama about two American children, Violet (Emajean Bullock) and Stella (Anastasia Veronica Lee), living through the ages of nine to 13, a time as packed with incident as it is simultaneously uneventful and reassuringly dull. Unlike Richard Linklater’s justly acclaimed Boyhood, which had the resources to film for over a decade and thus observe its central character grow up, this was clearly made over a more compact schedule. Violet and Stella age much more subtly here, gradually growing breasts and getting a little bit taller, but those tiny incremental changes mean so much to them. Just as in real life with girls this age, a little bit of makeup, different clothes and some flat-ironing on the hair can alter a kid’s whole presentation.

As the film starts, the two are nine-year-old besties, spending their summers together in New England where they go to camp, frolic in the surf (the title refers to a game they play with waves) and try to sleep over at each other’s houses. Unfortunately, Stella can’t yet cope with sleeping through the night at someone else’s place, and every time they try she must be collected by her parents after waking up frightened in the night. But it’s still something the girls yearn for. They even wish for it when they trap morning moths in jars, hoping fairies will grant them their hearts’ desires.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Waves Turn review – the exhausting, joyful, boring, wondrous realities of new motherhood

Women | The Guardian

Josephine Ahnelt’s gentle but truthful documentary has home-movie intimacy and some incredibly touching moments

As a piece of art depicting motherhood, Judith Rohrmoser’s self-portrait of breastfeeding sticks two fingers up at the tradition of the Madonna with child. In her painting, Rohrmoser’s baby feeds contentedly, chubby cheeked and sleepy under damp lashes. The artist is less serene, looking directly at us, headphones clamped over her ears, eyes filled with what might be a roar of grief, or possibly an overwhelming sense that everything has changed.

Rohrmoser is one of five women who agreed to be filmed at their most vulnerable in the first year of motherhood for this Austrian documentary. It’s a gentle but truthful look at new motherhood, making the point that – ignore the Renaissance artists – having a tiny baby does not put you in perpetual state of bliss. The reality is exhaustion, joy, boredom, wonder and a rush of other feelings. Director Josephine Ahnelt shoots in 16mm, her camera up close, filming with the intimacy of a home video, cutting off heads to at one point zero in on what interests her: a mother snipping her baby’s tiny fingernails.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Can antihistamines really help with PMDD and menopausal symptoms?

Women | The Guardian

Debilitating symptoms lead some to try over-the-counter medications Allegra and Pepcid due to a social media trend

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and menopause can come with debilitating symptoms, like intense emotional changes and exhaustion.

All over social media, women are claiming that a simple hack has helped enormously: a combination of two over-the-counter medications, both antihistamines – typically, the name brands Pepcid AC and Allegra.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: the secret to summer layering? Sheer bravery

Women | The Guardian

Adding layers doesn’t have to leave you a hot mess – think sheer scarves and crochet with flashes of colour to elevate your look

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m in two minds about summer dressing. Part of me believes summer is about joy, sunshine and good times, and clothes should embrace all of that. This woman loves Pucci and owns not one but two silver kaftans. The other part of me believes summer should be uncomplicated, laid-back and earthy. This woman never checks in luggage and has worn the same black beach cover-up for so many years it’s too threadbare to cover anything much.

The thing is, either approach looks absurd if taken to extremes. Candy swirls, cherry prints and strawberry bag charms are delightful, but pile them too high and you look like a walking knickerbocker glory. And while white linen shirts and simple black sandals are chic, you risk looking a bit like you’re on a meditation retreat where the dress code is “wealthy disciple”. Know what I mean?

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

‘So destructive’: women are paying for face scans that tell them what cosmetic procedures to get

Women | The Guardian

‘Looksmaxxing’ culture has led to the rise of facial analysis services – but experts warn they aren’t backed by science and can be harmful to users

Danielle, 37, didn’t always have issues with body image: she used to be a model and recalls receiving positive attention from men. However, when two years of unemployment plunged her into a period of financial insecurity, her confidence faded. “It was easy to wonder, if I was prettier, if some of my features were different, would that help?” she said.

So, when Danielle saw videos on TikTok about a “facial analysis” service that claimed it could provide her with “science-backed” glow-up advice, she bought it without hesitation. Three-hundred and thirty dollars later, after sending in selfies to be analyzed, Danielle received her personalized 30-page report from the company Qoves.

August 20th 2026, 7:27 pm

Disappointment over Liz Truss decision not to appoint minister for women

Women | The Guardian

Nadhim Zahawi’s new role as minister for equalities ‘covers women’, says PM’s spokesperson

Women have reacted with dismay at Liz Truss’s decision not to appoint a minister for women to her cabinet team, instead naming Cabinet Office minister Nadhim Zahawi as minister for equalities.

A spokesperson for the new prime minister – who held the title minister for women and equalities – confirmed that Zahawi’s role “covers women”.

September 7th 2022, 1:55 pm

Anger as Lisa LaFlamme dropped as Canada TV anchor after going grey

Women | The Guardian

Award-winning host of CTV National News ‘shocked and saddened’ as company denies accusations of sexism and ageism

Allegations that a popular television news anchor in Canada lost her job after “going grey” have prompted anger and disbelief, casting one of the country’s largest media organisations into turmoil and highlighting the rigid expectations facing women in the workforce.

In a two-minute video posted on Twitter on Monday, Lisa LaFlamme announced she had been ousted as anchor of CTV National News, one of the country’s most-watched evening shows.

September 4th 2022, 7:40 pm

‘I could not get out of Britain fast enough’: Amanda de Cadenet on tabloid bullies, teenage fame and

Women | The Guardian

She was dubbed ‘the wild child’ in the UK when she presented The Word in the early 90s – and left scarred by the experience. After fleeing across the Atlantic, she reinvented herself, as a feminist activist, photographer, talkshow host and now a podcaster

Amanda de Cadenet. If you are of a certain vintage, that name will probably bring back a Proustian rush of sensory memories: Impulse Vanilla Kisses body spray, the feel of a Primal Scream Screamadelica cassette in your hands, the taste of Hooch on your tongue – all the greatest hits of 1990s Britain. At only 18, De Cadenet was one of the hosts on the cult Channel 4 late-night show The Word, and images of her in all her messy teenage glory, with chunky blond hair falling around her shoulders and tights always ripped, were everywhere. The tabloids gleefully tutted at the careening nightlife antics of the “wild child”, as they invariably called her.

When she was 20, she ran off to the US with John Taylor of Duran Duran soon after she had their daughter, Atlanta. Despite the doomsayers’ predictions, she did not become another show-business casualty: she and Taylor broke up but remain friends, and she later married Nick Valensi from the Strokes and had twins. Her professional career was even more surprising as she became a portrait photographer for glossy magazines – and a good one.

September 4th 2022, 7:40 pm

My partner doesn’t masturbate – and gets frustrated when we don’t have sex

Women | The Guardian

Parenting and housework take up so much of my time. Must I be responsible for his sexual satisfaction as well?

My partner doesn’t masturbate and he gets very frustrated and difficult to live with when we don’t have sex. I feel it’s unfair for all the responsibility to fall on me to relieve him of his sexual tension. It just ends up becoming a chore I have to do on top of the parenting, housework, etc. I want to get another opinion on whether this is fair, plus advice on how to manage a man’s expectations about how much sex couples with kids have in long-term relationships.

I suspect this is not really about masturbation, or even sex. There is underlying resentment between you, and it needs to be addressed before everything becomes worse. You believe there is an unfair arrangement – and this can only be resolved by you asking him for more help. Be specific, and approach him calmly – expressing your feelings without starting a fight. You deserve to be less stressed.

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

Hair syrup: is it just old-fashioned hair oil by a sweeter name?

Women | The Guardian

This ‘new’ treatment may have gone viral, but hair oil has been part of Indian beauty routines for centuries

The hack
Hair syrup is the latest must-have viral product, and promises the softest strands of your life. But is it truly buzz-worthy – or just another marketing gimmick?

The test
Meet Hair Syrup, a hair oil that’s going viral on TikTok, formulated as a pre-wash treatment. I know what you’re thinking: that sounds familiar. That’s because it is: VO5’s hot-oil treatments in the 1980s had a similar approach.

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

‘Night after night I get harassed’: comedians call for safer working conditions

Women | The Guardian

With research showing sexual harassment is a routine occurrence, there is growing demand for arts venues to commit to protecting entertainers

Posey Mehta, like many performers at the Edinburgh fringe, has been flyering for her own show. It’s called I Am Not a Gorilla so she took to the streets in a gorilla costume. She did not expect to encounter daily sexual harassment.

Mehta has experienced “persistent verbal and physical harassment” such as “non-consensual touching, including men coming up behind me and grabbing my bum”. She continues: “I’ve experienced men and women hugging me, and tweaking, touching or rubbing the nipples of my gorilla costume, which are obviously directly on top of my actual breasts. These interactions have made me feel so unsafe that I now wear a bra over my costume.”

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

Vegetarian women more likely to fracture hips in later life, study shows

Women | The Guardian

Research suggests some vegetarians may not get sufficient nutrients for good bone and muscle health

Women who are vegetarian are more likely to experience hip fractures in later life than those who frequently eat meat, a UK study has found.

Researchers analysed health and diet records from more than 26,000 women and found that over a roughly 22-year period, vegetarians were a third more likely to break a hip than those who regularly ate meat.

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

‘Why did this young man have such a hold on me?’ How dating someone half my age rebooted my sex life

Women | The Guardian

After splitting from my husband and four years of celibacy, getting out there was daunting. Was I ready to be the ‘older woman’?

In the decade I lived in California, before I moved back to Britain in 2018, men would sometimes approach me in cafes or the gym, once at the Norton Simon museum, where Eve Babitz had played nude chess with Marcel Duchamp. On the 12-hour flight home from LAX to Heathrow, I lost all appeal. No man ever talked to me again, starting with the customs agent who turned his head as I walked through with the last of my legal weed. When I flew later that year, to take my kid to her dad who was working in Atlanta: lots of attention! When I landed back in England … silence. After a year of this, I caved in to my friends’ demands to join a dating app.

I put up the most me photograph that exists: writing, in a city with a view, wearing a pretty dress that made me feel powerfully “Rita Moreno”. It was literally Rita Moreno’s dress, which I’d bought at a consignment store in Venice Beach. There’s a cat leaning into me and next to my computer you can see Richard Avedon’s photo of Truman Capote, the Julian Opie painting of Blur that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and, at the front, a snapshot of my mother as a college student.

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

What can a woman do with a canoe – and a small chip on her shoulder?

Women | The Guardian

Megan Mayhew-Bergman tackles a historic canoe route - five years after a condescending conversation with a male adventurer. Instead of revenge, she found a touch of transcendence

Five years ago, while on assignment in the Adirondacks – a New York state park with 2m acres of protected land – an over-confident outdoorsman attempted to dazzle me with his recent adventures. He mentioned that he’d just finished the Seven Carries, a historic canoe route through the Saint Regis Canoe Area.

I was annoyed by the conversation – the notes of toxic masculinity, the sense that he was waiting for me to fawn – but intrigued by the route, and decided I would one day complete the Seven Carries myself.

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

A shopping guide to the best … summer tote bags

Women | The Guardian

Carry yourself through to the end of the season with these stylish, striking and practical additions to any outfit

Rainbow stripe, £75, stories.com

September 4th 2022, 7:38 pm

Hospitalised Torres Strait victims denied domestic violence protection, police report finds

Women | The Guardian

The internal Queensland police intelligence report found officer responses had heightened the risk of fatal consequences

• Get our free news app, morning email briefing and daily news podcast

Police officers in the Torres Strait Islands have avoided applying for domestic violence protection orders even after observing victims’ “swollen faces”, “black eyes” and need for hospitalisation, according to an internal intelligence report that found deaths were “likely”.

Victims who sustained injuries after having cars driven into them, or had received threats of violence, were referred to domestic violence services with no further action taken, “heightening the risk of … fatal consequences,” the report said.

August 6th 2022, 3:30 pm

Female in Focus photography awards 2022 – in pictures

Women | The Guardian

The Female in Focus international awards from the British Journal of Photography and its publisher 1854 Media, were established to champion the work of exceptional female photographers and combat gender inequality in the industry

August 3rd 2022, 3:29 am

Spain ‘beach bodies’ ad edited out my prosthetic leg, says British model

Women | The Guardian

Sian Green-Lord says adding a limb in promotional poster for body-positive campaign is ‘beyond wrong’

Spain’s summer campaign encouraging women of all shapes and sizes to hit the beach has backfired for a second time, after one of the models featured said her prosthetic leg had been edited out.

The likeness of Briton Sian Green-Lord features on the far left of the promotional poster, in a white swimsuit with floral patterns. Compared with an image on her Instagram account, the colour of her swimsuit has been changed, and a left leg added where her prosthetic limb should be.

July 31st 2022, 3:07 am

Spanish artist sorry for using models’ likeness without permission

Women | The Guardian

Image of UK model Nyome Nicholas-Williams among those used in government poster celebrating diversity of women’s bodies

The artist behind a Spanish government poster encouraging women of all shapes and sizes to be proud of their bodies has apologised for failing to seek the permission of the models who inspired the work.

On Wednesday, the Women’s Institute – part of Spain’s equality ministry – launched a campaign called “Summer is ours too”. The accompanying poster, designed by the artist Arte Mapache, shows five women of different body types, ages and ethnicities. It also shows a topless woman who has had a mastectomy.

July 29th 2022, 11:08 am

Why women and weights are a healthy fit | Letter

Women | The Guardian

I am sick to death of hearing women should focus on cardio exercise and leave strength training to men, says Bernadine Jones

Rose George writes about women’s exercise plummeting (Pandemic knocked you off your stride? An active woman’s tips for getting fit again, 26 July). The NHS wants us to vigorously run and moderately mow the lawn,, and then also strength train twice a week. Those of us who do all the housework and all the career-aspiring thinking work and then all the childcare would like to know where this time could be retrieved from? Often, we are pointed to spin classes and 2kg dumbbells and told “you can fit in a run in the morning”.

Here’s another solution: three times a week, after you deal with the kids and before work, lift a barbell loaded with two 25kg plates (or whatever you can manage) for 30-45 minutes, and then down a protein shake. Do the same thing every week, just a wee bit heavier. Ignore the “fitfluencers” doing donkey kicks while jumping with 50kg dumbbells. It doesn’t need to be fancy. You don’t need to be bathed in sweat. You don’t need to spend an hour hating yourself on a treadmill. You don’t even need to get that tired.

July 27th 2022, 4:52 pm

The cult of confidence: could positive thinking be making us feel less secure?

Women | The Guardian

The past decade has seen a boom in ‘confidence culture’. But behind all the positive thinking, are more cynical forces at work?

Believe in yourself. Be empowered. Show up. Love your body. Stand tall. How many times have you seen statements like these on social media? Or used to advertise products? All point towards confidence: a particular c-word that the modern woman cannot get away from.

Being self-confident is the command of our time. At some point in the past decade, women’s media seemed to shift from celebrity mockery and dieting advice to talking about “empowerment”. Parenting books told mums it was OK to be imperfect, wobbly and have stretch marks, as long as they were bringing up self-assured children. Beauty companies and fashion brands started telling us to love our bodies just the way they are. Along with the ascent of social media came a tide of feminism that prioritised self-care and welcomed imperfection. On the surface, we are living in a golden age of female confidence. But how much are we really feeling it?

July 25th 2022, 11:52 am

Male ‘biological clock’ can affect chances of birth more than was thought, study finds

Women | The Guardian

The research could help shape fertility education and messaging for couples trying to conceive through IVF

The first thing a woman seeking to conceive via fertility treatment will undoubtedly be told is the impact her age will have on her chances of a successful pregnancy.

But now a study of nearly 19,000 IVF cycles has shown how the influence of the paternal age on live birth rates could play a more vital role than previously thought.

July 23rd 2022, 6:20 pm

The women who wish they weren’t mothers: ‘An unwanted pregnancy lasts a lifetime’

Women | The Guardian

As Roe v Wade is overturned and abortion bans are reinstated in the US, women from across the world who felt pressured to have children tell their stories

I became pregnant two years after getting married and it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened to me because I was in the middle of separating from my husband. He had tried to hit me and I didn’t want to stick around to see if he would do it again.

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

A shopping guide to … gold hoop earrings

Women | The Guardian

Available in myriad shapes and sizes, these are a simple way to add polish to any outfit

Gold hoops are earrings for those who don’t usually do jewellery. Partly because there’s something for everyone – tiny ones for newbies, and hoops the size of saucers for the truly daring. And partly because they are trend-adjacent, gold hoops are never in fashion and never really out, yet worn by everyone from Diana Vreeland to Blue Velvet’s Dorothy Vallens. They’re a simple way to add polish regardless of the season. There’s a huge array of shapes to rent or thrift, though hoops with embellishments – lapis lazuli or crystal beads – add a summer flourish. If you’re worried about weight, try clip-ons (they don’t drag the lobe), and if you’re worried about cost, try renting – it’s what celebrities do on red carpet duty.
Lauren Cochrane

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

Florence Pugh hits back at ‘vulgar’ criticism of her body on social media

Women | The Guardian

Black Widow actor rails at ‘how easy it is for men to totally destroy a woman’s body, publicly, proudly, for everyone to see’

Florence Pugh has hit back at “vulgar” social media users who criticised her body, after she posted photographs of herself wearing a sheer dress at a fashion show.

“What happened to you to be so content on being so loudly upset by the size of my boobs and body?” said Pugh in an Instagram post on Sunday to her 7.4 million followers.

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

Sierra Leone backs bill to legalise abortion and end colonial-era law

Women | The Guardian

Country hails ‘monumental step’ towards expanding reproductive rights at a time when the US has overturned them

Ministers in Sierra Leone have taken a major step towards decriminalising abortion and overturning the country’s colonial-era law, in a move hailed by campaigners and women’s rights activists.

President Julius Maada Bio said his cabinet had unanimously backed a bill on risk-free motherhood, which would expand access to abortion in a country where terminations are only permitted when a mother’s life is at risk.

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

You be the judge: should my fellow bridesmaid dial down the hen-do plans?

Women | The Guardian

One bridesmaid is stressed and can’t afford the hen do, the other wants to go even bigger. Who’s in the right? You decide

Our friend wants a tropical hen do, but Katie seems to have no regard for how expensive it all is

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

A shopping guide to the best … summer shorts

Women | The Guardian

Shorts season is upon us. Whether you prefer long and structured linen or short and sporty for the beach, here are the best to buy rent or thrift

Striped seersucker, £55, everlane.com

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

Sexual Healing: My wife and I haven’t had sex for years. How can I boost my libido?

Women | The Guardian

Doctors tell me I’m hormonal or menopausal. Should I be looking elsewhere for help?

I am a 57-year-old lesbian and I have no sex drive. These are hard words to write, but my wife and I have not been intimate in years. She loves me and I do love her, but I suspect that over the years she got tired of initiating, and me either acquiescing out of obligation or turning her down. I want to be normal but don’t feel as if I am. Doctors dismiss me as either hormonal or menopausal. What should I do? What type of specialist can help me?

People living with such sadness and quiet desperation about their sexual functioning or lack of it should never be dismissed. Unfortunately, I often hear that they are. You deserve to be helped, so seek a well-qualified, knowledgable sex therapist or practitioner of psychosexual medicine.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

Comments on this piece are premoderated to ensure discussion remains on topics raised by the writer. Please be aware there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

July 22nd 2022, 7:03 pm

Breastfeeding improves cognitive ability for children of poorer mothers – study

Women | The Guardian

Analysis of data on almost 6,000 children found breastfeeding boosted brain development in disadvantaged mothers’ babies

Children of poorer mothers who breastfeed are much better at tasks involving speaking, drawing and comprehension as a direct result, a British study has found.

They do 8% better in tests of their cognitive ability up to the age of seven – if they were breastfed for at least three months – than those who were bottle-fed, according to the research.

June 30th 2022, 7:19 pm

She’s a single mother who works shifts at Whole Foods – and just climbed Everest for the 10th time

Women | The Guardian

Lhakpa Sherpa, who recently climbed the Nepal side of Everest, negotiates her adventures with remarkably limited resources

Lhakpa Sherpa – the female world record-holder for Everest summits – uses a 50-year-old oxygen mask. She has no regular sponsors, no trainers or dietitians.

She works an hourly job at Whole Foods in Connecticut, and raised three children nearly on her own while navigating poverty and domestic abuse.

June 28th 2022, 9:03 am

Julie Bindel to sue Nottingham council after talk cancelled

Women | The Guardian

Council says it called off Bindel’s talk at library because of her views on transgender rights

Julie Bindel, the veteran feminist and lesbian activist, has said she intends to take legal action after a council cancelled a talk she was due to give.

Bindel was scheduled to speak at Aspley library in Nottingham on Saturday but the 90-minute event was cancelled the day before. She says she found out when she was already on the train and ended up speaking in the library car park.

June 27th 2022, 5:18 pm

US woman left traumatised after Malta hospital refuses life-saving abortion

Women | The Guardian

‘Desperate’ tourist who fell foul of country’s total ban fears for her life if complications set in while she waits for transfer to UK

Doctors have denied an American woman on holiday in Malta a potentially life-saving abortion, despite saying her baby had a “zero chance” of survival after she was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding in her 16th week of pregnancy.

Despite an “extreme risk” of haemorrhage and infection, doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida told Andrea Prudente that they would not perform a termination because of the country’s total ban on abortion.

June 22nd 2022, 10:46 am

The female orgasm: lots of throbbing and quivering – but no moaning

Women | The Guardian

A woman enjoying a noisy end to sex is a cliche of TV and film. But is there any truth to it?

Name: The female orgasm.

Age: As old as humans.

June 22nd 2022, 10:46 am

Life inside the wild London club where lesbians were free to be themselves

Women | The Guardian

A new documentary takes viewers back down the rickety stairs to the trailblazing Gateways in Chelsea

The Gateways is back. The longest-running lesbian club of all-time – the one whose actual clientele appeared in the 1968 film The Killing of Sister George; the one where Mick Jagger tried to talk the owner into letting him crash in a frock; the one that was a sanctuary to every class and sort of woman, from well-known figures such as the writer Patricia Highsmith and the artist Maggi Hambling (then an art student) to swimming-pool attendants at the Tooting Bec lido – has been given a new lease of life in the first full-length documentary film to celebrate its history, and ensure that it is not erased.

Behind a dull green door on the corner of King’s Road and Bramerton Street in Chelsea, down some rickety steps to the basement lay the dive, a former strip club. The lease had been won in a bet at a televised boxing event at the Dorchester hotel by course bookie Ted Ware in 1943, and initially he offered it as a hang-out to a group of his lesbian pals who had been kicked out of their old Soho haunt the Bag O’ Nails pub after new owners took over and banned them.

June 18th 2022, 10:31 am

‘Fun and the beautiful game’: rise of women’s recreational football

Women | The Guardian

More women in England are making up for the decades when they felt shut out of the game

It’s Saturday-morning 11-a-side at a football pitch squeezed between a scrubby path running along the River Lee Navigation and a technology campus in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hackney. A dark-haired woman in red defies a gaggle of defenders with a skilled pass to the front. “Yes! Beginner’s debut, right there,” yells coach Julie Leaff at the top of her Mancunian lungs. The player breaks into a grin.

The camaraderie and joy on the pitch, where women are playing football, some for the first time, is noisy and infectious. This is Clapton Community Football Club’s open access training, one of thousands of grassroots sessions in England that have sprung up as women’s football has advanced. Unlike many targeted at encouraging young women and girls to take up the sport, however, it is for all ages.

June 17th 2022, 7:59 am

Revlon files for bankruptcy in US after supply chain trouble and surging costs

Women | The Guardian

Cosmetics company hopes to refinance and keep trading, saying demand for products remains strong

Revlon, the 90-year-old multinational beauty company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, weighed down by debt load, disruptions to its supply chain network and surging costs.

The New York-based company said that on court approval, it expects to receive $575m (£469m) in financing from its existing lenders, which will allow it to keep its day-to-day operations running.

June 16th 2022, 1:14 pm

Why can’t women in the UK afford to buy their own houses? We ask an expert

Women | The Guardian

Sara Reis, of the nonprofit Women’s Budget Group, says there is nowhere in the UK where an average-earning female can afford her own place

It is well known that the UK’s astronomic property prices have locked many people out of home ownership – especially if you’re single. Indeed, there is no region in the UK where a man or woman on median earnings could buy on their own. But a damning report has revealed there is no region where a median-earning woman can even rent alone. I asked the report’s author, Sara Reis, why.

The title of A Home of Her Own borrows from Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay where she writes that a woman “must have money and a room of her own”. Woolf is talking about writing conditions, but I wonder if women have ever had the space they need.
I don’t think this situation is necessarily new. But we know that, say, 30 years ago, wages and house prices were much closer than they are now. So housing affordability has decreased for everyone, but women still earn less. And if you have a gender pay gap, you will have a gender housing affordability gap.

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

The people making a difference: she was devastated by vaginal-mesh surgery. Now she helps others rec

Women | The Guardian

Kath Sansom’s surgery changed her life forever – and motived her to lobby for its halt

In 2015, Kath Sansom was the “ridiculously superfit mother of two adult daughters”. She did high-board diving, mountain biking, swimming and boxing. She had started to have a few “embarrassing leaks” while exercising, so Sansom did what many women do in her situation: she went to her GP, who referred her for transvaginal tape surgery, in which a small piece of mesh is fitted around the urethra to prevent incontinence.

“I assumed it was a bit like a coil,” says Sansom, 54, a PR manager from Cambridgeshire, “and if I didn’t get on with it, I could have it taken out. I had no idea it was permanent.”

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

We need stories from older mothers – and from women who don’t want children too | Letters

Women | The Guardian

Monica Cardenas advocates a move away from a culture that tends to see all women of child-bearing age as potential parents, and Claire Flood-Page and another reader write about the experiences of those who have been mothers for longer

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s column on the importance of telling stories of motherhood focused on Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, which Cosslett notes was criticised on publication, mainly by mothers (Writing honestly about motherhood still provokes anger, but we must tell our stories, 6 June). Cusk noted in 2008 that many of her critics exhibited a “hunger to express themselves not as women, not as commentators or intellectuals, but as mothers”.

Honest stories of motherhood are essential, but so too are identities beyond the maternal, for both mothers and non-mothers. We must come to know women as more than nurturing caregivers. Although truthful stories of motherhood are gaining traction, our culture tends to see all women of child-bearing age as potential mothers. Any thirtysomething can tell you about a time they were asked when they would have children, told they’d make a wonderful mother, or condescendingly advised that they would change their mind about not having children.

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

Surrey golf club welcomes Muslim women as taster tour begins

Women | The Guardian

Walton Heath golf club hosts one of series of sessions in England and Scotland for Muslim women

Last weekend, something unusual happened at Walton Heath golf club, one of the world’s top courses whose first captain was King Edward VIII and which has counted four prime ministers, including Winston Churchill, among its members.

The prestigious club, set amid Surrey heathland, first hosted the English Ladies’ Championship in 1914. A century later, it launched a ladies’ academy to encourage more women to take up the sport.

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

Depp-Heard trial verdict decried as ‘symptom of a culture that oppresses women’

Women | The Guardian

Heard’s lawyer says verdict sends ‘a horrible message’ while sexual violence experts say it reveals a system that doesn’t guarantee equal protection

A day after Johnny Depp largely won his defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard, Heard’s lead attorney said “lopsided” social media posts about the trial turned the courtroom into a “zoo” and influenced the jury’s verdict.

Speaking to NBC, Elaine Bredehoft said the verdict sent “a horrible message”, adding that she believed the seven-member jury was not able to escape the social media frenzy that enveloped the six-week trial.

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

How women saw the world in 1968

Women | The Guardian

Actors, bus conductors and accountants offered the female perspective on work, parenting and pervasive attitudes

The Observer Magazine of 28 January 1968 featured women talking about ‘families, life, husbands, sex, love, careers, money, children’. And gnomes.

Pamela, a clippie on the buses, may have objectified the passengers when she said, ‘You don’t have a lot of time to talk to the fares,’ but probably hinted at being objectified herself when she revealed: ‘Quite a few flirtations do go on.’

June 14th 2022, 5:44 pm

Eat plants, try pilates and stay positive: how to keep your body younger than your years

Women | The Guardian

Do blueberries make you live longer? Is pilates proper exercise? How do you avoid loneliness? Botox, yes or no? Here’s how to age better

Who doesn’t want a long and healthy life? Ageing may be non negotiable but how you do it affords some wiggle room. There is, however, no time to lose. Ideally you’d have been getting your health in order before middle age. But it’s never too late to start. Each of us has a chronological age that’s measured in birthday candles. Since every person ages differently we also have a biological age that reflects how old our body really is. This age depends on the relationship between our genes, lifestyle and living conditions. It’s this biological age you can change by doing what I’m about to tell you.

May 28th 2022, 2:43 am

Tell us: what is your experience of women’s healthcare in England?

Women | The Guardian

We would like to hear about your treatment for conditions like endometriosis, fibroids or UTIs

We would like to find out more about women’s health provision in England.

If you have recently been accessing care – for conditions such as endometriosis, fibroids or UTI’S, or for menopause (including HRT), devices (eg. vaginal mesh implants) or maternity services, we would like to hear from you.

May 26th 2022, 10:56 am

Can you give yourself a temporary facelift with tape and elastic?

Women | The Guardian

Some vloggers are tightening their skin with ‘beauty’ tape, but should we have anything to do with this perpetuation of unrealistic ideals?

The hack
Beauty enthusiasts – and supermodel Bella Hadid – are reportedly using face tape and elastic to temporarily tighten their skin.

The promise
This old Hollywood hack has made a comeback, and several companies now sell ready-made tape-and-elastic kits. But is it a toxic TikTok trend too far?

May 20th 2022, 7:03 am

I’m tired of accepting most of the domestic load. How do I tell my husband? | Leading questions

Women | The Guardian

How to approach this will depend on your husband, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Is this an issue of ignorance or motivation?

I’m tired of accepting the majority of the domestic load just because I’m technically better at it. My husband is a wonderful human, a great father and a generous and loving partner. But ever since I’ve known him, he has been almost inept at anything domestic in nature, be it chores around the home or managing life in a partnership with a family of his own. It all falls on me, and I’m tired not only from the physical load, but the mental load too. It’s this part that people talk less of – holding the knowledge and remembering, planning, executing all the things that are needed to run a household successfully.

I feel like the reason I, like many women I’m sure, carry this load is because we’ve let our men get away with the perception that “we know how” to do it better and therefore it’s easier that we take on the responsibility. My husband will only do things like chores or organising of household needs when prompted and guided.

May 19th 2022, 7:03 pm

US supreme court abortion reversal would be global ‘catastrophe’ for women

Women | The Guardian

If Roe v Wade is overturned, it will encourage anti-choice groups – particularly in the developing world, activists warn

The probable demise of abortion as a federal right in the US will be a “catastrophe” for women in low and middle-income countries, with an emboldened anti-choice movement likely to raise renewed pressure on hard-won gains, doctors and activists have warned.

The leak this month of the US supreme court’s draft majority opinion, which argued that the 1973 ruling effectively legalising abortion had been “egregiously wrong from the start”, stunned and enraged many in America.

May 18th 2022, 4:01 am

Prejudices that led to witch-hunts still affect women today, says historian

Women | The Guardian

Lucy Worsley, whose BBC TV series focuses on powerless people, says women continue to bear brunt of men’s rage

Prejudices that led to witch-hunts hundreds of years ago have not disappeared and women are still on the receiving end of men’s anger, a leading historian has said.

Writing in the Radio Times, Lucy Worsley, a historian and author, said: “[Although] we like to think we’re better than the people who hunted witches, witch-hunting still happens in some parts of the world today.”

May 17th 2022, 1:29 am

From the toxic culture that gave us mansplaining and manterrupting, here comes … hepeating

Women | The Guardian

Ever noticed how some men make a habit of repeating what women say – and then get all the credit? There’s a word for that

Name: Hepeating.

Age: Getting on for five years old.

May 16th 2022, 6:11 pm

HRT products could be sent to UK from mainland Europe next week

Women | The Guardian

Regulator expected to consent to import of hormone replacement pills and patches from France

Extra supplies of hormone replacement therapy products could be shipped to the UK from France and Poland as soon as next week, a major manufacturer has said after crisis meetings were held to address the nationwide shortage.

Tina Backhouse, the general UK manager at Theramex, which makes about a dozen HRT drugs, including Bijuva pills and Femseven patches, said the company needed special permission to bring in products from France that were not licensed in the UK. Theramex’s products are mainly made in Germany, and some are only licensed in other European countries.

May 13th 2022, 6:40 am

Spain to ease abortion limits for over-16s and allow menstrual leave

Women | The Guardian

Parental permission to end for terminations and up to five days’ leave a month for painful periods

Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government is preparing a law that would allow women over the age of 16 to have abortions without permission from their parents or guardians, and introduce up to five days of menstrual leave a month.

The draft legislation, which is due to be approved by the cabinet next week, is intended to ensure that abortion is available to all those using the public health system, and that menstruation is treated as a proper health issue.

May 12th 2022, 5:56 pm

‘A sea of men’: Andie MacDowell recalls having panic attack on all-male film set

Women | The Guardian

Realisation she was only woman in the room on 2016 film led Four Weddings and a Funeral star to fall to her knees

Andie MacDowell has said she had a panic attack prompted by the realisation she was the only woman on the set of a film she made in 2016.

Speaking to Marie Claire, MacDowell said she “dropped to [her] knees” after the incident, which came in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

May 12th 2022, 7:40 am

Contentious Croatian abortion goes ahead after medical officials step in

Women | The Guardian

Woman had been denied termination in strongly Catholic nation despite damaged foetus

A Croatian woman who was denied an abortion although her foetus had serious health issues has undergone the procedure, it was revealed on Wednesday.

The case sparked nationwide outrage in the EU country where Catholic church-backed conservative groups aspire to curb the right to abortion, which is legal until the 10th week of pregnancy.

May 11th 2022, 8:40 pm

Women who fought for US abortion rights in the 70s call for mass global protests

Women | The Guardian

Veteran activists say the overthrow of Roe v Wade would equate to murder, and should send warning signals around the world

It was over the Thanksgiving holiday, catching up with old high school friends, that Frances Beal heard that Cordelia had died. Like the now 82-year-old Black feminist and activist, her friend had left home to go to college, but she didn’t make it through her first year because, like anybody who wanted to terminate a pregnancy in America in 1958, she had been forced to undergo a backstreet abortion.

“She was dead because she’d had an illegal abortion. And it had gone bad. And if you take a look at the statistics, the number of woman that died from illegal abortions was tremendous,” Beal, who later joined the movement to legalise abortion, told the Observer.

May 8th 2022, 4:07 am

‘Inclusive’ language on maternity care risks excluding many women | Letter

Women | The Guardian

When discussing inherently sexed processes such as pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, there are risks to desexing language, writes Prof Jenny Gamble

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s article emphasised the importance of respectful, individualised maternity care, including in the language used to address transgender people (The language of maternity is alive and well – so why not expand it to include trans parents, 5 May). This idea is entirely uncontroversial. What has become contentious, however, is whether terms like “women” and “mothers” should be used in a broader sense, including in health communication and policy or replaced with other words that do not reference the female sex.

It is a well-established principle of communication that the sex of individuals should be made visible when relevant and should not be made visible when not. This ensures that sex-related needs and issues are not overlooked and sex stereotyping is avoided. As I and others outline in a recent paper in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, when discussing inherently sexed processes like pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding, there are risks to desexing language.

May 6th 2022, 6:25 pm

I’ve got a seven-month-old baby. How do I make sure she doesn’t feel the same body shame I did? | Le

Women | The Guardian

Bracing a child for a bad outcome can teach them to expect it, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Fortunately time is on your side

• Read more advice from Eleanor Gordon-Smith

I’ve never been happy with my looks and was often overlooked as a child and high school for the prettier girls which was very hurtful. I’ve got a seven-month-old baby (brown hair and brown eyes), quite chubby compared to other babies her age, and when I see pictures of her with my friends with babies a similar age I feel worried that she will always be seen as the “less than” one in the group due to her looks.

The other babies in my friendship group have bigger eyes, blond hair and blue eyes and my friends and extended family have made comments about her “not taking after this side of the family” (ie by being blond and skinny) or “oh no, she is going to have brown eyes!”

May 5th 2022, 2:35 pm

Calls for buffer zones around abortion clinics in Scotland after protests

Women | The Guardian

SNP urged to act by Scottish Labour and campaigners as fears grow threat to Roe v Wade in US could embolden anti-choice movement

The Scottish government is facing growing calls to impose buffer zones around abortion clinics amid fears that potential changes to abortion rights in the US are emboldening anti-choice protesters.

A leaked US draft supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade has sharpened anxieties over delays in implementing the SNP’s 2021 manifesto pledge to support local authorities to establish protest-free zones around clinics.

May 4th 2022, 2:37 pm