Feminism

The Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times columnist's new memoir explores her past, present and future — her relationships with her parents and children, her faith, her career and her feelings about herself over the past five decades.

Rush Limbaugh said a number of things about Sandra Fluke that created such a stir that he ultimately had to apologize. But most of the reactions focused on that once word: slut. Linguist Geoff Nunberg observes that our reaction to the word says a quite a lot about the society we live in.

Historian Jill Lepore writes about the early history of the birth control and abortion movements in this week's New Yorker. "I think it's easy to lose perspective [that] actually the arguments made by one side or another have switched sides over time more than once," she says.

On Fresh Air, social historian Stephanie Coontz explains how the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in 1963 helped women view themselves differently. But Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring, also critiques many aspects of Friedan's pioneering book, including its omission of minority women.

Critic John Powers compares the heroines featured in this summer's two cultural juggernauts -- Twilight and the Millennium Trilogy. And despite being almost diametrically opposed, the characters Lisbeth Salander and Bella Swan have more in common than you may think.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse examines the public discourse that led to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. She details the various legal briefs presented by both sides of the abortion debate to the court — and explains the newest challenges facing the legislation today.

Mare's-urine cocktails? Do-it-yourself forceps? Randi Hutter Epstein's new book Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank is full of delightful — and sometimes disturbing — anecdotes about the history of pregnancy and childbirth.

Journalist Michelle Goldberg discusses the politics, ideology and history of reproductive rights around the world in her new book The Means of Reproduction.

Elaine Showalter's A Jury Of Her Peers offers a literary history of American women writers spanning from the tales of Puritan Anne Bradstreet to the modern-day gay cowboy stories of Annie Proulx. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Sarah Palin is a staunch pro-lifer; Colorado voters may soon decide that life begins at conception. Author, journalist and academic Cynthia Gorney says the abortion wars are still going strong in this election cycle.

Some feminists have had a hard time accepting Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a symbol of women's empowerment. But political science professor Ronnee Schreiber argues that conservatism and feminism are not mutually exclusive ideologies.

Political columnist Katha Pollitt gets personal in a new collection of essays. Learning To Drive and Other Life Stories covers a range of topics, from Web-stalking a cheating boyfriend to what she learned about her parents using the Freedom of Information Act.

Yanar Mohammed, an internationally renowned Iraqi activist, founded the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq to advocate for women's rights. It's an uphill fight: From the 1950s to the 1970s, Iraqi women could legally work, study, marry and divorce, and wear what they wanted, but the new constitution in Iraq, based on the Islamic Sharia law system, denies women the civil and social rights guaranteed to men.

Ariel Levy is a contributing editor at New York magazine, where she writes about sexuality, culture and gender politics. Her new book is Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. One reviewer writes that Levy "strips the 'Girls Gone Wild' culture of its cuteness in her provocative [book], arguing that post-feminist poster girls such as Playboy Bunnies offer only faux empowerment."

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Elements of Style, the first and last novel by the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

Coleman is a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank. She's an expert on economic development, Afghanistan and women's initiatives in the Middle East.

In today's sexual politics, are women equal — and are men even needed? That's the question New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asks in her new book, 'Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide'.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse has covered the Supreme Court for The New York Times since 1978. She won the Pulitzer in 1998 for her coverage of the court. Her new book is Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey.

This year she received the John Humphrey Freedom Award for her 20-plus years in the field of human rights and democratic development in her country. She was noted for her work to promote women's rights in Nigeria. She helped organize civil protests across the country, demonstrating against the planned adoption of a conservative and discriminatory form of law known as Sharia.

Head of Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission, Dr. Sima Samar. She was appointed to the position in July. Previously she served as the country’s first Minister for Women’s Affairs appointed by the interim Afghan government. Dr. Samar is an internationally-renowned feminist and human rights activist. Samar defied the Taliban and continued to operate schools for girls and health clinics in Afghanistan’s provinces and refugee camps in Pakistan. Samar was born in Ghazani, Afghanistan and is a Hazara, one of the most persecuted of the ethnic minorities.