The Road to Gender Equity with Ting Ting Cheng and Nadine Epstein

Women still do not have equal rights to men in the United States, leaving them vulnerable to changing political winds. What needs to be done to finally achieve this critical goal? Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein is hosting a series of informal “dinner party” conversations, exploring long-term strategies that could lead to true gender equity. The focus is not on politics but on big picture legal, organizational and cultural change. In this inaugural conversation, Epstein talks with civil rights attorney Ting Ting Cheng, Director of the Equal Rights Amendment Project at Columbia Law School.

“The Road to Gender Equity” series is in memory of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose legal strategies, based on the 14th Amendment, helped strengthen the rights of American women.

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RBG's birthday

Make RBG’s Birthday a National Holiday

This March 15th, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have been 88. Over the last year of her life, she and I collaborated on a book for young readers, RBG’s Real Wonder Women: Brave and Brilliant Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, which comes out in September. Although it is about 33 amazing women, the late justice, who died after completing her part of the book, is the true star of the book. In the months since her death, I have come to believe that that the United States needs a national RBG Day. Yes, an actual federal holiday with all the trimmings, not just a monument as recently has been suggested by a group of women lawmakers in the House and Senate. Monuments are meaningful, but you have to go to a monument. Holidays come to...

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Meet the Jewish Women At the Heart of FX’s ‘Mrs. America’

FX’s newly released Mrs. America portrays the battle between the second-wave feminists who aimed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and conservative Phyllis Schlafly who strongly opposed their agenda and organized the “STOP ERA” campaign. The series documents the stories of these women who shaped the women’s liberation movement—several of whom happened to be Jewish. Here’s a bit about each: Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne) is a leader and spokeswoman for the American feminist movement and was head of the movement to ratify the ERA. Steinmen co-founded Ms. magazine and the Women’s Media Center and continues to advocate for women’s equality issues. Steinem’s father was Jewish and the son of immigrants from Wurttemberg, Germany and Radziejow, Poland, according to the Jewish Women’s Archive biography of Steinem (written by Moment columnist Letty Cottin Pogrebin). Steinem’s paternal grandmother,...

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