Brazilian women are breaking into politics by joining together in collective candidacies, which allow politicians to build stronger coalitions and push for progressive change.

Brazilian women are breaking into politics by joining together in collective candidacies, which allow politicians to build stronger coalitions and push for progressive change.

The Mosuo villages in the Chinese Himalayas are trying to hold on to their ancient, complex social structures that value female power and decision-making.

The Mosuo villages in the Chinese Himalayas are trying to hold on to their ancient, complex social structures that value female power and decision-making.

Speaking out when we see misogyny in action isn’t an affront to other men. It’s an invitation to do better.

In Europe, up through the Middle Ages, brewing, grain production, and malting were domestic tasks alongside food preparation and crop maintenance. For the most part, women ran these operations. These “brewsters” or “alewives” brewed primarily for their own households, but would also sell excess to friends and neighbors.

“Man up” may seem like a harmless way to tell a man to step up to his responsibilities, to be strong, or to show less emotion, but the phrase itself implies that doing any of these things is gender specific. More, it implies that one can be more or less of a man based on behavior. It’s a phrase that has long outlived its usefulness, assuming it was ever useful at all. I am committed to never uttering those two words to my son or using them in reference to anyone else. The words we need to be using instead of “man up” should be “grow up.”

“These women go to work every day and are told they are not as good, they are taking some man’s job, and ‘Why are they there?’ Subtle and straight to their faces, every day for their entire careers,” founder Alice Lockridge says. With Women4Women, she says, “we made a place where they could come to work and share their skills and learn new skills in an environment that was free from all that.”

Many young women in eastern Kentucky must battle abstinence-only sex education in their schools and a cultural veil of secrecy about their bodies in order to fully understand their options.The consequences of both factors are bleak: out of all the pregnancies in Kentucky, 47 percent are unplanned.