JWA chats with Samantha Perlman, a city councilor and mayoral candidate for Marlborough, Massachusetts about the Jewish women who inspired her to run for office, how she responds to pushback about her age and gender, and showing young people they can be drivers of change.

In Mrs. America, viewers are offered a glimpse at the anxieties surrounding the ERA in 1970s (which still persist today).

Women are strong leaders because we understand how deeply intertwined policy is with our everyday lives. Labeled a “passionate perfectionist,” Abzug refused to separate idealism from activism.

We at JWA decided to have an informal group chat about menstruation, our bodies, and sex. There was chocolate, honesty, and lots of laughter. Although we represent different ages and family backgrounds, we found plenty in common around this very normal (and under-discussed) topic.

This Women’s Equality Day, we asked three Jewish feminist thought leaders to reflect on this moment in history, to help us better understand where we are, where we need to go, and how we can pick up the mantle, again, from the suffragists and Bella Abzug, and keep marching.

I have always found women’s seders perplexing, ever since my mother first dragged me to one when I was a teenager. To me, Passover is a family holiday, and it felt wrong to exclude half of our family from the celebration. I also didn’t understand why, instead of telling the story of the Exodus, we toasted Bella Abzug and Henrietta Szold.

Among the many treats in Gloria Steinem’s new memoir My Life on the Road are the bevy of stories starring women who appear on jwa.org: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Gerda Lerner, Betty Friedan, and even Emma Goldman earned mentions. But as I read Steinem’s book, one name made more appearances than the rest: Bella Abzug.

“Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.” —Bella Abzug

Bella Abzug held office in the House of Representatives some forty years ago, and since then, what she said has been proven: those days are over. Women aren’t being trained to speak softly anymore, at least not uniformly. Outspoken women are allowed to put themselves out there.

How did Esther and Bella Abzug make change in their communities? How have Jewish women used costumes to help them achieve their goals? What can these stories teach us about gender and Judaism today?

We are well into October and it is time to talk Halloween. Knowing that it can be difficult to find a costume that accurately represents your feminism and your Jewish identity, we’ve put together our guide to a well-researched JWA Halloween costume.

With Women’s Equality Day just around the corner, voting has been on my mind.

And, I’ll admit it, voting isn’t usually on my mind—especially during August. But Women’s Equality Day, which celebrates women’s right to vote, has me thinking about voting.

I’m a pretty civic-minded person—fast to roll my eyes at people who tell me they don’t see the point in voting. While I’m not usually thinking about voting, it wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that I take voting for granted. In fact, I can’t imagine not being able to vote. Voting, expressing my views and taking a stand, is so central to my belief system that it’s hard to imagine not being able to vote.

Fifty years ago yesterday, the 1961 formation of Women Strike for Peace (WSP) marked a new era for activism, creating a new stage on which women could concentrate their power. In 1984, WSP described in their own words the beginning of their movement: "100,000 women from 60 cities came out of kitchens and jobs to demand: END THE ARMS RACE - NOT THE HUMAN RACE, and WSP was born."

This week marks a big one when it comes to major anniversaries of Jewish women in politics.

As second wave feminism gathered peak velocity forty years ago, the late bombastic and behatted Congresswoman (D-NY) Bella Abzug persuaded Congress to designate August 26th as Women’s Equality Day. It recognized the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that in 1920 gave all U.S. women the right to vote.