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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist | Aeon
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Human rights and justice

Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist

Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today

Lydia Moland

Milk, pity and power | Aeon
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Art

Milk, pity and power

Since antiquity, artists have depicted a perverse scene of a daughter breastfeeding her aged father. What does it mean?

Margie Orford

A manly divorce | Aeon
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Gender and identity

A manly divorce

Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence

Joshua Coleman

Masham and me | Aeon
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Thinkers and theories

Masham and me

Were it not for her friendship with John Locke, the radical feminist gems of philosopher Damaris Masham might be unknown

Regan Penaluna

Great art cities explained: New York | Aeon
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Art

The female Abstract Expressionists of New York shook the world of art

15 minutes

Enter the conductrice | Aeon
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Music

Enter the conductrice

Will a new generation of women on the podium perpetuate the tyrannical charisma of their male predecessors or overturn it?

Xenia Hanusiak

Women at the barricades | Aeon
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History

Women at the barricades

The transgressions of working-class women formed the revolutionary heart of the 1871 Paris Commune

Carolyn Eichner

The doxxing of Rose Mainville | Aeon
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History

The doxxing of Rose Mainville

When a young street vendor found her name in a guidebook to the sex workers of Paris, she couldn’t live with the shame

Amanda E Herbert & David N Woodworth

Lady of the Gobi | Aeon
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Work

Living out of a truck, Maikhuu finds promise and peril on Mongolia’s ‘coal highway’

25 minutes

Life as a Victorian teenager | Aeon
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History

From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London

10 minutes

Sisters in dharma | Aeon
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Religion

Sisters in dharma

In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, Parwati Soepangat pioneered a Buddhist feminist theology with deep roots

Jack Meng-Tat Chia

Mink! | Aeon
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Fairness and equality

How the first woman of colour to be elected to the US Congress remade education

21 minutes

Tantra: enlightenment to revolution | Aeon
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History of ideas

Tantra is, and was, a subversive philosophy of feminine power

19 minutes

Marilyn Waring on women and economics | Aeon
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Economics

We all play by economic rules set by men. What could a feminist economics look like?

30 minutes

Her body is a problem | Aeon
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Art

Her body is a problem

When 1970s women artists put the female body under the female gaze, why did the critics see only obscene monsters?

Lauren Elkin

The incredible life of Maria Sibylla Merian | Aeon
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Biology

In the jungle of Suriname, Maria Sibylla Merian discovered insect metamorphosis

4 minutes

More than muses and martyrs | Aeon
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Thinkers and theories

More than muses and martyrs

In the long 19th century, many women philosophers were marginalised or ignored. We need to rediscover them

Kristin Gjesdal & Dalia Nassar

The lady vanishes | Aeon
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Thinkers and theories

The lady vanishes

The history of ideas still struggles to remember the names of notable women philosophers. Mary Hesse is a salient example

Ann-Sophie Barwich

Open shutters | Aeon
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Gender and identity

How the spy-cam epidemic in South Korea affects the women who are its victims

35 minutes

Tattoos and trousers | Aeon
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History

Tattoos and trousers

Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the real Amazons

Christine Lehnen

Are men animals? | Aeon
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Gender

Are men animals?

Diagnosing men as violent and oversexed beasts is tempting but it’s a regressive idea built on dubious analogies

Matthew Gutmann

Senior prom | Aeon
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Gender and identity

LGBTQ+ retirees celebrate their hard-earned self-acceptance at a belated prom night

14 minutes

The other Fab Four | Aeon
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Biography and memoir

Meet the Liverbirds! The bittersweet tale of Liverpool’s all-female answer to the Beatles

16 minutes

Healthcare workers of yore | Aeon
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History of science

Healthcare workers of yore

Looking past conventional histories of medicine we see that women delivered much of medieval healthcare. Just as today

Sara Ritchey