Without these women, man would not have walked on the moon
All 12 people who walked on the moon were men. But among the 400,000 people who made it possible, there were numerous unsung women, from computer engineers and mathematicians to secretaries and seamstresses. Today,...
Pardon the rant, but here’s why I love my Mooncup so much
If you’re a Guardian-reading woman of a certain age, it’s likely you’ll have been party to the evangelical Mooncup rant. In the Mooncup rant, one woman tells the other about a convex piece of...
E-girls and boys’ style is the antidote to the homogenised IG aesthetic
@eve.frsr In the age of the cookie-cutter Instagram influencer, an army of Gen-Zers are exploring the alternative via rising social platform TikTok It’s likely that, if you’ve heard of E-girls before, you know them...
Yayoi Kusama is creating her first ever participatory art installation
Kusama with Pumpkin (2010) Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York Celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is set to bring exciting new work to her latest...
How Liz Johnson Artur chronicled black culture – in pictures
The photography of Russian-Ghanaian Liz Johnson Artur is being showcased in her first solo exhibition , now on at the Brooklyn Museum in New York until 18 August. It spans three decades of work...
Let’s not forget, women’s football is still an act of resistance
As the Women’s World Cup reaches new levels of recognition and respectability, we explore how inequality has always been rife in the game When the early football clubs of England began to establish the...
Women outperform men after Japan medical school stops rigging exam scores
Women have outperformed their male counterparts in entrance examinations for a medical school in Japan that last year admitted rigging admission procedures to give men an unfair advantage. Juntendo University in Tokyo said that...
Polly Higgins, lawyer who fought for recognition of ‘ecocide’
Polly Higgins, one of the most inspiring figures in the green movement, has died aged 50. Higgins, a British barrister, led a decade-long campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime against humanity....
One Brave Woman – Carole Cadwalladr
Carole Cadwalladr speaking at TED2019 last week. The Observer journalist was invited to give a talk in a session tagged Truth. If Silicon Valley is the beast, then TED is its belly. And on...
‘We are now free’: Yazidis fleeing Isis start over in female-only commune
A mural in Jinwar. The female-only commune in north-eastern Syria opened in November and is home to Kurdish, Yazidi and Arab families. Photograph: Bethan McKernan/The Guardian Berivan runs over to join in the...
Tracey Thorn: ‘Not everything you do is cool’
‘I feel very lucky to still feel like I’m full of ideas’: Tracey Thorn. Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose for the Observer You mined your teenage diaries a little in your first book, Bedsit Disco...
Susan Hiller, artist who explored the paranormal, dies aged 78
The artist Susan Hiller – whose work tackled such esoteric subjects as automatic writing, near-death experiences and alien abduction – has died aged 78 after a short illness. The news was confirmed by...
Megan Rapinoe: ‘Maybe men should just take a few hundred years off’
Megan Rapinoe says: ‘It’s not really an issue of whether police brutality exists or not or whether racism is still an issue or not. It very much is.’ Photograph: Jeff Chiu/AP “As I’ve...
June Whitfield – a life in pictures
Much loved comedy actor June Whitfield has died at the age of 93. Best known for her roles in Terry and June and Absolutely Fabulous, here we look back at her career that...
The season of the witch: how Sabrina and co are casting their spell over...
The season of the witch is truly upon us . A remake of Dario Argento’s giallo classic Suspiria has just been released, while this autumn, TV will conjure up not just one but three...
English Heritage calls for female blue plaque nominees
English Heritage has admitted that not enough women from history are celebrated with blue plaques and has asked the public to help redress the balance.
Only 14% of the more than 900 blue plaques in...
Why female superheroes shouldn’t hit old ladies
The trailer for Captain Marvel has landed. I always find it hard to tell someone’s superpower from a trailer – it all moves so fast – but I know she can breathe fire out...
The Favourite
Early 18th century. England is at war with the French. Nevertheless, duck racing and pineapple eating are thriving. A frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) occupies the throne and her close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel...
Virginie Despentes: ‘What is going on in men’s heads when women’s pleasure has become...
In her living room in northern Paris, Virginie Despentes, a former punk and wild child of French literature, sits on her sofa with coffee in a Motörhead mug, rolling a cigarette and reflecting on...
How we made: Spare Rib magazine
Rosie Boycott, co-founder
There were lots of things rumbling around in 1971. Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch had come out, and there were protests against Miss World – but they didn’t seem to reach the...
