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Fifty-One Percent

Fifty-One Percent

  • Meg Stone
    On this week’s 51%, we take a feminist self-defense course with IMPACT Boston Executive Director Meg Stone. In her new book, The Cost of Fear, Stone says a majority of the safety advice given to women – like “Don’t walk at night,” “Don’t put your hair in a ponytail” – is well-meaning, but sexist, and doesn’t actually address gender-based violence on a large scale.
  • Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
    On this week’s 51%, we chat with rising Broadway star Jasmine Amy Rogers about her Tony-nominated performance in BOOP! The Musical, and how she gets in character for the iconic role of Betty Boop. We also stop by a lecture with the author of Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her.
  • On this week's 51%, we chat with Minnesota Law Professor Jill Hasday about her book, We the Men: How Forgetting Women's Struggles for Equality Perpetuates Inequality.
  • The House has passed the SAVE Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship from anyone registering to vote in federal elections. What might this mean for married women and other voters with changed names or hard-to-reach documents? We discuss the bill (and where it goes from here) with Dr. Elizabeth Matto, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University - New Brunswick.
  • On this week’s 51%, we learn how to prep for and survive a recession with Professor Suzanne Shu of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. We also chat with business journalist Alison Kosik about her new book What’s Up with Women and Money? Part memoir, part how-to guide, Kosik’s book explains how women can feel more confident navigating their finances, invest for the future, and avoid getting taken for a ride at the car dealership.
  • On this week’s 51%, we speak with author Nanda Reddy about her new novel A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl. An exploration of identity and the immigrant experience, A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl follows Maya, an Indo-Guyanese woman, as she confronts the many versions of herself, she had to create in order to escape her traumatic youth and survive as an undocumented immigrant in the U.S.
  • We internalize a lot of ideas about womanhood, good and bad, as we grow up. On this week’s 51%, we speak with Dr. Samra Zafar about how to ditch the bad ones. In her new book Unconditional, Zafar shares her journey of escaping an abusive, forced marriage and unlearning her long-held beliefs around love and womanhood.
  • On this week’s 51%, we sit down with longtime feminist activist Muriel Fox to chat about how the National Organization for Women got started in the 1960s, and how it fought for many of the rights and opportunities women cherish today.
  • On this week’s 51%, we speak with sports journalist Jane McManus about the history and business of women’s sports, as detailed in her new book The Fast Track.
  • On this week’s 51%, we chat with Kimberly Heckler about her book A Woman of Firsts: Margaret Heckler, Political Trailblazer.
  • When most of us think of the Viking Age, we think of its men: powerful warriors sailing ships, building armies, and sacking cities across Europe. But new research shows Viking women were warriors, too – and that they were traders, artisans, explorers, landowners, and respected leaders in their own right. On this week’s 51%, we kick off Women’s History Month by speaking with science writer Heather Pringle about her book The Northwomen, on how women helped shape Viking society and culture.
  • On this week’s 51%, we speak with Carol Cleaveland and Michele Waslin, author of Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum. As President Trump effectively shuts down processing at the southern border and ramps up deportations, asylum seekers in the U.S. are left in a precarious position, especially women fleeing domestic and gender-based violence. Through interviews and eyewitness accounts of closed court proceedings, Cleaveland and Waslin demonstrate how difficult it is for these women to seek shelter in the U.S., and why “gender-based violence” is still not considered grounds for asylum — even before the second Trump Administration.