Women’s Rights and Feminism in the 2024 Election

Nov 8, 2024

Days before the 2024 general election, Republican nominee Donald Trump vowed to “protect women … whether they like it or not.” In large part the election was about women—their rights, their ability to make their own health care decisions, and their bodily autonomy.

In a conversation recorded on Election Day, before results were known, YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with academic and author Serene Khader on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the role of women in the election and what it will take to win reproductive justice and other rights post-election. Khader is the author of Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop and a professor of philosophy and women’s and gender studies at the City University of New York. Her recent op-ed in YES! is called “Trump Is Pulling From White Feminism’s Playbook.”

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.