Ms. Magazine Celebrates 40 Years

Spring 1972. The first full issue of Ms. featured an “Everywoman” playfully modeled on a Hindu goddess to illustrate the many competing tasks modern women were expected to balance. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)

Ms. “guiding light” Gloria Steinem at a news conference for Women's Action Alliance in January 1972, the month Ms. Magazine hit the newsstands. (US News and World Report and Library of Congress)

A Women’s Liberation March in New York In 1970. (courtesy of Veteran Feminists of America)

May 1974. The fathering instinct, and an expanded role for fathers in the lives of conscious modern families, was the headliner in this issue of Ms., whose editors wanted equality for all, not just women. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)

Author Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, photographed in January 2012 in her home office in New York. (VOA - A. Phillips)

January 1978. Reproductive issues, such as the right to birth control and safe and legalized abortion were an important part of Ms. Magazine’s coverage. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)

Папа Римский и Рауль Кастро. Гавана, 27 марта 2012г.

August 1982. The tenth anniversary issue depicted Gloria Steinem, the force behind Ms. Magazine’s inception and early days, and one of American feminism’s most public and easily recognizable faces. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)

The political pins on Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s kitchen wall in January 2012 are a visual testament to the feminist activism over the decades. (VOA - A. Phillips)

October 1988. This issue, which was published in connection with the Olympic Games highlighted the increasingly prominent role of women in sports. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)

Spring 2011. Ms. is still going strong, albeit in quarterly form, and with no advertisements. This issue confronted the FBI’s legal definition of rape dating from the 1920s. (Courtesy of Ms. Magazine)