Girls Gone Bible is on tour in the US, touting a regressive ideal of femininity through discussions of abstinence and mental health struggles

At first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls – or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star’s show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.

But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray.

Ignore Iran, the Epstein files, and your wallet – not to mention Trump’s plummeting approval ratings

Don’t mention the war! Or the economy, for that matter. Or the Epstein files. Or Natalie Harp. Or “affordability”, which, as Donald Trump recently said at a rally, is a word that was “never used” by the media before he took office. Best not to talk about anything that affects ordinary people or embarrasses the president, really. Instead, let’s all rejoice in Trump’s latest triumph: renaming Lake Ontario, which is shared by Canada and the US, as Lake America.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to America-fy the lake’s name on US maps and documents, which is an excellent use of time and resources. I suppose we can at least be thankful that the president, who is trying to slap his own name on everything from airports to the Kennedy Center, didn’t decree that the body of water be called Lake Trump.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The senator’s remarks reflect a turning point in Democrats’ attacks on the president. What should we make of them?

Apparently, he likes to say her name with a French accent. “Na-tah-lee!” the president cries out, in that affected tone of faux-formality that one might use with a person they love but do not quite respect, and she comes running, her thin legs teetering on her heels.

Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant”, was an odd recurring character in the latest blockbuster Trump administration book, Regime Change, by the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. In the book, Harp features like a silent sentinel, ever present but eerily quiet as Trump rants and raves. It’s not exactly clear what the scope of her responsibilities is; though, as Jamelle Bouie points out, the fact that she evidently helps run the president’s social media accounts, which can sway markets and influence his foreign counterparts, makes her one of the most powerful people in the federal government.

A call revealing Todd Blanche’s plans to crack down on mifepristone lays bare the danger

The abortion pill is a miracle. Mifepristone, then called RU-486, was synthesized by a French lab in the 1980s; in combination with misoprostol, commonly used as ulcer medication, it cuts off the body’s supply of progesterone, halts the development of a pregnancy, and incites contractions, which empty the uterus. The drug allows pregnancies to be terminated with a shocking degree of reliability and ease. Gone are the concoctions of ergot and Spanish Fly dispensed by 19th century midwives, which only sometimes worked to induce a miscarriage; gone are the backroom procedures of the pre-Roe US, when drunk, lascivious, incompetent or cruel providers wielded bent coat hangers in dirty rooms. The abortion pill is safe, effective and cheaper than ever. And since Dobbs, it’s everywhere: even if you live in a state with an abortion ban, you can get the pills shipped to your house in the mail. Since Roe was overturned, there has not been a return to the terror of mass death that marked the pre-Roe era of septic abortion wards, where women routinely found themselves maimed, sickened or killed. There’s exactly one reason why: because illegal abortions were largely unsafe without the pill, and they are extremely safe with it.

So of course, the Trump administration and their allies on the American right are trying to get rid of it. And this month, they gained a powerful new ally when Todd Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and an anti-abortion zealot, was confirmed as attorney general.

For more than 30 years, Ukraine's Labor Code has prohibited women from working night shifts, except in those sectors where the Cabinet of Ministers permits it — and the Cabinet has never approved the list of those sectors, so the exception has no content and the prohibition has no limit.

Ukraine's State Labor Service confirms the list was never adopted, and labor lawyers describe the provision as declarative — a rule that cannot be applied in practice. What it can do is make employers in shift industries cautious, because the safer option, when the law is unclear and the inspectorate is not, is to hire a man.

This is happening in an economy that, by the Economy Ministry's count, is short roughly 4.5 million workers. Around 700,000 men are serving in the Defense Forces, some 5.3 million Ukrainians are abroad, most of them of working age, and the State Employment Service reports that the vacancies hardest to fill are precisely those traditionally considered male—industry, construction, transport, and logistics. Meanwhile, 81% of Ukraine's registered unemployed are now women, up from 55% before the full-scale invasion. The people looking for work and the jobs that need filling are, increasingly, on opposite sides of a legal line drawn in Soviet times.

The vacuum, and how employers use it

Article 175 of the Labor Code prohibits night work for all women except in sectors where it is "required by special necessity and permitted as a temporary measure." The Cabinet of Ministers was to approve the list of those sectors, and in more than three decades it never has.

Hospitals, the police, railways, and the State Emergency Service employ women on night shifts anyway, under special laws regulating service in those sectors. Under the hierarchy of legislation, codes and laws have equal status, so a specialized law takes precedence over a conflicting general one.

In other sectors, however, the ambiguity has consequences. Employing women at night may lead to inspections by labor safety authorities and the imposition of fines, which means employers in industries that depend on night work can point to the legal uncertainty as a justification for not hiring women at all. The prohibition does its damage not because it is enforced, but because it has been left unresolved.

The Law on the Organization of Labor Relations under Martial Law temporarily lifted the restrictions related to night work, leave, rest periods, and overtime. But once martial law ends, the previous rules will return unless Parliament adopts a new Labor Code—and the one draft that would have done so has since been withdrawn.

What the draft code would change

The draft code—bill No. 14386, submitted by the Cabinet in January 2026 and recommended for adoption by the parliamentary social policy committee the following month—would have abolished the general prohibition on women's night work. Pregnant women and women who have recently given birth and are breastfeeding would remain exempt from night shifts until the child reaches 18 months of age, provided they submit the appropriate documentation to their employer. All other female employees would work on equal terms with men.

The draft also addresses the second barrier employers cite: parental leave. At present, leave runs until a child turns three, and employers are required to keep the position open while receiving no compensation for doing so.

For small businesses, which account for 74% of all jobs in Ukraine, this can be financially burdensome, and it is a reason employers may prefer not to hire women of childbearing age. Instead of protecting women specifically, the draft proposes equal rights for both parents, providing each with two months of paid leave while retaining the option of unpaid parental leave. Protection against dismissal would apply to both parents of children under 18 months, and employers would be required to provide written justification if they deny flexible work arrangements to pregnant employees or parents of children under eight.

The draft code also gives pregnant women and mothers of children under 18 months the right to request remote work, and employers may refuse only if the job cannot physically be performed remotely. Bakers and surgeons cannot work from home because they lack the necessary tools and equipment, while accountants and editors can. In other words, refusal would no longer be a matter of employer discretion; it would have to be justified.

None of it came to pass. The draft drew objections—the Federation of Employers warned of risks, and the Atomic Energy Workers' Union argued that several provisions contradicted the very principles the code claimed to advance—but it never reached a vote. Parliament was scheduled to take up the bill in a first reading on 30 June 2026, but did not get to it.

Two weeks later, the government resigned, and bill No. 14386 was withdrawn along with other government bills that had not passed a first reading. A new government may resubmit it under a new number; at this stage there is no way to know whether or when. For now, the draft that would have lifted the ban does not exist, and even had it passed, it would have taken effect only six months after martial law ends—so the vacuum in Article 175 outlasts both the war and the transition that follows it.

Where the law works

The picture is not one of obstruction alone. Just a few years ago, a woman could legally be denied a job because she sought employment in one of more than 450 prohibited occupations, ranging from truck driving to mining. The list was approved in 1993 as a measure intended to protect women's reproductive health, but in practice, it restricted their access to the labor market. In 2017, the list was abolished, and women can now enter any profession provided a medical examination shows the job does not pose significant health risks. Ukraine has also allowed women to serve in the military on equal terms with men.

Women have taken advantage of these opportunities. Today, nearly 75,000 women serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine — about 20% more than in 2022. In 2025, almost 1,000 women completed the State Employment Service's retraining program in 31 "non-traditional" occupations, ranging from machine operators to tractor drivers. Meanwhile, nearly one-third of the graduates of the Kyiv School of Economics' ProfTech program were women who trained in welding, electronics assembly, and machine operation.

These are small numbers set against a reserve of 3.5 million women who, according to VoxUkraine's research, would like to work. But they suggest that the obstacle is not a shortage of willingness on the part of women, where a legal pathway into these occupations has been opened, women have used it.

Where the law fails

Ukrainian legislation explicitly prohibits discrimination. The Law on Advertising imposes a fine of UAH 86,470 for discriminatory language in job postings, such as "looking for a woman under 30." Article 184 of the Labor Code also prohibits employers from refusing to hire women because they are pregnant or have children.

However, while violations in the first case are relatively easy to identify and punish because job advertisements are usually public, proving discrimination in hiring is virtually impossible. Employers can always claim they found a better candidate, and women have no way of comparing their qualifications with those of other applicants. According to Work.ua data for March 2026, 25% of women have experienced discrimination related to motherhood—in most cases not outright refusal to hire or dismissal, but psychological pressure, inappropriate questions, or attempts to force them to quit.

Equal pay is also required by law, under the Law on Remuneration and the Law on Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Men. According to official data, in 2023 — the year Ukraine adopted its strategy for overcoming the gender pay gap — the average gap stood at 18.6%. Among women aged 19–29 it reaches 41.4%, according to estimates by the Institute for Demography of the National Academy of Sciences, based on Pension Fund data. The average in the European Union is 11.1%.

One of the problems in this area is the lack of detailed statistics, which makes it difficult to determine whether wage differences are driven by women and men holding different positions — which would point to a "glass ceiling," whereby women are less likely to be hired into managerial roles—or whether women and men are actually paid differently for the same work. Ukraine does not require employers to report wage data broken down by gender, and as a result three-quarters of companies do not systematically monitor gender pay equality. Without such reporting requirements, tracking whether the gap is closing will remain difficult.

Laws alone are not enough

The new Law on Preschool Education, adopted in 2024, guarantees all children the right to preschool education and allows children to remain in daycare facilities around the clock. However, not all facilities have bomb shelters, and 24-hour childcare is available primarily in private institutions, because public facilities often lack funding for overnight staff.

The shortage of childcare places is not a legal issue. Still, it directly determines whether women can work at all: 67.5% of women outside the labor market are engaged in caregiving and household work. The war has further increased this burden. During the war years, the share of women who are the primary breadwinners in their families rose from 7% to 23%, while the amount of care work—including caring for children and sick or injured family members—also increased. That is why access to childcare is no longer a matter of convenience; it is a condition for families' survival.

A new Labor Code could one day abolish every prohibition it contains, and that would improve the chances of employment for the 3.5 million women who say they want to work. It would not, on its own, give them anywhere to leave their children.

Oleh Ivanov

Oleh Ivanov is an analyst at Vox Ukraine