Women, incarceration and 'Jane Crow' laws

Women and girls changing their worlds — and ours. No Images? [Click here]( [Across Women's Lives]( Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Fear not, sign-up and receive your own copy weekly in your inbox. [Subscribe]( Letter from the Editor Hi AWL friends, A story that has gone largely uncovered — the [skyrocketing incarceration rates]( of women in the US — which has grown 716 percent since 1980, a rate 50 percent higher than men — has been in the news lately, thanks, in part, to a piece of [legislation]( introduced by some top-ranking Democrats that calls for banning [shackling]( of pregnant women in prison, among other changes. Let's hope that this leads to some deeper journalism on the issues surrounding the female prison population in the United States, like this [Broadly piece]( on Wednesday that looked at how restricting conjugal visits hurts incarcerated moms the most. In another article that stopped me in my tracks recently, Catherine Saint Louis wrote about newborn, opioid-dependent babies being taken away from their [mothers]( at birth, despite the research showing that it’s best for the babies’ health to breast-feed and stay close to their mothers. Also, ["Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of 'Jane Crow'"]( in The New York Times last week, revealed how states punish mothers, often for minor offenses, by taking their children away. What's more, the mothers are predominantly poor African Americans and Latinos. It's a disturbing state of affairs, but the journalism is stellar. There's more: Overseas, Yazidi women freed from ISIS control in Mosul, Iraq, are telling their stories. Check out Glamour’s intimate [photo essay]( by Erin Trieb. And following Albania’s recent elections, nearly a third of its [parliament is made up of women](. Bravo. In contrast, the US Congress is only about [19 percent female](. But, at least the State Department isn’t abandoning its programming to promote women’s rights entirely, we learned on Thursday. Thanks to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the only female on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Issues is being kept on. Read more about it [here](. Have a great weekend, Christina Asquith, Editorial Director, Across Women’s Lives [This week from AWL.]( Editor's note: Our reporting team of Jasmine Garsd and Andrea Crossan is leaving today for South Africa for a two week series on rising HIV infection among adolescent girls — and who's fighting back. Watch this space for their stories. This woman says she was trafficked by a diplomat. And it happens all the time.]( A half-hour outside of Washington, DC, there's a six-bedroom townhouse with a white portico. It was the house of Jane Kambalame, a diplomat in the United States from Malawi. Her job was to advocate for Malawian citizens. But there was one Malawian who didn't get Kambalame's help: Kambalame's maid, Fainess Lipenga. [Share via Twitter]( [Listen to the story]( [For the first time in its history, Brazil's top literary festival showcases books by women and minorities]( When Giovana Xavier looked at the lineup of writers who would attend FLIP 2016, the International Literary Festival of Paraty, she held her breath. Not one black woman author was invited. "I felt overlooked, left behind; I felt anger and pain. I wondered how could I turn those feelings into something creative, something beautiful, how could we evolve? [Share via Twitter]( [A team of women is unearthing the forgotten legacy of Harvard’s women ‘computers’]( In a cramped Harvard University sub-basement, a team of women is working to document the rich history of their predecessors. More than 40 years before women gained the right to vote, women labored in the Harvard College Observatory as “computers” — astronomy’s version of NASA’s “Hidden Figures” mathematicians. [Hear the story](. [Share via Twitter]( [Women and girls are a new frontier in the fight against HIV]( At the ninth annual conference on HIV science there was a lot to celebrate. AIDS used to be one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide — no more. A report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) shows deaths have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to 1 million last year. But for women across the world, the news is still grim. Women, especially girls, are disproportionately affected by the disease. The numbers are staggering: Today, women are twice as likely to acquire HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, 3 in 4 infections in teenagers are found in girls. [Share via Twitter]( This week on @womenslives Well thanks, Stephanie. We thought it was an amazing story too. Thank you for sharing it! [Follow @womenslives on Twitter]( Across Our News Feeds 👀 Weekend reads and dinner party fodder Splinter News [A Brief History of What Happens When White Women Are Killed by Cops]( Much has been made of Justine Damond’s status as the “ideal victim.” Robert Bennett, an attorney for Damond’s family, described her as “the most innocent victim” of a police shooting he had ever seen. Rightfully, black activists and writers have pointed out the hypocrisy implied in his words: that black people who are shot by police are not innocent but somehow deserving of their fates. Slate [Trump’s Boy Scouts Speech Is a Reminder of How Different the Girls Scouts Organization Is]( In some ways, the Boy Scouts represent a perfect slate onto which Trump can project his fantasies about authoritarian rule and a bygone era of white men saying and doing whatever they wanted. Broadly [Kamaiyah Wants the Music Industry to Stop Pitting Women Against Each Other]( Kamaiyah, a 22-year-old rapper out of Oakland, has lofty dreams lined up for herself. She stole the scene in 2016 with A Good Night in The Ghetto, her stellar debut mixtape boasting earworm hooks, G-funk bounce, melodies to spare, and above all a clear message: not only is she here to stay, but she's sure as hell going to have fun doing it. Dallas News [Overlooked: As women go to jail in record numbers, who's watching out for their kids? No one.]( For nearly a month, Kylia and her two young sisters lived alone in a rented house in Arlington. No one involved in jailing their mother — not the police, not the courts, not the sheriff’s department — ever checked on them. UN News Service [Peace is the 'bedrock' for women's development and human rights in DR Congo]( The importance of reversing the tragedies of violence, particularly against women and children, and ensuring that women's and girl's voices are heard in all aspects of society are at the core of the second leg of a high-level United Nations-African Union (AU) mission to Africa, which today visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Muslim Girl [Stories From a Muslim Women’s Shelter]( With a heavy heart, I put down my phone after answering the third call of the day–yet another woman with a young child who was seeking refuge at a shelter is now looking to leave since the shelter was co-ed and she feared for her child given the large number of cases of other residents with drug and alcohol addictions. News Deeply Women & Girls [The Women Confronting Loggers to Protect Cambodia’s Dwindling Forests]( “I love the forest and I want to protect it. We use it for everything – we make medicines from herbs and tree bark, and the trees protect us from the wind and hurricanes,” Sok Am, 23, says. “But the loggers are always in the forest.” Across Women’s Lives is PRI’s ambitious multi-platform journalism and engagement initiative about the connection between the empowerment of women and girls, and economic development and improved health around the world. This newsletter highlights our reporting and the work of PRI staff in calling attention to the ways that women are shaping a better future for their communities. [Donate Today]( PRI Public Radio International Hear a Different Voice [Like]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](