Year: 2018

Canada (Conversation) – Are Canada’s current prostitution laws, enacted in 2014, achieving their goals? How you answer that question will depend on what you identify those goals to be. News reports frequently claim that Canada’s criminal prostitution laws are failing to achieve their goals. These articles often suggest that the laws were implemented to make sex work safer, healthier and less risky for those who engage in it. Despite these consistent assertions, these outcomes are not what the laws aim to achieve. Canada’s criminal laws applicable to prostitution were enacted…

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United States (Conversation) – Throughout history, politicians have restricted or outright banned certain areas of scientific or medical research based on moral or ethical grounds. In some cases, these measures were justified and prevented unethical human or animal research. In others, the bans could be seen as misguided and delaying medical advances. The use of human fetal tissue for research purposes has been highly contentious and tightly regulated, given that access to this tissue is directly associated with a woman’s right to choose an abortion since the tissue is procured…

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United States (Conversation) – Over nine decades, efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to recognize women’s rights have faced major challenges. Congress finally passed such legislation, known as the Equal Rights Amendment, in 1972. The amendment would recognize women’s equal rights to men under the law. Despite concerted campaigns by women’s rights groups, it fell short of the 38 states that needed to ratify it in order for it to become part of the Constitution. The original deadline for states to ratify was 1979. Congress extended the deadline to 1982,…

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United States (Conversation) – The Tennessee Supreme Court recently confirmed that Cyntoia Brown must serve 51 years in prison for shooting and killing a man in 2004 when she was just 16. News stories and social media have widely reported and shared Brown’s story. Many have compared her harsh sentence to lesser ones for white juveniles since the state of Tennessee first tried her case more than 10 years ago. The decision this week was the result of an appeal to her original sentence, submitted because it is now unconstitutional…

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Texas, United States (TexasTribune) –  In February 2016, prosecutors in Houston filed a lawsuit against a truck: State of Texas vs. One 2003 Chevrolet Silverado. Houston police had seized the vehicle after surveilling its driver, Macario Hernandez, and pulling him over after he left his house. They took the truck to court, hoping to keep it or sell it at auction to fund their operations, claiming the vehicle was known to be involved in the drug trade. But the truck’s owner, Oralia Rodriguez, was never charged with a crime. She wasn’t…

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West Africa (Conversation) –There are global efforts fighting modern slavery, but one traditional system is still holding strong in West Africa: Trokosi. The Conversation Africa’s Moina Spooner spoke to Wisdom Mensah about the system and what can be done to finally put a stop to it. What is Trokosi? Trokosi is a traditional system where virgin girls, some as young as six years old, are sent into Troxovi shrines (shrines for gods) as slaves to make amends for wrongs committed by a member of the virgin girl’s family. Until the…

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United States (TexasTribune) – It had been six months since Maria fled for the U.S. She spent the first two weeks running from her tiny hometown in southern Guatemala, where she said gangs had threatened to kill her and her 7-year-old son, Jerson. After traveling through Mexico, they requested asylum at the U.S. border. They were separated for the next two months, with Maria detained at an adult detention center in Arizona and Jerson sent to a shelter in New York. Given the choice to reunite with her son in detention…

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United States (WNV) – On Nov. 30, the MIT Media Lab hosted its second annual Disobedience Award presentation. It was a celebration of individuals who defied the law in conscientious efforts to promote justice in the areas of gender equity, immigration rights, economic fairness and environmental well-being. There were three winners, five finalists and two honorable mentions — every one of them was a woman. Ethan Zuckerman, director of MIT Center for Civic Media, opened the presentation by highlighting the importance of civil disobedience: When we dare to follow our conscience…

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World Wide (Conversation) – Can you name a female scientist from history? Chances are you are shouting out Marie Curie. The twice Nobel Prize-winning Curie and mathematician Ada Lovelace are two of the few women within Western science to receive lasting popular recognition. One reason women tend to be absent from narratives of science is because it’s not as easy to find female scientists on the public record. Even today, the numbers of women entering science remain below those of men, especially in certain disciplines. A-level figures show only 12%…

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