Year: 2018

United States (Conversation) – Republican women have faced a conundrum repeatedly in the last two years. In the cases of Donald Trump, Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh, the question facing them has been whether to support a male Republican leader accused of sexual assault – or to press for male accountability. That was evident most recently when Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, spoke for 45 minutes on the Senate floor earlier this month. Collins explained why she voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite multiple allegations…

United States (Conversation) – Roughly 5,000 people, mostly from Central America’s violent and unstable “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are reportedly making their way through Mexico with the intention of claiming asylum at the U.S. border. The so-called “migrant caravan” is attracting intense social and political attention, with U.S. President Donald Trump declaring it a “national emergency.” He has also claimed, erroneously, that the migrants “have to” claim asylum in Mexico first. Migrants aren’t obligated to claim asylum in any country, but have a right to seek…

World Wide (Conversation) – If you want gender equality, get rich. Research shows that men and women tend to be more equal in more developed countries. You might expect that the more equal opportunities in these countries might reduce other differences between the genders, such as what kind of jobs people are more likely to have, or personality traits such as kindness or a tendency for risk-taking. But a new study published in Science argues the opposite, that greater equality actually widens these kind of gender differences. Cleverly, the study…

United States (Conversation) – African American civil rights activist Tarana Burke started the metoo campaign in 2006 as a way to support sexual abuse survivors, specifically black women and women of colour. But when it fired its way into the public consciousness to become a popular, global hashtag after the Harvey Weinstein story broke 12 months ago, the media responded. News outlets reported on Weinstein and the hundreds of others accused, and a number of television series and films worked #metoo into their storylines. These are all positive steps. But…

Texas, United States (TexasTribune) – In a self portrait that a 10-year-old girl pencil-sketched after her father was deported, her expression is solemn, eyes downcast and tears stream down her face. “What I felt when [they] took my dad was the worst,” the girl wrote. “I felt like I was missing something, and that was part of my heart.” Her testimony is one of dozens collected during a study on the impacts of stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, which has led to what the authors are calling a mental health…

Zimbabwe (Mosaic) – In the early 2000s, when there were just two psychiatrists serving over 12 million people, Zimbabwe had to get creative to treat depression. Now, one bright idea – the Friendship Bench – is spreading far and wide. Dixon Chibanda spent more time with Erica than most of his other patients. It wasn’t that her problems were more serious than others’ – she was just one of thousands of women in their mid-20s with depression in Zimbabwe. It was because she had travelled over 160 miles to meet him. Erica…

United States (TexasTribune) – Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s keynote speech at the World Gas Conference in June opened with a marching band and ended with an exhibition by the Harlem Globetrotters. It was a spectacle befitting the industry symposium, which kicked off with a reception featuring a violinist perched on a pedestal in a 20-foot-long dress and trumpeters bearing ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips banners on their instruments. “We’re sharing our energy bounty with the world,” Perry gushed from a stage at the Washington Convention Center. “I wish I could tell you the entire…

United States (Conversation) – The Violence Against Women Act, the federal government’s signature legislation aimed at responding to domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and stalking, expired at the end of September. Legislative wrangling over the act’s provisions led to the expiration. This was not the first time controversy has gotten in the way of extending the legislation. Originally passed with strong bipartisan support in 1994, a previous reauthorization ran into problems as a result of disputes involving protection for Native Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims of violence, and…