Sunday Links

• Oregon is getting it right when it comes to higher education
• Georgia's syllabus experiment
• Testing the prisoner's dilemma on prisoners 
• This is pretty cool and so is this 
• Protect male sperm!
• Education for Saudi women
• Men better vote in Zimbabwe or else...
• Portuguese migrants settle in Mozambique

Sexism and misogyny this week:

• California has been sterilizing female prisoners 
• Sexism's stamina
• "Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. Im sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes."  
• Misogyny lives on in Australia 
• Lost girls and prostitution
• Sexual harassment and rape in Egypt
• Why cops don't listen to rape victims
• Street harassment a global epidemic

Weekend Links

• Boys with sisters are more likely to be Republican
• We are asking men the wrong question when it comes to violence against women
• Responding to Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg
• Freida Pinto says the film industry is too male dominated
• Coming to a refugee camp near you: Ikea
• Brazilian youth entry into drug gangs
• Cell phones cause war?

Female IR Bloggers

Last week, Political Violence @ a Glance, asked where are all the female international relations (IR) bloggers.   This week Taylor Marvin and Barbara F. Walter answered that question with four main points: 

1.  High barriers to entry into the elite blogosphere.  Almost all have PhDs, are tenured, and from elite universities, which means they are more likely to be men.  There are fewer women with the credentials.  

This point goes hand in hand with "Do babies matter"?  Evidence suggests that female academics are "punished" for having families, which might explain the low numbers of women in IR as tenured faculty.  This means ensuring that universities pay attention to the types of barriers that women face in academia and address them. 

 2.  Women are simply not being asked to participate in blogs as often as are men. 

This means that prominent blogs should reach out to women, but it also means that women should reach out to prominent blogs.  The book Lean In talks about how women hold back when it comes to "sitting at the table."  The natural tendency for many women is to wait to be called on instead of volunteering an opinion.  This does not hold for all women though, just think about "Maya" from Zero Dark Thirty. 

3.  The blogosphere could deter greater female participation. Female bloggers are more likely to be dismissed for their gender than male bloggers.

Again, this a point made in Lean In. Women are just not taken as seriously as men when it comes to being experts on topics that have traditionally been dominated by men.  Both men and women are culprits when it comes to subtle and not so subtle remarks about the competency of women at their job.  The moral of the story is to stop assuming that "female x got the job because she is woman."  Instead, try reading her work and commenting on it. 

4.  Women may simply be less interested in blogging about professional topics than men because women simply have less time to blog than men, women are less confident in their opinions, and/or because women are less likely to self-promote than men.

The first explanation (the time factor) is perhaps the answer that most women would give if asked the question about why they do not blog.  The other two explanation are difficult to discern (without conducting an experiment, and experiments do suggest this as Marvin and Walter point out). 

Another reason there might not be many female bloggers is because 

Some thoughts on Gender

I have been here for a little over two weeks now, and have has some thoughts about gender and the role of women in Peru. There are several jobs that were previously dominated by men, which are slowly seeing more and more women.

• In a previous post, I described a national program implemented by then President Alberto Fujimori to replace male traffic officers with female ones. At the time of implementation, there was a major backlash with reports of some taxi drivers running the women over. While I am here, I intend to study how perceptions of these male drivers have changed over the last ten years and how the female traffic officers' own perceptions have changed.
• Another male dominated male work area that women have penetrated is the job of conductor in public transportation vehicles. Their jobs are to fill the vehicle (whether bus, "convi," or minibus) with as many people as possible and collect the fares. The men who have this job are, by far, more aggressive than the women. However, there does not seem to be a difference int he number of passengers in the vehicles. It would be interesting to find out whether women are just as effective or maybe even more effective in their job than men. One way to do this would be to research the total fares collected by the men versus the women for a selected mode of transportation over given period of time.
  
• The last area that I have noticed women is at gasoline stands. It is not a self service system here in Peru. Rather, ther are workers who fill your tank for you. In many gasoline stands, women have replaced men in this job. However, the women in many cases are required to wear mini skirts etc. Thus instead of a gender role transformation, the women continue to fulfill constructed gender norms.
  

The UK needs a Gender Sensitive Asylum System

We need a Gender Sensitive Asylum System:

Last week the government launched its strategy to end violence against women and girls. This rightly refers to the progress made by the police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts in dealing with violence against women and girls. For example, if you report a rape nowadays you can ask for a female police officer to be present at your interview and you get supported by a specially trained officer throughout the police investigation and at any subsequent trial. Contrast this treatment with that in the asylum system. Rani, who escaped Sri Lanka after her husband was murdered and she was raped by soldiers, told me that at her asylum interview:

I was happy with a lady interviewer but not a male translator ... Because he was a man I felt ashamed. If it was a woman I would have said more.

A gender-sensitive system should prevent this taking place. This week we at Asylum Aid have launched Every Single Woman, a new campaign under the Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum, which highlights that the criminal justice system has at least 26 laws or policies on working with women victims of crime while the UK Border Agency has just two.

Cecilia had the misfortune to spend time in both prison and an asylum detention centre. When I asked her the difference between them, her answer shocked me:

I'd prefer, rather than going in a detention centre ... to be in prison for the rest of my life.

She talked about male staff at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre, appearing unannounced, entering her room and searching through her possessions, including her underwear. Having herself experienced rape in Cameroon, this was particularly frightening. In prison, a search was always undertaken by a female prison officer and always after she had been warned that this would take place. In fact, UK prison policy is that there should be at least 60% female staff in a women's prison because "women who have been abused by men may feel safer in a predominantly female environment". No such policy exists in detention centres for women. At Tinsley House, near Gatwick Airport, there is room for 116 men and five women. With such a disproportionate number of males to females, women can feel intimidated, scared and isolated. Quite often a woman can be the only female detainee surrounded by 116 men. Women would never be placed in a men's prison in this way.

If a young woman is homeless and pregnant in the UK she is eligible for housing benefit, income support and one-off maternity grants worth £690. But not if she is a refused asylum seeker. Rahel is from Ethiopia and found herself without any support after her asylum claim was refused. For the first three months of her pregnancy she slept at Victoria Station in a sleeping bag given to her by the Red Cross. Only when she became so ill that she had to be hospitalised was she offered basic accommodation and vouchers to pay for food.

Women's Shelter for Muslim Women in Baltimore

I liked this story on NPR:

As families come together over the holidays, the victims of domestic abuse are often sequestered in shelters — a situation that's especially difficult for Muslim women, because few facilities meet their cultural and religious needs.

The women are here for many reasons. It's a sanctuary and an escape. It's also a place where they can live and pray without having their faith questioned.

"My biggest problem was that if you send a Muslim woman to be counseled in a shelter that's run by Christians, then what the people say is the reason why you're being beat is because of that religion. We do not want Islam to be the focal point of domestic violence," Hanif said.

Indeed, domestic violence knows no religion, but not all shelters are sensitive to Muslims, Hanif said.

"There may be situations — such as, there would be men that were there, or there wasn't any place for them to pray, or maybe there was an issue with the food," Hanif explained.

At Muslima Anisah, people take their shoes off at the door. There's no pork in the kitchen. A section at the front of the house is reserved for prayers.

"This is the prayer area; we pray five times a day," Hanif said, showing off the area.

Hanif is a nurse by trade, not a social worker. Running a battered women's shelter wasn't part of her plan. But over the years, she treated dozens of abused Muslim women at a health clinic.

One memory stayed with her: a woman who came in with a broken jaw.

"One of the Muslim women, her jaw was wired, and I remember her saying that now she could lose some weight because she had to suck her food through a straw," Hanif recalled. "We didn't inquire about it. We laughed with her. I remember we didn't do anything about it."

Now, it has been 12 years since Hanif set up this home in a residential neighborhood in Baltimore. She lives there even though she has three grown children.

Hanif is African-American, but most of the women she takes care of are immigrants.

"They have nowhere to go. Society doesn't want them. Their family doesn't want them, and the man who beat them doesn't want them," Hanif said.

Hanif said American women can turn to their community for help; they know the legal system better, and they know their rights. Most of the immigrants, including the Kurdish woman, speak little English and have even fewer resources.

Men Married to Smart Women Live Longer

Encouraging to know that I will make my spouse, whoever he may be, live longer :)
From the Times Online:

There is a lingering suspicion among girls (as the unpopularity of science subjects demonstrates) that boys don’t value cleverness as an essential quality in a life partner. Given a choice between gorgeous or brainy, there is no guarantee they’ll do the right thing, because men think they’re clever enough for two. Well, it turns out they’re wrong. Swedish scientists have discovered that long life and good health have nothing to do with a man’s education and everything to do with his wife’s. Men married to smart women live longer — simple.

I do have a few questions about this article though. What about gay couples, lesbian couples, transexual couples? Also, it struck me as a little arbitrary about how "smart" was defined in the article. In all its possible that the article has a gender bias, which should not be overlooked.

(HT: Jacques of All Trades)

Women to Suffer Most from Climate Change

According to a new study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), women in developing countries will be the most vulnerable to climate change. The BBC reports:

Women do most of the agricultural work, and are therefore affected by weather-related natural disasters impacting on food, energy and water, it said. The report suggested family planning, reproductive healthcare and "gender relations" could influence how the world adapts to rising seas, worsening storms and severe droughts.

Describing "a cycle of deprivation", the report said that women in developing countries did a larger share of farming and had less access to income-earning opportunities. They also managed households and cared for families, which limited their chances of moving around and increased "their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters".

I cant help but wonder, if while women are 'the most vulnerable to climate change' are they also not the most resilient to climate change? In other words, would they not be the key to finding particular and unique coping mechanisms to climate induced problems?

Percentage of Women Who Think it is Ok for their Husbands to Hit Them From Around the World

Global Health Magazine posted this screenshot today.

The information used in this graphic comes from data assembled on the UNICEF site Child Info: Monitoring the Situation of Women and Children and collected between 2001 and 2007. The percentages above represent women aged 15–49 who responded that a husband or partner is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances. See a chart with more country info and sources here. There appears to be no data on the U.S.

I want to stress one important point. Before we start blaming these women for their ignorance, we need to understand that their differing views are due to differences in culture. They were not raised with same values and convictions of those in the western world, and thus should not necessarily be looked down upon because of what they think. It is a matter of cultural relativism. That is not to say that I condone domestic violence. Rather, what I am saying is lets not blame these women for thinking the way they do.

(HT: Huffington Post)

Fighting Sexual Violence in the Congo

There has recently been a lot of clamor around Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to the Congo in which she stated that we must punish those that commit sexual violence against women. She even committed $17 million to fight the epidemic of sexual violence there. But unfortunately there has been little talk about real solutions and it seems that there is much controversy about how this money would be spent.

NPR reported on the visit and interviewed Anneke Van Woudenberg from Human Rights Watch about the visit. Here is what she had to say:

And I think much more of the money needs to go to stopping rape. That means ensuring that there's justice. It means better protection mechanisms for women and girls. We shouldn't just be helping the victims. We need to ensure that there are less victims in the future.

I dont think anyone would disagree with this. But it remains to be seen just what this means. What does better protection look like? How can women get justice when there are so many perpetrators and the government is not protecting its people but are in some cases the perpetrators themselves?

Moreover here is how the money is being spent, learned via Wronging Rights:

We learned from the New York Times today that the U.S. government is launching a $17 million plan to combat sexual violence in the Congo. (And yes, we probably should just go ahead and change the blog's name to "Wronging Rapes.")

The new initiative includes training for local gynecologists, assistance to the Congolese police force and, wait for it... "supply[ing] rape victims with video cameras to document violence."

The article does not explain the logic or logistics behind what TexasinAfrica is calling "Camcorders for the Congo" so we're left with a number of questions:

(1) Who are we giving these cameras to? Victims who report past rapes, on the assumption that they will soon be raped again? People who appear to be promising candidates for future rapes? Or, is the American government going to go back in time and hand out cameras to documented rape victims so they can be ready to hit "record" when the violence begins?

(2) In what way is the lack of film evidence impeding the fight against sexual violence in the Congo? Seriously, just let us know. Open-minded bloggers that we are, we are amenable to the possibility that someone looked into this question and found that, in a country without a functioning government, economy, police force, judiciary, army, system of land tenure, prosecutor's office, criminal defense bar, or -we can't help but point out- power grid on which to charge portable electronic devices, the real impediment to the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes is the dearth of video footage. We eagerly await receipt of that study.

(3) Where is the footage gathered from these cameras going to go? We are aware that there is plenty of demand for that sort of thing (this blog gets a lot of Google hits from people in search of "Africa rape porn") but remain a little fuzzy on how filling that niche is going to combat the problem at hand.

And by the way, those camcorders had better not contain any conflict coltan. Because if they do, then it's only a matter of time before we all have to read another Enough Project report pointing out the direct link between violence against women in the Congo and the video camera that you sent to be used to film violence against women in the Congo.

Here is some more analysis.

Gender Discrimination in Theatre?

Via NPR:

Surprisingly, there is a disparity between the number of theatre shows by men that make it to a stage and those by women...according to a new study by Emily Glassber Sands, author of a new economic study on gender bias and women playwrights, called "Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender."

US Immigration Policy Harms Women, Families

In case people have missed this point earlier- US Immigration Policy harms women and families (and men too). Human Rights Watch briefed Congress on this issue. Will Congress do something?

Immigration detention is the fastest growing form of incarceration in the United States. On any given day, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holds 33,000 immigrants in detention, about 10 percent of them women. Detainees include asylum seekers, victims of trafficking, survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence, pregnant women, and mothers of children who are US citizens.

"The vast majority of women I interviewed posed no security threat or flight risk," said Nina Rabin, director of border research at the Southwest Institute for Research on Women and director of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program at Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. "One of the most effective ways to deal with immigration enforcement is simply not to detain so many people and instead use a wide range of alternatives."

Kathleen Baldoni, who worked as a nurse at Willacy Detention Center, the largest immigration detention center in the country, said that women there often are subjected to extreme temperatures, inadequate nutrition, medical staffing shortages and long delays for critically needed health care.

"I was prevented from providing the level of care ethically required of me as a health care provider," said Baldoni. "Nursing and medical staff are genuinely caring people who want to do the best for their patients, but we are often hampered by the system. Not only are the detainees in danger, but also the medical staff, who face liability issues, are as well."

A March 2009 report by Human Rights Watch found that while current standards allow for emergency medical care and treatment for detained immigrants, they are insufficient to cover women's unique physical, social, emotional, and health care needs. These include gynecological exams, pre- and post-natal care, and treatment for those who have been victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.

"It is appalling that ICE does not provide women in its custody with enough sanitary pads to keep from bleeding through their clothes, to say nothing of sufficient Pap smears, mammograms, and the other most basic elements of women's health care," said Meghan Rhoad, researcher in the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "It is bad enough that these women are locked up. The least the government can do is to give them decent care."

Emily Butera, program officer at the Women's Refugee Commission, said that ICE's focus on emergency care and keeping detainees medically ready for deportation is misplaced. "ICE needs to take into account the pressing humanitarian needs of individuals not held on criminal charges," she said. "In addition to poor conditions in detention facilities, our immigration and enforcement policies are needlessly endangering the well-being of vulnerable people and tearing apart families."

In fact, the advocates point out, women are being separated from their children, permanently in many cases, at great cost to society. In some cases, mothers are detained and taken to detention facilities hundreds of miles away without being given the opportunity to make the most basic arrangements for the care of their children. While in detention they are denied access to telephones and the legal materials necessary to locate their children and communicate with family courts to preserve their parental rights.

"ICE took me from my home while my children watched in fear," said Marlene Jaggernauth, a single parent who was separated from her four children, all of them US citizens, and who will speak at today's event. "Had I not experienced a year in immigration detention, I would never have believed that such inhumanity existed."

Is Rape Also Torture?

Via the UN dispatch:

The International Criminal Court formally ordered that Jean Pierre Bemba, a former Congolese vice president and militia leader, stand trial on charges that he commanded his militia in a campaign of rape, murder and pillage in the Central African Republic. Bemba was arrested last year in Belgium where he was living in exile.

The case against Bemba is unprecedented in international war crimes tribunals for the fact that it will center on the crime of rape. The number of alleged rapes by Bemba's troops far outnumber cases of murder that his troops are alleged to have committed in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Rape was Bemba's primary weapon of war. Accordingly, much of the jurisprudence decided upon by this case will have long-lasting effects on how future war crimes prosecutors and judges approach cases of rape-as-a-war crime.

At issue yesterday was whether or not the prosecutor could charge Bemba for both rape AND torture for the same act of rape. That is, when a soldier under Bemba's command raped a victim, the prosecution argued that this soldier is also committing the crime of torture.

In yesterday's pre-trial ruling, ICC judges said, basically, "not so fast."

Bec Hamilton summarizes the key point.

Although during the confirmation hearing the Prosecution said that Bemba’s...troops “used torture through acts of sexual violence for the purpose of punishing and intimidating the civilian population for allegedly sympathizing with Bozizé’s rebels, as well as for the purpose of discriminating against their victims”, the Chamber found that the specific purpose was not clearly articulated in the Amended Document Containing the Charges, and therefore the Defence did not have sufficient notice to respond to the charge. (para 299/300) It was this lack of notice, rather than an ‘in-principle’ view that both rape and torture as a war crime could not be charged for the same act of rape, that lead the Chamber to dismiss the charge of torture as a war crime.

So, it seems we will have to wait a bit longer for a resolution to the legal question: "is rape also torture."

If you want to learn more about the terrible crimes that occurred in CAR during 2002-2003, this Amnesty report is a good place to start.

Women Find Empowerment Through Digital Storytelling

At the 53rd United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) held March 2 to March 13, in New York City, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) sponsored "Digital Storytelling," an event that highlighted the use of digital media as a powerful platform that gives survivors of gender-based violence the ability to determine how they are viewed and how their personal accounts are told. Reuters reports:

Through digital storytelling, youth and adults are able to use existing media tools to record, produce, and share stories from their lives in ways that promote artistic expression, health and well being, and justice.

"Digital Storytelling is a medium used to bring the stories of women's lives to the foreground through both video imaging, and still pictures," said John Torres, senior public relations manager for ADRA International. "These short productions express the many and varied experiences and challenges that women around the world face on a day-to-day basis."

Ecuador's Sex Industry

Sex workers in Ecuador are building a national labor network and trying to curb HIV-AIDS, while dealing with the growing presence of minors and undocumented workers in brothels:

RedTrabSex (labor union), Ecuador's national network of sex workers with headquarters in Quito, is divided into 15 organizations and is still growing. So far, the group, which began mustering its ranks in 2005, has established organizations in 14 of the country's 24 total provinces.

The Ministry of Health registered 25,000 sex workers in 2000. But the real figure is much higher, given that sex workers rarely stay more than a few weeks in one place. Health officials also only monitor licensed venues and clandestine brothels are numerous.

But RedTrabSex--the name, an abbreviation for sex workers network in Spanish--faces legal and ethical complications in Ecuador, where sex work is neither legal nor illegal. Currently, brothels derive their legitimacy not from the law but from a series of health and sanitation certificates from local health authorities that add up to "centers of tolerance," where prostitution is accepted.

Some Colombian sex workers are drawn to Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar as its official currency. Human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a strong reality in Ecuador. A high percentage of Colombian sex workers in Ecuador arrived after being lured by pimping agents with promises of high-end retail and caretaker jobs only to end up in indentured servitude in brothels and bars.n those paid in the more volatile Colombian peso. Many Ecuadorian minors are trafficked from small rural towns to commercial capitals across the country, particularly Quito and Guayaquil.

More on the sex trade in Ecuador.

While I was in Ecuador, I looked at child exploitation in the sex industry, and interviewed several sex workers in brothels in Quito, and the Galapagos Islands.

• I found that in legal brothels, there is a rotating scheme for women from different countries and they are required to have mandatory health screenings once a month.
  
• In the Galapagos Islands, there was a correlation between the price of sexual acts and the gains from fishing.
  
• There is also a class issue, those from the lower class were usually on the street, in the underground market, whereas those from higher class were found in the legal brothels. For example, most of the women/men on the street were of African origin.

Women in American Politics

This is a great summary of the numbers of women in American politics.

The Gender Disparities in Medical Care for Immigrant Detainees

The medical care system in US immigration detention is dangerously inadequate, with unique consequences for women, and improving health care for immigration detainees should be a top priority for the new administration. Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center said in documented numerous instances in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) botched, delayed or denied medical care, causing suffering and even death.

The 78-page Human Rights Watch report, "Detained and Dismissed: Women's Struggles to Obtain Health Care in United States Immigration Detention," documents dozens of cases in which the immigration agency's medical staff either failed to respond at all to health problems of women in detention or responded only after considerable delays.

"Women in detention described violations such as shackling pregnant detainees or failing to follow up on signs of breast and cervical cancer, as well as basic affronts to their dignity," said Meghan Rhoad, researcher in the women's rights division at Human Rights Watch.

Women described struggling to obtain potentially life-saving services such as Pap smears to detect cervical cancer, mammograms to check for breast cancer, pre-natal care, counseling for survivors of violence, and even basic supplies such as sanitary pads or breast pumps for nursing mothers. The obstacles to health services included inadequate communication about available services, unexplained delays in treatment, unwarranted denial of services, breaches of confidentiality, and failure to transfer medical records. When women were denied services, complaint mechanisms were ineffective.

The Human Rights Watch report is based on visits to nine detention centers in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, and interviews with 48 women detained or recently released from immigration detention, detention facility staff and health care providers, immigration officials, immigration attorneys and advocates. Additional research was conducted in the New York and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas.

Girl Child Soldiers

Dr. Myriam Denov draws from her experience in Sierra Leone to focus on girl soldiers:

First, whether in the heat of conflict or within postwar programming, girls are, for the most part, rendered invisible and marginalized. During conflict, the roles that they play are frequently deemed peripheral and insignificant by governments, national and international NGOs, policy-makers, and program developers. In the aftermath of war, girls continue to be marginalized within the realms of education, economics, and are frequently discriminated against within formal disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) processes, as well as within the context of their families and communities.

Second, in spite of this profound invisibility and marginalization, girls are fundamental to the war machine – their operational contributions are integral and critical to the overall functioning of armed groups.

Third, girls in fighting forces contend with overwhelming experiences of victimization, perpetration, and insecurity. During conflict, girls are subjected to grave violations of their human rights through forced recruitment, killing, maiming, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, abduction, forced marriage, and increased exposure to HIV/AIDS. Many are also forced to participate in brutal acts of violence. In the aftermath of conflict, girls arguably bear a form of secondary victimization through socio-economic marginalization and exclusion, as well as the ongoing threats to their health and personal security.

Finally, girls in fighting forces are not simply silent victims, but active agents and resisters during armed conflict. Girls’ made remarkable attempts to defend and protect themselves during situations of severe violence and insecurity, as well as efforts to bring about change for themselves and by themselves. Challenging the predominant portrayals of girls as emblematic victims, girls attempted to avoid, minimize, or resist wartime abuses, patriarchal power structures, and the culture of violence that surrounded them.

In light of these research findings, an alternative approach is essential -- one that gives due regard to the ways in which girls in fighting forces are perceived, represented, and conceptualized.

Rather than focusing solely on girls’ vulnerability and victimization, it is essential also to direct our attention to their self-efficacy, resilience, and skills. Moreover, given their significant presence and multiple roles within fighting forces, girls’ experiences and perspectives should be considered as central and indispensable to understandings and analyses of war and political violence, and not regarded as peripheral or, unwittingly or wittingly, rendered invisible.

Sexually Assaulted Female Immigrants Denied Reproductive Rights

Current U.S. immigration detention policy includes locking up women who have been raped and then denying them access to abortion services. Kevin Sieff writes in the Texas Observer:

In 2008, 10,653 women were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to agency spokeswoman Cori Bassett, 965 of those women — nearly 10 percent — were pregnant. Many of them, were raped on their way to the United States—a journey known to be dangerous for any willing to take it, but especially so for women. For pregnant women in immigration detention facilities, it is virtually impossible to obtain an abortion. “Preliminary records indicated that during fiscal year ’08 and ’09 to date, no detainee has had a pregnancy terminated while in ICE custody.” Not a single one.

With the prevalence of rape among immigrants and the government’s increasingly stringent immigration enforcement policies, ICE’s treatment of pregnant detainees has become particularly relevant in recent years.

Medical services within ICE detention facilities, including requests for abortions, are handled by the Division of Immigration Health Services, a subagency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The division has sometimes scrambled to fulfill its growing responsibilities, since ICE was created out of the now-defunct Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services.

The joint policy of the division and ICE is to not fund elective procedures, including abortions. On its “Detainee Covered Service Package,” the division lists abortion as an example of commonly requested procedures that are “not covered but can be requested in the event of an emergency situation.” “ICE must pay for the termination of a pregnancy if a physician determines that the continuation of a pregnancy is life-threatening for the mother.”

ICE’s policy on abortion is markedly different than that of its sister organization, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which requires that each pregnant inmate receive counseling to help her decide “whether to carry the pregnancy to full term or to have an elective abortion,” according to federal regulations. If a detainee asks for an abortion, the prison’s clinical director “shall arrange for an abortion to take place.”

Kolkata's Red Light District

Kolkata's red light districts are world famous, but the women who work there are too numerous to stand out. Shamita Das Dasgupta and her co-author interviewed some of those with children to feed.