Incarcerated Women and High School Students Attend Class Together: ‘We’re All Americans in One Way or Another’

Horace Mann senior Simon Schackner created something that appears to have never been done before: a class simultaneously taught to 11 students at his high school and six students at a minimum-security women’s prison in Maine. 

“Prison education is very important to the way that [people who are incarcerated] reenter society,” said Gwen Wellman, a student in a Maine correctional facility. “Having this opportunity has given our generation a look at how we are worth that opportunity.”

The Confining Nature of Climate Change on Incarcerated People

From extreme flooding in Florida from Tropical Storm Elsa in July, to the wildfires that ravaged California last year, climate change is being realized in our everyday lives—with no end in sight. In fact, in the next 30 years, the cost of flood damage is expected to rise by 26 percent.

Those who are incarcerated are more likely to be impacted by climate change and environmental toxicity.

Ms. Global: Goodbye Merkel, Hello Gender Parity in German Cabinet; Barbados Becomes a Republic; Rohingya Sue Facebook for Promoting Genocide

Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: Sandra Mason becomes Barbados’s first ever president; journalist Maria Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize; China is “the world’s biggest captor of journalists”; Germany will have a gender-equal Cabinet for the first time; countries with the highest reported crimes against women include Sweden, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.; and more.

Ms. Global: #WhereIsPengShuai?; Sweden May Get Its First Woman PM; Bolivia Debates Abortion Rights; The End of COP 26

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: Romania’s massive coronavirus outbreak; Afghan families forced to sell their daughters; the aftermath of COP 26; where is Peng Shuai?; Sweden may get its first woman PM; and more.

Women’s Land Rights Are Necessary to Build Climate-Resilient Futures

“Despite the huge impact of agriculture on emissions, and the huge potential of land use for both mitigation and adaptation, it still receives far too little attention; and gender is consistently given minimal attention or altogether left out in conversations about agriculture and land use planning and management in particular, relative to climate conversations overall,” Beth Roberts, the director of Landesa’s Center for Women’s Land Rights, told Ms. 

Ms. Global: World Leaders Pledge Climate Action at COP 26; Barbados Elects First President; Israel Pushes West Bank Settlements

Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: Japan’s lower house has fewer women despite its empowerment law; despite disapproval from the Biden administration, Israel will build over 3,000 new homes in the West Bank; Barbados prepares to “fully leave our colonial past behind”; a historic bill in Sierra Leone mandates tat women occupy 30 percent of Cabinet posts and Parliament seats; and more.

Ms. Global: Arab World Gets Its First Female Head of State; Historic Trans Representation in Germany; Islamophobia in the U.K.

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

The Voices Excluded From the U.N. Climate Change Conference: “Women Are Vital to Solutions”

Beginning on October 31, the United Nations will host the U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 26) in Glasgow. The conference, which will last until November 12, aims to bring “parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” But environmental activists say COP26 is lacking adequate representation of voices from the Global South and Indigenous communities.

Women Carry Two-Thirds of Student Loan Debt. How Does the Pay Gap, Plus This Debt, Affect Women Workers?

More than 44 million Americans hold a combined $1.7 trillion in federal student loan debt (and those numbers don’t include privatize student loans). And of that collective debt, women carry two-thirds of it, according to a recent study from the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

Biden wants student loan forgiveness to include targeted student loan cancellation, improving student loan servicing, holding student loan servicers and universities accountable, and improving policies around student loan debt collection. But activists want more: the cancelation of *all* student debt.