Story here. Excerpt:

'Ride share services are convenient and popular. However, some riders think it may not always be the safest option.

“I’ve questioned who is driving me around,” explains car service rider Lindsay Roth of Brighton.

Chariot for Women is a new Massachusetts-based company that will soon offer rides nationwide from an app, similar to Uber, but this service is for women with vehicles only driven by women.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The United Nations office on women's rights in Brazil said Thursday that President Dilma Rousseff has been the victim of "sexist political violence" by opponents seeking to oust her.

Rousseff, Brazil's first woman president, is battling impeachment proceedings and mass protests calling for her departure.

The leftist leader's popularity has tumbled in the face of a recession and an explosive corruption scandal, but UN Women said underlying sexism is fueling the increasingly vitriolic movement against her.

"As a defender of women's and girls' rights around the world, UN Women condemns all forms of violence against women, including the political violence of a sexist nature directed against President Dilma Rousseff," Nadine Gasman, head of UN Women in Brazil, said in a statement.
...
Some three million Brazilians took to the streets on March 13 calling for her departure.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Why has marriage declined in America? Here's my dorm room bull theory: it's because men are pigs.

I know, I know: #NotAllMen blah blah blah. That said, let's unpack this a bit. Basically, an awful lot of men are—and always have been—volatile and unreliable. They drink, they get abusive, and they do stupid stuff. They're bad with money, they don't help with the kids, and they don't help around the house. They demand subservience. They demand sex. And even on the one dimension they're supposedly good for—being breadwinners—they frequently tend to screw up and get fired.

In other words, marriage has been a bad deal for women pretty much forever. But they've been forced into it by cultural mores and economic imperatives, and that's the only reason it's been nearly universal in the past.

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman has been jailed for over three years after she admitted to tricking girls into having sex using a rubber penis.

Jennifer Staines, 23, groomed her victims online under the name Jason Spiller saying she was looking for love.

She even went on holiday with the girls and one relationship lasted for more than a year, convincing entire families that she was a man.

She wouldn’t let her victims – aged between 12 and 17 – touch her body and used condoms on the rubber penis. One of the girls went to her doctor believing she might be pregnant and so convincing was her deceit that one of her victims still struggles to believe she was in a relationship with a woman, not a man.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The growing federal emphasis on combating sexual harassment on campus, along with universities’ broadening definitions of inappropriate sexual behavior, has had a chilling effect on academic freedom and speech, especially on female professors in areas like gender studies, a report released Thursday by the American Association of University Professors said.

The report says that in the last few years, the government has been regulating not just sexual conduct but also sexual speech, and that the emphasis on complying with federal law has led to some professors being investigated by universities for making statements that some students find offensive but that the report says should be protected. A heightened focus on speech, the report said, has led to episodes like one in which students demanded trigger warnings before being exposed to graphic lesbian sex in “Fun Home,” the memoir by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights brought needed attention to the problem of sexual assault and harassment on college campuses with its 2011 letter telling institutions to enforce the law. But in so doing, the office has created a slew of new problems with implications for free speech and academic freedom. That’s the premise of a lengthy new report from the American Association of University Professors.

Drawing on the history of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender discrimination in education, the report argues for a more judicious application of the law across academe. The report is an attempt to reshape discussion of Title IX -- to put substantially more emphasis on due process.

Predictably for so controversial a topic, “The History, Uses and Abuses of Title IX” is earning praise and criticism from those on all sides of the argument.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Amherst College, which is in the midst of one of the most egregious sexual assault lawsuits I've ever seen, is now defending itself against a lawsuit by claiming it can't be expected to find key evidence.

I've written about this case previously, and though it seems like an article from The Onion, it's real. A male student was blacked out (as in, a blackout state, notpassed out) and received oral sex from a female student, who happened to be his girlfriend's roommate. The ordeal cost the female student her friends, and 18 months later (and after befriending some victims' advocates) she accused the male student of sexual assault.

So, to briefly recap: A male student is blacked out, receives a sex act, and is then accused of sexual assault.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'U.S. colleges trying to respond decisively to complaints of sexual assault are getting slammed with lawsuits from men who say they've been unfairly suspended or otherwise punished.

At least 75 men have sued their schools since 2013, complaining largely of reverse discrimination and unfair disciplinary proceedings.

Most of the men were never charged with a crime because the accuser didn't go to police or authorities decided there wasn't enough evidence.

Schools say they feel caught in the middle.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'A doctoral candidate at the University of North Dakota recently published a research paper that argued one way to make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics more inclusive for women is to make it “less competitive.”

Laura Parson suggests that females enrolled in such studies suffer from “the masculine nature of STEM education” in her research paper “Are STEM Syllabi Gendered? A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis.” To rectify the issue of reinforced gendered messages, Parson essentially proposes that STEM courses could offer “less competitive teaching methods.”

“Although the corpus of syllabi explored was small, the findings from this exploration support the view of STEM courses as chilly,” Parson posited in her paper. “This suggests that there is an opportunity for STEM courses to reduce the perception of courses as difficult and unfriendly through language use in the syllabi, and also as a guide for how to use less competitive teaching methods and grading profiles that could improve the experience of female students.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yet Republican Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Louie Gohmert (Texas) and Thomas Massie (Ky.) voted against both bills. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) supported the science mentorship legislation but opposed the other measure.

Gohmert addressed his vote during a House floor speech later Tuesday afternoon, saying he was concerned the legislation he described as “incredibly well intended” might shortchange some people.

“We want to take time from our $19 trillion in debt to demand that the National Science Foundation discriminate based on gender. There may be some young boy [who] needs encouragement from a tough family situation, but this program is designed to discriminate against that young poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the boy, encourage the girl,” Gohmert said.

The Texas Republican suggested that forcing the government to prioritize recruiting women could potentially result in a reversed gender gap down the road.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'The Knox County district attorney last year determined that "no sustainable prosecution exists" to pursue sexual assault charges against a former UT football player — an incident that is briefly cited in asexual assault lawsuit brought against the University of Tennessee by eight former students.
...
one of the plaintiffs is a former roommate of a woman who reported being sexually assaulted who said she felt forced to leave the school after intimidation by football players.

In at least five cases, the university's own disciplinary process found, by a preponderance of evidence, that athletes referenced in the lawsuit had violated student codes of conduct by engaging in non-consensual sex, according to the lawsuit.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Plaintiff Samy Jecrois was arrested Nov. 12, 2014, two days after a sexual encounter in his dorm room with a female student, the complaint says. He was held in the Hudson County Jail until Dec. 2, 2014, because he could not make the $250,000 bail, the suit claims. The prosecutor's office administratively dismissed his charges Dec. 22, 2014, before the case could be submitted to a grand jury.

The alleged victim, identified in the complaint as S.S.D., described to investigators multiple versions of what happened during the encounter with Jecrois, according to the suit. Inconsistencies in her account demonstrated that she could not tell a credible story in an interview with investigators, that she described an event that "could have been viewed as a consensual sexual encounter" and that the problems with her story should have alerted detectives that her allegations were insufficient to establish probable cause, the suit claims.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Jay Cheshire was cleared of rape in June. Allegations made against the 17-year old were withdrawn by the complainant just weeks after being filed, resulting in the investigation being closed. Yet, two weeks after the teenager was acquitted of the charge - and with his adult life still ahead of him - Jay was discovered hanging from a treein his local park.

According to coroner Grahame Short, Jay was a sensitive young man who had "found it difficult to cope with the police investigation" - a conclusion reiterated by the boy's mum, Karin, who said of the accuser: "She accused him of rape and said he was a sexual offender. He was absolutely distraught."

To prosecute an individual for rape - or indeed sexual harassment of any type - is notoriously difficult. However, since the tragic events surrounding the death of Jay Cheshire, thoseopposed to the current laws and practices concerning sexual harassment have become increasingly active in voicing their criticism of the system.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Senior bankers could see their bonuses slashed if they fail to appoint enough women to top jobs.

A series of proposals to stamp out inequality in the workplace will be announced by a Government-backed task force today.

The report found that women occupy only 14 per cent of top financial service jobs. The sector employs more than two million people.

A key recommendation is that financial services firms such as banks and insurance companies link the bonuses of bosses to the number of women they appoint in senior roles.

Companies will also be asked to sign up to a voluntary charter, pledging to promote ‘gender balance’.

They will have to commit to putting one senior executive in charge of gender diversity, setting internal targets and publishing their progress on an annual basis.

Four firms, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland have already signed up.'

Story here. Ever notice how people tend to assume otherwise unidentified animal abusers are male and sooo shocked to discover a female was the perp? Excerpt:

'The intermittent wails of four-year-old Ammu, a female stray dog that grew up among the residents of Lane No. 3, Krishnanagar, off Tumkur Road, have cast a pall of gloom over this locality of mostly ex-servicemen.

Residents are haunted by the memory of the dog digging her 15-day-old puppies out of their graves and trying to nurse them.

On March 15, her litter of eight was mercilessly flung onto the boulders, allegedly by Ponnamma, the wife of an ex-honorary flight lieutenant, a resident of this Jallahalli West neighbourhood. This she did reportedly to "teach the dog a lesson", who had dared to have puppies in a drain under her gate.

When we reached her doorstep to enquire about the incident, she refused to comment.