Article here. Excerpt:

'Courts will be encouraged to hand more community sentences to women offenders – backed by curfews, tagging and unpaid work – in an attempt to reduce the female prison population.

The move, combined with treatment programmes for women with alcohol and drug problems, is designed to reduce the number of families that are broken up when a mother is jailed.

In an interview with The Independent, the Justice Minister, Helen Grant said: “There are some women who are bad and a risk to the public and society and they need to go to prison. But there are other women who are in the system, low-risk women, who would benefit greatly from punitive, credible punishments in the community.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has ruled that women convicts serving life sentence in Maharashtra jails are required to spend only 14 years unlike male convicts, who have to be behind bars for a period ranging from 14 to 28 years depending on the nature of offence committed by them.

The ruling was delivered on March 15 by Justices Abhay Thipsay and P V Hardas, who were hearing a petition filed by Usha Upadhyay challenging the decision of the state government in respect of benefit of premature release to be given to her on the basis of guidelines framed by the Government.

"In our opinion, category 1 of 2010 guidelines, which is exclusively for women offenders, must cover all cases of women offenders and that they can be fitted only in that category.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Having skills suited for a variety of careers helps explain why few women pursue math and science jobs, new research finds.

A study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan revealed that women may be less likely to want careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) because they have more career choices, not because they have less ability.

"Our study shows that it's not lack of ability or differences in ability that orients females to pursue non-STEM careers, it's the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability," said Ming-Te Wang, one of the study's co-authors and developmental psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh. "Because they're good at both, they can consider a wide range of occupations."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A former Titans cheerleader is accused of pulling a 12-year-old boys pants off and offering him oral sex. She denies the allegations.

Black Mountain News reports that Elizabeth Leigh Garner, 42, of Nashville was indicted last week on aggravated sexual battery and solicitation of a minor for child rape.

In February, the boy told police he was at his home when he went upstairs to use the bathroom. He said Garner, who had been drinking, followed him upstairs.

"He stated she was asking him if he had ever been with a woman,” Murfreesboro Police Detective Tommy Roberts said in a report obtained by the Black Mountain News.

The boy said Garner then touched him "on the outside of his pants" and made "an attempt to take his shorts off" while offering to "perform oral sex on him."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The family and friends of Travis Alexander said it was difficult to watch Jodi Arias testify for nearly a month and "murder him again" with what they said are lies about Alexander's behavior and character.

"Travis is not on trial. Jodi is on trial and she done everything to put him on trial," Chris Hughes, who was Alexander's best friend, told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

Hughes has been watching the trial mostly from his home in Utah while members of Alexander's family, including at least three of his seven brothers and sisters, have been in the front row of the courtroom almost every day.

Arias, 32, is accused of murdering Alexander by stabbing him 27 times, slitting his throat and shooting him in the head. She could face the death penalty if convicted.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week, we reported the data gathered by Fathers and Families member Terry Brennan on the number of men and women incarcerated from Massachusetts Probate and Family Courts for incomplete payment of child support. We found that 95% to 98.5% of those incarcerated in Massachusetts for this violation from 2001 through 2011 were men.

I then took Terry’s data and compared it to national data on rates of child support payment. I found that mothers in arrears are incarcerated at lower rates even though they have higher rates of incomplete payment, pay a smaller percentage of their child support order, and have larger arrears than fathers. In fact, mothers with child support arrears in Massachusetts are incarcerated at approximately one-eighth of the rate that would be justified by their numbers if fathers and mothers in arrears were treated equally.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Lawyers with the Utah-based Rocky Mountain Innocence Center say new DNA testing proves the innocence of a man who has served more than 23 years in prison on a Wyoming rape conviction.

Cheyenne lawyer Aaron J. Lyttle filed a request for a new trial for 63-year-old Andrew J. Johnson on Tuesday. Johnson, who has maintained his innocence, is serving a life sentence at the state prison in Rawlins on the 1989 conviction.

Lyttle stated that DNA testing proves Johnson didn't commit the crime. Lyttle says he expects that Johnson will receive a new trial.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON — The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.

David H. Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.

Prosecutor bias is a serious problem. In January we sent the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) a letter*. We requested that they make their program, the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women (NCPVAW) gender neutral or gender inclusive, consistent with current research.

[*Ed.: I had trouble opening this .pdf using Firefox, but it worked fine for me in Internet Explorer. You may have different results. -- Matt ]

They didn't do it. So last week we asked you to file complaints. You called and emailed; and for that we thank you. Unfortunately, our concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

NDAA has defended the NCPVAW program while reporting that it's almost entirely funded by grant awards given by the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). That almost sounds like an excuse to discriminate, doesn't it? Oh my.

Luckily they also stated, "We train prosecutors all over the country to prosecute ALL cases of domestic violence - on behalf of BOTH MALE AND FEMALE VICTIMS." Good thing, since the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)'s inclusiveness mandate includes the need for prosecutors to charge DV suspects regardless of sex....and to prosecute false accusers.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Many Rabbis are welcoming intact males into the Jewish community, and a growing number of Rabbis feel that surgical circumcision is no longer appropriate in the 21st century. Over 50 Rabbis, mohels and other Jewish leaders perform covenant ceremonies without surgical circumcision, and many more will do so upon request. These include Rabbis in the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and many other branches of Judaism.

Hundreds of thousands of Jewish males around the world remain intact. Most Eastern European and South American Jews remain intact, and many Western European Jews have ceased circumcision, seeing it as a barbaric remnant of pre-civilized times. Both Reform Judaism and Humanistic Judaism welcome intact Jews.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Yesterday, CPAC featured a bold all-female panel to discuss the issues affecting women today. Blogger Crystal Wright lead the discussion and raised critically important topics like how hard it is to "come out of the closet" and the pervasiveness of "sexism" in America. I know what you’re thinking. This is astounding. Could conservative and progressive women finally be speaking the same language? That would be accurate if anything they discussed had any basis in reality. Unfortunately, Republicans have a reputation to live up to, so it did not.
...
"Obamacare is sexist […] because it takes the guy off the hook [...] A guy who pressures a girl to get pregnant, all he has to do is say is oh that’s not my fault, you should have been using Obama’s free birth control."

Compiled in 2011, but still very bookmark-able: The Intactivist Movement Within Judaism. Excerpt:

'The following resource list is an extension of the original items linked on the Judaism and Circumcision Resource Page. If you have an additional item to add, please contact us at DrMomma.org-at-gmail.com. We welcome guest authors and scholars with experiences or literature to share.

The past century has been marked by the declaration and protection of universal human rights, as well as a marked increase in the quality of life, both in the United States and worldwide. With these improvements, higher expectations regarding a child’s right to bodily autonomy have become socially accepted and legally mandated. Many argue that because female children in the U.S. are protected by the 1996 law banning all forms of genital cutting, legally male children cannot be excluded from this same federal protection; the 14th Amendment to the Constitution would support this argument.'

Abstract here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Mary Curnock Cook, the head of the admissions service, Ucas, said she was “very worried” about the decline in the proportion of young men applying for places on degree courses.

The trend has significant implications for society because university graduates are expected to earn far more than workers without degrees, the Commons business select committee was warned.

Ms Curnock Cook intervened as it was disclosed that 14 universities had targets to recruit more men. The initiative is part of a drive to train more men as primary school teachers to provide role models for young boys.

So far this year 80,000 more women have applied to universities in the UK than men and the trend is likely to grow, according to Ucas figures.

Of the 558,898 candidates who applied to university by the January deadline this year, 319,752, or 57.2 per cent, were women. Some 239,146, or 42.8 per cent, were men.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Thirty-eight physicians from Europe have written a paper alleging that “cultural bias” was behind the pro-circumcision stance of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The commentary, published on March 18 on the website of the U.S.-based Pediatric Journal, disputes a report which the American academy on children’s health published in August, which states that “benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh the risks but the benefits are not great enough to recommend universal newborn circumcision.”

The European reply states that “seen from the outside, cultural bias reflecting the normality of non-therapeutic male circumcision in the United States seems obvious. The report’s conclusions are different from those reached by physicians in other parts of the Western world.”'