“It is brutal,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women, said of the current environment for women.
Thousands are still imprisoned on federal drug charges who, without presidential clemency, will most likely die behind bars. In 2013, 98,200 people (more than half the federal prison population) were in prison for drug offenses such as trafficking and possession. Within the federal prison system, the overall imprisonment rate for Black women is more than twice that of white women. Latinas are also imprisoned at a higher rate than their white counterparts.
According to a report by the Restaurant Opportunity Center United (ROC), workers who like female restaurant workers rely on tips to make a living experience twice as much sexual harassment as those earning minimum wage. The report, "The Glass Floor: Sexual Harassment in the Restaurant Industry," asserts laws that allow employers to pay "tipped" workers below the minimum wage place female restaurant workers in a "uniquely vulnerable position."
To puncture official indifference, Latin American indigenous women are staging a tribunal on the sidelines of a U.N. permanent forum "to push back the invisibility" about what they suffer. "The justice system really doesn't work for us," says one.
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