Red Light, Green Light In 1947, Women’s Wear Daily reported on a fad for novelty pins among “college girls,” who loved their “pearls and sorority pin” but would “never turn down an item that’s an attention getter, a source for conversation, or a piece that would stagger a stag line.” A small plastic pin shaped like a traffic light filled the bill: pull one of its tiny chains and a red blade emblazoned with “STOP” popped out; pull the other, and a green one marked “GO”...

Both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly have passed a bill that will try correction officers who engage in sexual relations with detainees as a Class 6 Felony.  However, Governor Ralph Northam still needs to sign the bill for it to become law. Delegate Karrie Delaney said she proposed the bill to close a loophole in the law which currently allows police officers to have sexual relations with a detainee. “This puts people in a clear power imbalance at a very vulnerable time if they were detained...

Although the last decade brought much-needed advancements in cultural acceptance for the LGBTQ community, much of the legislation in America and elsewhere has not kept up. Early last week, the U.K. announced that they would not go through with proposals that would make it easier for trans people to legally change their gender. The Gender Recognition Act, or GRA, was developed under former Prime Minister, Theresa May and laid out the legal process a person must go through to change their gender on their birth certificate....

FOR MOST OF US, pandemics were once the stuff of the distant past, relegated to dusty history books. Of course, today, we understand them so much better. We’ve seen first-hand the way they cause death and suffering, put huge numbers of people out of work, and tip societies all over the world into recessions and depressions. So it may be a surprise to find out that, in a number of instances, there has also been an unexpected side-effect of global disease outbreaks. Sometimes, they have...

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Saturday allowing transgender inmates to be placed in prisons based on their gender identity. Advocates say prisons are particularly dangerous for anyone who does not fulfill stereotypical gender roles, specifically members of the LGBTQ community. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is now letting inmates house based on their gender identity rather than their assigned sex— but only if the state does not have “security concerns” with individual inmates. The law requires officers to ask inmates in private...

The state of Kentucky describes wantonly as such: “A person acts wantonly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.” In other words, negligence despite...

Following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Monday that Ginsburg will be the first woman to lie in repose at the Supreme Court and the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. Rosa Parks, who was previously laid "in honor" at the Capitol, is the only other woman to be honored this way. Pelosi announces that Justice Ginsburg will lie in state at the Capitol this Friday --> pic.twitter.com/dNJPh4YEHT — Addy Baird (@addysbaird) September 21, 2020 Ginsburg’s memorial marks...

There are many similarities with the COVID-19 pandemic of today and the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 50s. However, while COVID seems to affect people with compromised immune systems more, as far as we know at this point, there was a sense of desperation to search for a vaccine for polio which overwhelmingly affected young children. Jonas Salk was the first to develop an effective polio vaccine in 1955. Without the women scientists, secretaries, and researchers on his team, the vaccine’s development would not have...

In the wake of COVID-19, daycares, schools and workplaces have closed down and most of the population has severely altered their day-to-day habits. For mothers, this has meant changes to their work-life balance and an increase in invisible unpaid labor. The United Nations reports that not only women’s safety is affected by COVID-19 related stay-at-home orders but also the amount of time women spend on household and childcare tasks. Their data shows that women spend an average of 4.1 hours a day on unpaid care...

TIME magazine released their annual list of 100 most influential people last night during a live televised event in collaboration with ABC. Of the 100 listed, 54 are women and seven of them grace TIME’s iconic magazine covers that will hit newsstands in early October. In a last minute decision, TIME added the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg to their stack of eight covers to honor her lifelong influence and leadership.  Every person on this list wields power, whether they are an athlete, an author, an artist...